
Economic Development and Changing Socioeconomic Differences in Health: Evidence from South Korea, 1946–1977
JEL Classification: I14, N35, O15
Abstract
This study examines how socioeconomic differences in health change with improvements in economic and environmental conditions in South Korea. Using a newly collected 0.5% random sample of military records for all males born from 1946 to 1957, I found that socioeconomic disparity in health increased across birth cohorts. A possible hypothesis is that health shocks (such as exposure to war-caused disruptions, natural disasters, and infectious diseases) could weaken the effects of different parental investments. Such shocks were more prevalent prior the end of the Korean War. In support of the hypothesis, I found that socioeconomic disparity in adult height among the cohorts born before 1952 was less pronounced among conscripts from the central region, which was more severely affected by the Korean War, than those from the south region.
Keywords:
Economic development, Height, Disparity in health, The Korean War, Military recordsAcknowledgments
I benefited from the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers, Myung Soo Cha, Itaek Park, and participants of the KEKA seminar and the Korean Economic Association Meeting. I thank Min-young Do for her excellent research assistance. This work was supported by the Fostering a New Wave of K-Academics Program of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2021-KDA-1250002).
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