New Korean Life Expectancy Statistics Released

According to recently released statistics, 45-year-old Korean males are expected to live an additional 32.6 years, and females of the same age are forecast to live 38.6 years more. But 54 percent of men aged 40 and under are expected to die before 80, while about 70 percent of their female counterparts will likely survive until 80.

These figures are part of the Korea National Statistics Office’s ‘2006 Life Expectancy Table’ released on Tuesday, which shows the latest life expectancy data for Koreans at birth, their remaining life expectancy, and their death rates from specific causes.

Average Male Life Expectancy 75.74 Years; Female, 82.36 Years-

The life expectancy of Korean males born last year averaged 75.74 and that of females averaged 82.36, a 0.60- and 0.48-year increase from last year, respectively.

Life expectancy increased 5.66 years among males and 4.59 years among females compared with a decade ago. For the decrease, the statistics office explained that the number of deaths among males between 45 and 64 and females over 65 dropped.

The gap between men and women in life expectancy was 6.62 years, a 0.13-year decrease from last year and a 1.07-year decline from a decade ago.

Years of remaining life expectancy were 32.6 among 45-year-old males and 38.6 among females of the same age.

The percentage of males aged 0-40 years who are expected to survive until 80 was 45.2 percent (age 0)- 46.4 percent (age 40). Meanwhile, that of females was 68.9 percent (age 0)- 70.1 percent (age 40).

27.6 Percent of Men Are Expected to Die of Cancer-

If the trend continues, boys born last year had a 27.6 percent of chance of dying of any kind of cancers, a 0.1 percent increase from 2005, followed by circulatory diseases like CVA, high blood pressure, and heart diseases (22.3 percent), and accidents such as car accidents and suicide (9.4 percent).

In contrast, girls were most likely to die of circulatory diseases (27.5 percent), a 0.3 percent increase from last year (27.2 percent), followed by cancer (15.3 percent), respiratory diseases like pneumonia (6.4 percent), and accidents (6.1 percent).

Korea Ranks Second in OECD rankings of life expectancy -

The average Korean male life expectancy (75.74 years) was 0.1 years shorter than the average male of OECD member countries (75.8 years), but the Korean average female life expectancy (81.4 years) was one year longer than the OECD average (81.4).

The gap between life expectancy between Korean men and women (6.62 years) was greater than that of OECD members (5.7 years), but it was smaller than that of Poland (8.6 years), Hungary (8.3 years), Slovakia (7.8 years), France (7.1 years), Japan (7.0 years) and Finland (6.8 years).

Since 1970, Korea has seen a 17.07-year and 16.79-year life expectancy increase among males and females, respectively, the greatest leap among OECD member countries except for Turkey (17.1 years among males and 17.7 years among females).

higgledy@donga.com