Health ministry forum turns to Korea's widening lifespan gap

The health ministry said Thursday it had convened a forum on the gap in healthy life expectancy between income groups and regions, a divide that has widened by income even as medical treatment has improved.

Speaking at the 14th Future Health Strategy Forum in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, Kim Han-suk, director-general of the ministry's health policy bureau, said treatment technologies and outcomes keep advancing, but the period people live in good health still varies with income and region. The forum, held under the theme "Everyone's Health, Bridging the Gap," was organized by the ministry and the Korea Health Promotion Institute as a planning session of the Korean Society for Preventive Medicine's autumn conference. The session was scheduled to open at 10:30 a.m. in Room 105 of the HICO convention center under the title "Healthy Life Expectancy That Differs by Income and Region: Seeking the Causes and Solutions."

The income gap is the more stubborn of the two. The difference in healthy life expectancy between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent by income was 8.13 years in 2023, about a year wider than the 7.14 years recorded in 2013. By region, the spread has narrowed to 2.03 years in 2023, down from a peak of 2.86 years in 2016 and 2.74 years in 2018. The figures come from the Korea Health Promotion Institute's 2023 healthy life expectancy statistical yearbook.

Other measures of unequal care point the same way. Over the past decade, the gap in health checkup participation rates between medical aid recipients and the top income quintile widened by as much as 19.4 percentage points, while disparities in follow-up management for chronic diseases stayed comparatively small. In cancer care, the share of people who seek out prevention information differs by 10.5 percentage points depending on income, and regional differences also appear within treatment, including waiting times for surgery and the share of demand met for hospice care.

Kim said the ministry would respond early, before gaps take hold, and concentrate support where circumstances are hardest. "We will steadily develop programs that narrow the gap, verify their effectiveness and spread them," he said.

Kim Heon-ju, president of the Korea Health Promotion Institute, said pinpointing where regional gaps arise is the starting point for closing them, and that the institute will strengthen on-site support so programs can be designed and run to suit conditions in each region.

One such effort is already running. The ministry estimates that the early-life health care program, currently operated at 90 public health centers, will reduce inequality in child-rearing environment indicators by about 18 to 20 percent.