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KMID : 1170320200260040127
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Korean Journal of Health Economics and Policy
2020 Volume.26 No. 4 p.127 ~ p.151
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Changes in Health of the Elderly and the Impacts of Socioeconomic Factors
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Paik Myung-Ho
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Abstract
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Using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this paper studies the changes in health of the elderly aged between 60 and 79 during 2006-2018. The overtime change in elderly health could be affected by the change in socioeconomic characteristics and the change in their impacts on health. The study examines five health variables related to subjective health condition, activity restriction, and chronic diseases. It first scrutinizes the changes in health and socioeconomic factors, such as education and employment. Using the estimation results of probability models, it applies the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. On the one hand, the educational attainment of the elderly improves on average, and the labor force participation rate and employment rate also increase steadily. On the other hand, based on the subjective health reports, the elderly health improves during the period, and the improvement seems to be explained mostly by the changes in socioeconomic characteristics involving the increase in educational attainment and labor force participation. These results do not change much even if the activity restriction is used as the health measure. However, when the morbidity of chronic diseases is used, the results are different. The health gap by education seems widened during the period, which should be examined by further research along with the changes in elderly’s lifestyles, access to medical services, and usage of services.
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KEYWORD
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Subjective health, Chronic disease, Socioeconomic factors, Elderly
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