An elderly person is seen in this illustration.JOONGANG ILBO
Two-person households are set to make up more than 30 percent of total households next year for the first time, a larger share than three- and four-person homes combined.
Of those two-person households, more than 44 percent are projected to be headed by someone aged 65 or older. The projection has led to calls for a policy response to care situations in which older couples look after each other.
Korea is expected to have 22.81 million households next year, up 0.9 percent from this year, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics' household projections through 2052.
Single-person households, already the largest group, are expected to rise 2.3 percent to 8.55 million and make up 37.5 percent of the total, up 0.5 percentage points from this year.
Two-person households are projected to grow 2.1 percent to 6.89 million and their share is expected to rise from 29.9 percent this year to 30.2 percent. The share has never topped 30 percent in the data series, which dates back to 2000.
By contrast, three-person households are projected to slip 0.4 percent to 4.12 million or 18.1 percent of the total, and four-person households to fall 2.9 percent to 2.61 million or 11.4 percent. Their combined share of 29.5 percent would fall below that of two-person households for the first time. Households of five or more people are expected to number just 634,000.
An AI-generated illustration shows a couple standing on a cliff of stacked coins and looking toward a house on a distant hill, with an unfinished bridge of coins reaching only partway across. Only 24.6 percent of Korean households qualify as "truly middle class" once savings, debt and retirement readiness are counted, a recent analysis found.CHATGPT
Households of three or four people, once seen as the typical Korean family, are giving way to smaller ones.
One- and two-person households are expected to keep gaining ground for years. By 2043, single-person households are projected to make up 40.9 percent of all households and two-person households 34.2 percent, while the shares of three- and four-person households fall to 15.6 percent and 7.7 percent.
After 2043, population decline is expected to start reducing the number of one- and two-person households as well, though their share of all households would keep rising.
In 2052, the final year of the projections, single-person households are expected to account for 41.3 percent of the total and two-person households 35.5 percent. Three-person households would make up 15.2 percent and four-person households just 6.7 percent.
Two-person households are also aging. Next year, 44.3 percent of them are projected to be headed by someone aged 65 or older, up 1.3 percentage points from this year. Many are likely to be older couples.
Apartment complexes in Seoul are seen from Namsan in central Seoul on Oct. 5.NEWS1
The increase is attributed to more couples spending their later years apart from their children, as the nuclear family has become the norm and medical advances have extended life expectancy.
As these couples grow older, the healthier spouse is more likely to be pushed into caring for a frail partner. When one spouse's health declines, the burden of care falls on the other, whose own health can then deteriorate in a vicious cycle.
Chung Soon-dool, a professor of social welfare at Ewha Womans University, said an institutional framework to support such care situations is already in place. The government's customized care service for older people, which once centered on seniors living alone, has been expanded to cover older households, according to Chung.
However, Chung stressed that local communities need to do more to find households in need and inform them, so older couples do not miss out on support because they are unaware of it.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
