Korean’s Life Expectancy Reaches 82

According to Statistics Korea, Korean's life expectancy increased by 0.3 years compared to the previous year. This means that Korean babies born last year are expected to live an average of 82.1 years.

Korean's life expectancy between boys and girls differ, though. Korean boys who are born last year are expected to live up to 79 years while the Korean girls are to live up to 85.2 years on the average. That is 19.4 years (for the girls) to 20.2 years (for the boys) longer than the life expectancy of those Korean babies born in 1970.

Korea ranked 12th among 35 OECD member countries in life expectancy. If gender will be taken into consideration, Korean males ranked 18th on the OECD in life expectancy where Iceland topping the ranking with an average of 81.3 years. Korean females, on the other hand, ranked 7th with Japan ranking 1st with an average of 86.8 years.

Although Korean females are known to live longer than the Korean males, the gap between both gender's life expectancy was reported to have narrowed. Compared to a difference of 8.6 years between the female and male's life expectancy in 1985, it has been recently found out that the difference had narrowed down to 6.2 years. The changes in the gap between both genders' life expectancy are said to be because of an improvement in Korean male's life expectancy.

The risk of the Korean male babies born this year of dying in the future due to cancer is higher than the female babies. Male babies have a 27.3% possibility of dying due to cancer in the future, that's higher than the female babies with only 16.1%. The case is different with heart disease, though. Korean male babies only face the risk of dying due to heart disease in the future by 9.7% which is relatively lower than the female's 12.6%.