The quality of life in Korea is one of the lowest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and G20 nations, a Korea Development Institute, report showed Sunday.

According to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the KDI report on developing indexes for measuring national competitiveness showed that the measure of Korea’s quality of life for 2008 was 27th among the 39 nations.

The report measures national competitiveness in four major categories ― growth engines, quality of life, environment and infrastructure ― divided into 15 subcategories, then divided into 50 smaller categories.

The infrastructure category includes human and financial resources.

The report, which was compiled by using related data for 2000 and 2008 from a number of international organizations including the OECD and the World Bank, showed that the country also ranked 27th in 2000.

In the social spending subcategory, Korea came last among the 31 comparable countries, while it ranked 28th in terms of health. With only 30 of the 39 nations having comparable data, Korea had one of the lowest health-related competitiveness.

The report also showed that the level of equity in Korea has deteriorated significantly between 2000 and 2008.

The data from 2000 placed Korea at 12th place, but the figures for 2008 pulled the country’s ranking down to 23rd place in terms of equity.

The KDI report showed that Korea does not measure up to other nations in the other categories.

The competitiveness of the country’s growth engine was rated 17th, down two places from 2000, while the country ranking in the infrastructure category remained unchanged at 19th place.

Regarding the issue, the report showed that Korea has seen little improvement in subcategories for measuring the competitiveness of its growth engine with the exception of technological innovation.

While Korea’s competitiveness in technological innovation rose to the fourth place from the seventh place, the rating for conditions for running a business remained unchanged at 14th place, while the country’s industrial structure lost competitiveness going from 27th to 28th place between 2000 and 2008.

At 14th place, Korea’s national competitiveness was the highest for the environment. However, despite the comparatively high ranking, the country’s environmental competitiveness slipped from 13th place calculated for 2000.

By Choi He-su (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)