• Mia Son, Hye Ri Kim, Seung-Ah Choe, Myung Ki, Fran Yong, Mijin Park, and Domyung Paek.
• Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, School of Medicine, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2023 Jan 9; 38 (2): e20e20.

BackgroundTo investigate the effect of parental social class on cancer mortality in children under 5 in Korea, two birth cohorts were constructed by linking national birth data to under-5 death data from the Statistics Korea for 1995-1999 (3,323,613 births) and 2010-2014 (2,297,876 births).MethodsThe Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for covariates was used in this study.ResultsSocial inequalities of under-5 cancer mortality risk in paternal education and paternal employment status were greater in 2010-2014 than in 1995-1999. The gap of hazard ratio (HR) of under-5 cancer mortality between lower (high school or below) and higher (university or higher) paternal education increased from 1.23 (95% confidence interval, 1.041.46) in 1995-1999 to 1.45 (1.11-1.97) in 2010-2014; the gap of HR between parents engaged in manual work and non-manual work increased from 1.32 (1.12-1.56) in 1995-1999 to 1.45 (1.12-1.89) in 2010-2014 for fathers, and from 1.18 (0.7-1.98) to 1.69 (1.03-2.79) for mothers. When the parental social class was lower, the risk of under-5 cancer mortality was higher in not only adverse but normal births.ConclusionSocial inequalities must be addressed to reduce the disparity in cancer mortality of children under 5 years old.© 2023 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

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