Due to COVID-19, indicators have been developed to gauge social and economic changes in Korea triggered by the epidemic of infectious diseases such as consumption, employment, marriage and childbirth, and education.
On the 28th, the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Disease Crisis Response (COVID-19 Advisory Committee) announced a "plan to establish and utilize socio-economic indicators for responding to infectious diseases."
The Infectious Disease Advisory Committee formed a separate work group headed by Hong Seok-cheol, an economics professor at Seoul National University, within the socioeconomic division to conduct preliminary research to review the necessity and feasibility of establishing socioeconomic indicators.
Specifically, indicators related to consumer spending, jobs, and small business owners were presented in the economic sector, and indicators of crisis households, social isolation, medical accessibility, educational environment, and population trend were presented in the social sector. There are indicators of population movement and risk perception in the field of water solubility and crisis perception.
As a result of the analysis, consumption expenditure tended to decrease due to the COVID-19 epidemic and strengthening social distancing. Multi-use facilities and leisure-related industries have become more sensitive.
The number of unemployment benefits recipients has become clear that women tend to exceed men since the COVID-19 epidemic. The researchers analyzed that this was related to the need to care for children.
Looking at the number of business days for multi-use facilities and leisure facilities, the number of business days in the fields of "enjoyment sports and culture" and "food and beverage services" has decreased due to strengthening quarantine policies and winter trends. In particular, the number of business days of "entertainment sports and culture" during the third epidemic in 2020 decreased by one day from an average of four days to three days.
Looking at the trend of monthly changes in the number of emergency welfare support, the number of "living support" increased as the criteria for emergency welfare support in the early stages of responding to COVID-19 increased and decreased since the summer of 2020.
The number of days of depression patients per month was observed intermittently in 2020, the first year of COVID-19, but increased significantly from March 2021, the second year.
Looking at the monthly trend of face-to-face/non-face-to-face classes in schools, in the first year of COVID-19, remote classes were significantly more than face-to-face classes in 2020, but restrictions on school attendance were eased from March 2021.
The number of marriages has decreased significantly since March 2020. The trend of decline continued until 2021 and recovered somewhat in 2022, but it is still low. The number of births also decreased more in 2022.
The amount of movement decreased due to the COVID-19 epidemic and strengthened social distancing, the lowest point in three fads in 2020, but the decline has decreased and turned to an increasing trend since 2021.
The perception of the severity of the COVID-19 situation showed a pattern of increasing or decreasing with the trend, and has decreased overall since the lifting of the distance in April 2022.
The Advisory Committee on Infectious Diseases saw the need to upgrade the socio-economic indicator system to respond to such an infectious disease crisis. In particular, it was suggested that it is necessary to develop innovative indicators that can examine changes in people's lives from various angles using big data from the public and private sectors. It was considered that a more comprehensive infectious disease social crisis index should be developed and used as the basis for crisis response strategies from a macro perspective.
In addition, it was proposed to track changes in indicators related to the vulnerable group of infectious diseases and to use them to subdivide indicators so that policy support can be provided preemptively. He stressed the need to develop mid- to long-term effects and evaluation and monitoring indicators for various areas such as child development, quality of life for the elderly, and educational environment gaps in accordance with the infectious disease crisis.
Policies close to people's lives, such as social distancing, were recommended to establish a socioeconomic impact prediction and evaluation system for quarantine policies that can predict socioeconomic impacts.
Finally, in order to establish a short-term and mid- to long-term impact assessment system of the infectious disease crisis, pan-government interest and research support such as the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Employment and Labor must be supported.
Hong Seok-cheol, who oversaw the preliminary research, said, "I hope this study will recognize the importance of establishing a socioeconomic indicator system, while actively promoting empirical research on the path and impact of the infectious disease crisis on people's lives."
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon
(Picture from Unsplash)