Multidimensional Poverty in South Korea: Analyses of Deprivation Interlinkages

Background: Multidimensional poverty measures play a crucial role in assessing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) concerning poverty reduction. Recent research indicates the necessities of considering interconnections among deprivation indicators to effectively gauge the progress toward the SDGs. This research extends prior work by investigating the prevalence of various combinations of selected deprivations and analyzing co-deprivations among specific deprivation indicators.

Methods: Using data from the 2012 and 2022 Korean Welfare Panel Study, I construct a deprivation index based on ten indicators from five domains: living standards, education, health, economic status, and social security. Following the way proposed by Suppa et al. (2022), an analysis of deprivations was conducted utilizing profiles, bundles, and co-deprivations. Each of these approaches sheds light on specific aspects of the joint distribution of deprivations, aiming to understand the interconnected nature of these deprivations.

Results: Key findings include: (a) over the past decade, the multidimensional poverty rate declined from 39.9% to 31.8%, a rate twice that of income poverty during the same period (18.3% to 15.1%); (b) in 2012, approximately 60% of households experienced simultaneous deprivations in education, pension, income, and health. By 2022, the most prevalence deprivations were in education, employment, and health; (c) among households with working-aged heads, deprivation in employment and assets increased, while for those with elderly heads, deprivation in housing and assets rose over time; and (d) experiencing multidimensional poverty in 2012 significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing it six-fold in 2022.

Implications: These preliminary findings suggest that despite improvements in social security leading to a reduction in income poverty over the past decade, the poor still experience deprivations in education, health, and employment, which are essential for achieving a desirable quality of life. Future research should focus on developing diverse poverty measures to offer insights for multi-sectoral policy interventions.