South Korea continues to rank near the bottom among OECD member nations in terms of life satisfaction. (Image courtesy of Kobiz Media)
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – While South Koreans’ quality of life has seen some improvement, the country continues to rank near the bottom among OECD member nations in terms of life satisfaction.
According to a recent report from Statistics Korea, the life satisfaction score for South Koreans in 2022 was 6.5, a slight increase of 0.2 points from the previous year. Life satisfaction, measured on a scale from 0 to 10, reflects subjective contentment with objective life conditions.
The score had risen to 6.1 in 2018 and plateaued at 6.0 in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic before showing an upward trend.
Factors such as employment rates, employment rates for university graduates, frequency of cultural and sports events attendance, and the number of domestic travel days per capita have shown improvement in the post-pandemic period.
Despite these positive changes, the life satisfaction scores varied significantly across different income levels, with households earning less than 1 million won per month reporting a life satisfaction score of 6.0, which was 0.4 points lower than those earning between 1 million won and 2 million won.
Households with incomes over 6 million won scored 6.6, indicating a tendency for lower satisfaction among lower-income groups.
Comparatively, South Korea’s life satisfaction remains at the lower end among OECD countries, with an average score of 5.95 from 2020 to 2022, ranking 35th out of 38 member countries. Only Turkey (4.6), Colombia (5.6), and Greece (5.9) scored lower, with the OECD average at 6.69, which is 0.74 points higher than South Korea’s.
The report also revealed that life satisfaction tends to decrease with age, with a consistent decline in satisfaction across all areas from children and adolescents to the elderly. While 56.6% of children and adolescents expressed satisfaction with their subjective well-being, only 29.9% of the elderly felt the same.
The issue of elderly poverty in South Korea was also highlighted, with a relative poverty rate of 39.3% among those aged 66 and above in 2021, the second highest among 37 OECD countries, following Estonia.
The relative poverty rate, which measures the proportion of the population living below 50% of the median income, was 14.9% for the entire country in 2022, marking a slight increase from the previous year’s 14.8%. South Korea’s relative poverty rate in 2021 was the ninth highest among OECD member countries.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
