Singles Earn Less Than Half the Average Household Income

Single householders are proliferating, but their income and assets are not even half the overall household average.

According to Statistics Korea on Tuesday, one-person households increased by 336,000 last year to 7.5 million, which brought their proportion of total households from 33.4 percent in 2021 to 34.5 percent.

The figure surpassed 30 percent for the first time in 2019.

But life for singles is not without challenges. Their average annual income last year was W30.1 million, far lower than the average income of all households of W67.62 million, and 61.3 percent of them earned less than W30 million (US$1=W1,314).

Their assets also fell short of half the average for all households. As of March, the average assets of single householders were worth W209.49 million, compared to W527.27 million for all households, while their debts increased by 1.9 percent to W36.51 million.

A majority or 54.6 percent live in small spaces of less than 40 sq.m.

But more than half of them take a positive view of Korean society and their human relationships, polls suggest. A Statistics Korea official said, “As young people are increasingly reluctant to marry, the number of single households is expected to keep rising.”