Single men and women have different reasons for not getting married. (image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, April 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Single men and women have different reasons for putting off marriage or not getting married at all.
The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs conducted a survey of 947 singles between the ages of 19 and 49, 31 percent of whom said housing was the main reason for putting off marriage.
Others blamed ‘unstable job’ (27.6 percent), ‘comfort of being single’ (26.2 percent), ‘lack of an ideal partner’ (8.1 percent), and ‘workload’ (4.9 percent) as reasons for not getting married.
The responses differed by gender.
Among single women, the most popular response was the ‘comfort of being single’ (31 percent) as the primary reason for not getting married. In contrast, single men chose ‘housing’ (35 percent) as the main problem.
However, both single men (28.8 percent) and women (25.9 percent) picked ‘unstable job’ as the second most common reason for not getting married.
This shows that single men and women have different reasons for not getting married.
The responses also differed by educational attainment.
High school graduates picked the ‘comfort of being single’ (31.5 percent) as the primary reason for not getting married, followed by ‘unstable job’ (28.3 percent).
College graduates chose ‘housing’ (32.7 percent) as the primary reason, followed by ‘unstable job’ (28 percent).
Those with a Master’s degree or higher picked ‘housing’ (38.9 percent) as the main factor, followed by ‘lack of an ideal partner’ and the ‘comfort of being single’, both of which accounted for 19.4 percent of the responses.
Respondents with jobs picked ‘housing’ (34.1 percent) as the primary reason for not getting married, while those without jobs chose ‘unstable job’ (33.1 percent) as the main factor.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
