Announcement of ‘Social Trends in Korea’ by the National Statistical Office
When multi-homed people increase their assets by 43% over 3 years
Only 18% increase in jeonse and monthly rent households
Satisfaction with elderly couples without children is high
“I don’t have to worry regarding Twilight parenting and kangaroo children”
Postponement of graduation due to cold wave of employment 43.6%↑
Real estate prices have skyrocketed over the past five years, widening the wealth gap between homeless people and those with multiple homes by up to 20 times. 90% of household assets were real estate assets.
The happiness index ranked 59th in the world, falling short of the average. The life satisfaction of elderly couples living alone without having children or having children was found to be higher than those living with children. The fact that the job market for liberal arts students has become more severe than for science students has also become an aspect of the job market created by Corona 19.
On the 13th, the National Statistical Office published “Social Trends in Korea 2022,” which analyzed changes in 12 areas of our society, including population, family, education, labor, assets, and leisure.
Last year, the net worth of multi-homed households increased by 43.4% over the three years since 2018. Over the same period, the wealth of non-home-rental households increased only by 18.0%. The gap between multi-housing households and non-housing households widened from 15.6 times in 2018 to 19 times last year.
During the same period, the net wealth gap between single-housing households and homeless households widened from 6.2 times to 6.6 times. The gap between the income of the top 10% (KRW 154.65 million) and the bottom 10% (KRW 6.81 million) reached 22.7 times.
In the life satisfaction survey for elderly households, the proportion of ‘satisfied’ responses was 52.9% for elderly married couples, 47.3% for households with children, and 42.6% for elderly households living alone. It is analyzed that the reason why elderly couples have a high quality of life is that they can spend their old age without the stress of raising children at dusk and the stress of having children of the ‘kangaroo tribe’, who depend on their parents’ economic power until late in life.
Among elderly couple households, the proportion of respondents who answered that they “rely on their children for living expenses in old age” has decreased by less than half in the past 9 years, from 10.2% in 2011 to 4.2% in 2020.
The happiness index of Koreans (out of 10) was only 59th in the world with an average of 5.94 over the past three years. Finland ranked first (7.82 points), the United States ranked 16th (6.98 points), and Japan ranked 54th (6.04 points), higher than Korea. Since the spread of Corona 19, the rate of leave of absence from college students has soared. The ratio of students on leave of absence at Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Korea University increased by up to 2.6 percentage points compared to 2019. It is analyzed that this is because the number of college students who take a leave of absence and want to take a second course is increasing because they cannot enjoy college life properly.
The number of university students who postponed graduation (obtaining a bachelor’s degree) increased by 43.6 percent as the job market of large companies narrowed. In particular, graduates of science and engineering majors were not significantly affected by employment, but the employment rate of graduates of humanities and social sciences plummeted by 6.1 percentage points in 2020, and did not recover to the pre-COVID-19 situation last year.
Reporter Sejong Lee Young-joon
