Statistics Korea Builds 'Population Dynamics Cohort DB'... Service Launch Scheduled for Second Half of Next Year

Building 36 Years of Data Since 1983... Linking Birth, Death, Marriage, Divorce, and More

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] On the 15th, Statistics Korea announced that it has for the first time established a population dynamics cohort database (DB) capable of analyzing life course changes by birth cohort.

The population dynamics cohort DB links four individual statistical DBs on birth, death, marriage, and divorce based on birth, covering 36 years of data from 1983 to 2018, and plans to add new birth cohorts annually.

There has been high demand for a population dynamics cohort DB that can measure life cycle changes from birth to education, employment, and marriage, and identify population changes by characteristics, but it was difficult to proceed due to lack of data linkage and information protection infrastructure.

However, since 2015, the Population and Housing Census has been conducted annually as an administrative data-based registration census, and since November 2018, a statistical data center with a privacy protection and data linkage infrastructure has been operated, enabling the establishment of the population dynamics cohort DB for the first time this year.

As the population dynamics cohort DB accumulates over a long period, it is expected to enable various analyses by characteristics, such as cohort total fertility rate, life expectancy calculation, and differential fertility and mortality studies by population characteristics (gender, age, marital status, education level, occupation, etc.).

Additionally, the population dynamics cohort DB links populations by birth year as panels, allowing longitudinal analysis of patterns in which people of the same age group experience marriage, childbirth, divorce, and death over time.

Furthermore, by linking with various administrative data such as housing, jobs, and parental leave, it is possible to produce customized new statistics as low-cost, high-efficiency administrative statistics for policy-making related to low fertility, family, and welfare through comprehensive analysis of life course changes and economic and social characteristic changes of people born in specific periods.

Statistics Korea plans to provide the service through the statistical data center in the second half of 2021 after quality inspection and research on data provision guidelines for information protection.

Kang Shin-wook, Commissioner of Statistics Korea, said, "It is significant that we have established a basic DB that links individual population dynamics statistical data and allows various data to be combined," and added, "We hope it will be smoothly utilized as evidence-based data for policy-making on low fertility, family, welfare, and other areas."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.