Old Age Poverty In South Korea

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Elderly are vulnerable to economic instability. They are prone to higher risk of poverty due to withdrawal from work and health issues. Insufficient public transfer is not able to ensure adequate income of people after retirement. In most countries, poverty tends to increase with age. In other words, the older the individual, the higher chance of becoming poor. Across OECD countries, the elderly poverty rate is 11.2 and 14.7 for age group of 66 to 75 and over 75 years consecutively. The oldest-old, the elderly of age 80 and above are the most likely to be suffered from poverty because hey are less capable of working than the other old age (United Nations, 2015). Another striking point is that the oldest-old, the most vulnerable group, is growing …show more content…

The old age poverty contributes the highest in the total population poverty. In 2000, the elderly poverty rate is 3 times higher than the non-elderly group (Lee & Lee, 2009). Also, income-poverty ratio is the highest in the household led by those aged 60 and above (World Bank, 2014). On the broader scale, South Korea old age poverty is ranked the highest among OECD countries. The elderly poverty rate on average in OECD is 13% while 45% of elderly in South Korea are living less than median household income (OECD, 2015) (KyungHee, 2010). Despite economic prosperity of the country, the elderly is still struggling to make ends …show more content…

Coined by Dorothy Miller, the Sandwich generation are those in the age of 30-45 responsible for taking care of both children and aging parents. The sandwich generation confront with educational expense for their children and medical expense for their old parents. Aside from a family obligation, the sandwich generation also feel the need to express gratitude and gratefulness to the older generation that have devoted hard work and sacrifice themselves to build up Korea from Korean War and bring the country into prosperity. This financial burden from taking care of multigenerational force the young people to work harder, save less and become risk-averse in investment. Furthermore, the increasing of old age dependency ratio will even worsen the situation. By 2050, it is projected to be 71.0 which is quadruple from year 2010 (Rim, 2013) Given this stress, the 61% of the Korean reported feel pessimistic to remain their current lifestyle once retired (Economist Intelligence Unit,

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