Volunteers prepare “samgyetang,” a traditional Korean soup made with a whole young chicken stuffed with ginseng, sticky rice and garlic, for underprivileged senior citizens at a community welfare center in Daegu, some 300 km southeast of Seoul, on June 20, 2019. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — A number of low-income households had less than an appropriate amount of food with less or no consideration for a balanced diet last year.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency conducted an analysis of national health and nutritional surveys, which showed that only 86.6 percent of low-income households had access to a sufficient amount of food.
This indicates that the remaining 13.4 percent had less or no access to a sufficient amount of food.
This ratio has been deteriorating for five years, falling from 89.2 percent in 2016 to 88.5 percent in 2018 and 86.6 percent in 2020.
Food access among high-income households maintained a 99.5 percent, 99.9 percent and 99.8 percent ratio throughout the same period, widening the gap between high-income and low-income households in terms of access to food.
The overall ratio of sufficient food access also dropped from 96.9 percent in 2018 to 96.3 percent last year.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
