Seoul: People aged 65 and older accounted for roughly 20% of South Korea’s population this year, owing to accelerated ageing and an extremely low birth rate, according to a report released on Thursday.
According to Statistics Korea, the number of senior people will reach 9.94 million in 2024, accounting for 19.2 percent of the country’s 51.75 million population, Yonhap reported.
The proportion is expected to exceed 20% in 2025, transforming South Korea into a “super-aged society,” before increasing to 30% in 2036 and more than 40% in 2050.
Senior citizens headed 5.66 million households in 2023, accounting for 26.5% of the country’s total households.
Of the 5.66 million households, a staggering 37.8 percent were single-person households, a figure that has been steadily increasing since 2015, highlighting the growing isolation among the elderly.
The number of households led by older adults is expected to increase further, reaching 50.6% of the country’s total households by 2052.
As of 2022, the remaining life expectancy for persons over the age of 65 was expected to be 20.7 years on average, with men at 18.6 years and women at 22.8 years.
It was about a year ahead of the OECD member nations’ average.
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The income of households headed by senior citizens reached 455.4 million in 2023, and 90.4 percent of the total elderly population received the state pension in 2022, with the average monthly amount coming to 650,000 won.
As per the report, 32.6% of the elderly who live alone reported having no one to talk to.
More than half of the seniors living alone claimed they had not adequately prepared for their later years.
In 2023, the employment rate among persons 65 and older was 37.3 percent, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous year.
The employment rate among those aged 65 and older was 37.3 percent in 2023, up 1.1 percentage points from a year earlier.
The comparable figure for the population aged 15 and older stood at 62.6 per cent, but the employment rate among senior citizens has increased since 2015, indicating a growing trend of continued employment among the elderly.
Of those aged 65-79, 57.2 percent said they want to work in the future, with half citing financial issues as a reason, underscoring the economic strain faced by the elderly.
When asked about their quality of life in 2023, 31.9 percent of senior citizens said they were “satisfied” with their current lives, down 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier. Meanwhile, 26.7 percent said they felt proud of their social and economic achievements.
South Korea is facing grim demographic challenges as many young people opt to postpone or give up on getting married or having babies due to changing social norms and lifestyles, the tough job market, and rising home prices.
The fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, came to a fresh low of 0.72 in 2023, much lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep the population stable.
Since 2003, the agency has drawn up the yearly report on senior citizens based on various data from the Bank of Korea, the Financial Supervisory Service, the OECD, and the National Human Rights Commission.
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–IANS
