A public health physician provides on-site care at a senior center. Cho Tae-hyung reporter
Life expectancy for babies born last year reached a record 83.7 years. However, the period expected to be lived without illness, in good health, averaged 65.5 years. This means people are living 'long lives with illness'.
According to the '2024 Life Tables' released by the National Data Office on the 3rd, life expectancy for babies born last year was 83.7 years, up 0.2 years from a year earlier and 1.9 years from ten years earlier. Babies born last year are expected to live longer than any cohort of newborns since the life tables began to be compiled for those born in the 1970s. A life table is a statistical table that estimates how long a person of a given age would live if current age-specific mortality levels were to remain unchanged.
Life expectancy at birth has recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels and is increasing. It fell from 83.6 years in 2021 to 82.7 years in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, then rose to 83.5 years in 2023.
By sex, male life expectancy for babies born last year was 80.8 years and female life expectancy was 86.6 years, with both up 0.2 years from the previous year. The male-female life expectancy gap was 5.8 years and has been narrowing since peaking at 8.6 years in 1985.
Healthy life expectancy, excluding periods lived with illness, was 65.5 years for babies born last year, down 0.3 years from 2022. If a baby born last year were to live to 83.7 years, only 65.5 years would be healthy, and the remaining 18.2 years could be spent with illness.
Of the life expectancy for babies born last year, the period expected to be lived in a state of morbidity due to disease or injury was 16.2 years for men and 20.2 years for women, longer for women. Excluding morbidity, the period expected to be lived in a healthy state was 64.6 years for men and 66.4 years for women, down 0.5 years for men and 0.2 years for women from two years earlier. People are living longer than previous generations, but spending more years in ill health.
By cause of death, a baby born last year faces a 19.5% probability of eventually dying from cancer, the highest share. This was followed by pneumonia at 10.2%, heart disease at 10.0%, and cerebrovascular disease at 6.9%. Compared with a year earlier, the probabilities of dying from cancer and pneumonia increased, while the probability of dying from COVID-19 decreased. Life expectancy for babies born last year is expected to increase by 3.3 years if cancer were eliminated, by 1.2 years if heart disease were eliminated, and by 1.0 years if pneumonia were eliminated.
Life expectancy in Korea was 80.8 years; compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member average of 78.5 years, men live 2.3 years longer and women 2.9 years longer. Men aged 60 last year are expected to live 23.7 more years, and women 28.4 more years. Compared with a year earlier, remaining life expectancy increased by 0.3 years for men and 0.2 years for women. For 40-year-olds last year, remaining life expectancy was 41.9 years for men and 47.4 years for women.
한글기사 원본(Original Korean Story)