Abstract

Worker’s compensation is different for each country according to their histological and cultural background and socioeconomic status. The number of workers and the kind of diseases covered by worker’s compensation differs for each country depending on approval criteria and degree of worker’s compensation.

It has close relationship with social security system of each country. Therefore, it is important to understand various situations when using worker’s compensation statistics or comparing with other countries. We compared and analysed worker’s compensation and social security systems of South Korea, Japan, Germany and US, and studied the correlation between socioeconomic status and worker’s compensation statistics of OECD countries. Occupational injury rate of South Korea is not high compared to Japan, Germany or US, but fatal injury rate is significantly high. This is presumably related to under-reporting and the under- reporting is in relation with social and political situations of Korea. US shows very high ratio of musculoskeletal diseases including sprains and strains, while Germany shows lower ratio. This seems to be related with paid sick leave of each country. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have almost identical approval criteria for cerebrovascular diseases, but approval rate is exceptionally high in South Korea. This is because of high application ratio due to the fact that the all cerebral haemorrhage cases during work were compensated as occupational diseases in South Korea in the past. For developing countries trying to benchmark other countries’ worker’s compensation system, should consider not only the workers’ compensation system, but also other social security systems and the socioeconomic status.