1 in 5 elderly people live alone in Korea

[Photo by Yonhap]

The number of elderly people living alone in South Korea surpassed the 2-million mark for the first time in history thanks to the rapid aging of the population and the rise of single-person households, data showed on Monday.

According to the ‘2023 Population and Housing Census’ released by Statistics Korea on Monday, the country’s total population was 51.78 million as of November 1st, 2023, up 82,000 or 0.2 percent from a year earlier.

The total population had been declining for two consecutive years since 2021 but turned to an increase for the first time in three years, thanks to a 10.4 percent increase in the number of foreign residents (1.94 million) that was driven by increased immigration after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The elderly population, or those aged 65 and over, was 9.61 million, accounted for 18.6 percent of the total population. Both the number and proportion of the elderly population are at record levels from when related statistics became available.

Of the total number of elderly Koreans (9.5 million), 2.14 million were living alone in 2023. The number of seniors living alone topped 2 million, up from 1.45 million in 2018, marking a 48 percent increase in five years.

“Most cases of single-person households among the elderly are likely due to bereavement, although there are cases of living apart from their children,” according to Kim Seo-young, head of the Population Census Division at Statistics Korea.

The trend of increasing single-person households continued. There were 7.83 million single-person households in 2023, an increase of 327,000 from the previous year. The proportion of single-person households surged to 35.5 percent in the same year from 29.3 percent in 2018.

The proportion of the key active labor market population gradually declined as the elderly population rapidly increased. The working-age population (aged 15 to 64) was 36.55 million in 2023, accounting for 70.6 percent of the total population and the lowest percentage ever on record. The proportion of the youth population (aged 0 to 14) also hit a record low of 10.9 percent, in line with the aging trend.

The phenomenon of young people gravitating towards the metropolitan area accelerated alongside aging. The proportion of people living in the metropolitan hit a record high of 50.7 percent in 2023, with 72.8 percent of Seoul‘s population being of working age, while the proportion of the elderly population was only 18.3 percent. This figure was more than 5 percentage points lower than the elderly population proportion in South Jeolla Province (25.4 percent) and North Gyeongsang Province (23.8 percent).

There is a call to effectively use the increasing elderly population to enhance productivity. With improved medical services and greater health awareness than in the past, there is a need to develop support measures for ‘working seniors.’

“We need to transition to a system that allows the elderly to work more, which will prevent the younger generation from bearing an excessive welfare burden,” Koo Jeong-woo, a professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University, said. “Providing various job opportunities for the elderly can help address the shortage of the economically active population.”

There are also calls for a system to be put in place where people receive higher wages based on performance regardless of age.

“If we abolish or relax the seniority-based pay system, enabling capable individuals to work at any time, we can improve productivity,” Choi Chang-kyu, professor emeritus of economics at Myongji University, said.