Children's quality of life depends on where they live

By Choi Sung-jin

The quality of life for Korean children varies widely depending on which part of the country they reside, a study showed Friday.

In general, children living in cities or provinces which have high financial self-sufficiency ratios and spend more on social welfare enjoy a higher quality of life, the study said.

The Seoul National University’s Research Institute for Society and Welfare, and Save the Children, an international aid group, released the report entitled “Study on comprehensive indices concerning Korean children’s quality of life.” It is based on their joint survey of 8,685 elementary school children and their parents in 16 provinces and metropolises from October to December.

The study, the third such one following those conducted in 2012 and 2013, calculated quality of life indices in eight major areas – health, sense of happiness, human relationships, economic situation, safety, education, housing and personality.

According to the report, seven metropolises showed above-average quality of life on the index – Daegu, Ulsan, Busan, Daejoen, Seoul, Incheon and Gwangju, in that order. Daegu got the highest marks in all of the eight areas measuring the quality of life, while Daejeon, which topped the list in two previous surveys, fell to fourth place. Seoul’s ranking dropped by one notch, and taking the bottom three places were North Jeolla, South Jeolla and North Chungcheong provinces.

The comparison of 40 core indices in the eight areas with the two previous studies, however, showed that the average quality of life for Korean children has not changed much, maintaining levels much the same over the period, the study shoed.

Compared with the first study in 2012, North Chungcheong showed the steepest drop from second to 15th place while Daegu jumped from eighth to first place. Most other provinces and large cities, however, saw little change in their rankings, indicating increasingly fixed levels of the quality of life in different parts of the country.

Particularly, regional differences have been widening as shown by the gap of 40 points between the indexes of the top-ranked Daegu and 16th-ranked North Jeolla.

By local autonomous units, the quality of life for children in large cities (110.7 in the comprehensive index) was much higher than those of small cities (98.38) and farming and fishing villages (90.91). Only two small cities showed above-average numbers on the index but farming and fishing villages all showed below average numbers. In education and safety in particular, farming and fishing villages marked indexes below 90 – 89.89 and 89.35, respectively.

The research team also analyzed correlations between the quality of life and various social indices. The study revealed that in provinces and cities with large spending on social welfare programs and high financial self-reliance ratios, the children enjoyed a high quality of life. Also, children living in regions with higher rates of child abuse suffer from a lower quality of life.

“It is the state’s duty to provide the same starting line for all children,” said Professor Lee Bong-joo of Seoul National University who led the study. “The central government needs to actively step in by shouldering part of the spending for children’s welfare in regions with low fiscal self-sufficiency ratios.”

Professor Yu Jo-an of the same university said, “As the quality of life of children in farming and fishing villages is relatively low, the government should try to expand their access to education and other welfare services by, for instance, assigning more teachers and social workers to these areas.”

The study was part of an international research project conducted simultaneously in 15 countries under the auspices of Save the Children. The final results comparing the quality of life of these countries will be released next year.