Title: Inequalities in Working and Health Expectancies at Older Ages in South Korea

Abstract: Alongside South Korea’s increasing life expectancy comes increases in working life, but whether that happens in good or poor health is less clear. South Korea has high proportions of working older adults and older adult poverty, and an increasing burden of multimorbidity. Using data from eight waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2006-2020), we take a discrete-time multistate modelling approach to estimate working life expectancy (WLE) at age 60 with 0 disease, 1 disease, and multimorbidity and explore inequalities by sex, education, and urban/rural geography. Preliminary analyses find that males have higher WLE and spend less time with disease compared to females. Regardless of sex, individuals with low education and from rural areas have higher WLE and spend more of their WLE with multimorbidity compared to those with high education and from urban areas. These findings have important implications for the welfare of older adults, particularly those with low education and from rural areas, who are working longer and in poorer health than their high educated, urban counterparts.