Income-Related Health Inequalities in Korea

Data from the 2001 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination
Survey and the ill health concentration index (CI) were used to
examine income-related health inequalities among Koreans.
Participants (>19 years old) were requested to provide
information regarding monthly household income, expenditures,
subjective living conditions, and health status. Ill health was
determined both subjectively through self-rated health (SRH) scores
and objectively through the number of diseases (ND). At the
individual level, the CIs for SRH and ND were -0.147 and -0.093,
respectively; age–gender adjusted CIs were -0.065 and -0.071,
respectively. These values remained unchanged when estimating CI
for grouped data. These results indicate that ill health was more
pronounced among lower income groups in Korea. However, avoidable
health inequality in Korea was smaller than in the United Kingdom
and the United States, larger than in Sweden, Eastern Germany,
Finland, and Western Germany, and roughly equal to the Netherlands,
Spain, and Switzerland.