ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

Difficulties accessing medical services for residents living in areas at high risk of local extinction are emerging as a serious social problem. Inequality in healthcare is anticipated to exacerbate the risk of local extinction, as regions facing such challenges typically demand increased healthcare resources due to factors such as population aging and related vulnerabilities. In this respect, this study confirmed spatial inequality in medical services and empirically analyzed the relationship with local extinction. The main results are as follows. First, medical service inequality between the metropolitan area and provinces, and between large cities and small and medium-sized cities was found to vary greatly. Second, it was found that the outflow of the population was large in areas with high inequality in medical services particularly in non-metropolitan areas. Third, the spatial inequality of medical services was greater in areas with a high risk of local extinction. Fourth, in the case of primary medical services, the northern part of the metropolitan area, where the extinction risk is higher, was found to be more vulnerable than other metropolitan areas. In conclusion, this study confirmed that the imbalance in medical resources is deepening the gap between regions, which can accelerate the outflow of local populations and local extinction. In particular, since the difficulty of providing secondary and tertiary medical services can be a serious problem in the treatment of severe diseases, it is necessary to provide enough medical resources in high-risk local extinction areas with large service inequality. Through this, it is believed that the risk of local unsustainability and extinction in the provinces can be lowered.

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