KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Rapid increasing shares of single-person households change the whole household structure in Korea. The purpose of this study is to show current status of employment, income and expenditure of single-person households. Of particular interest was working aged groups(15~64) in this study. Compared to non single-person households, we tried to emphasize vulnerability of single-person households both in labor market and income security.

We analyzed “KoWePs(Korea Welfare Panel Study)”, collected by KIHASA(Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs) and SNU(Seoul National University). KoWePs accumulated 8th wave of panel study and it covers from 2005 to 2012. The data were useful since they included significant numbers of single-person households as well as variables regarding employment and welfare.

Major findings include, not limited that income and expenditure of single-person households are different from those of non single-person households in terms of poverty rates and dynamics. Especially those in youth generation showed dramatic changes in both amounts and structures. The middle aged mostly had low income and were expected to be poor when they became the old.

The employment of single-person households was not very promising as well. Many of them were the unemployed even though they were workable. The middle aged were as serious as 40% of men and 46%of women were unemployed. Definitely they had very unstable income and expenditure dynamics. Particularly women in middle aged had very low level of assets and it affected being poor. Due to the responsibility of caring others, women had little job experience, and generated bad outcome in labor market.

Assisting labor market transition for unemployed women was effective as they responded to income and expenditure by the employment. Compared to men, women were more vulnerable by employment and household economic status. We suggested providing strong action plan of employment and welfare to needed single-person households. Women of course have first priority due to the high risk of poverty. Targeting working aged groups might be the efficient strategy to maximize policy outcomes and to minimize unnecessary public spending.