SEOUL, June 16 (Korea Bizwire) – The expanding proportion of seniors since the mid-1990s has exacerbated income inequality among households nationwide, the central bank said Thursday. South Korea’s Gini coefficient for market income gradually increased for older age groups until individuals reached their 50s, but it experienced a significant spike among individuals in their 60s [...]
SEJONG, Oct. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea ranks fourth in relative poverty among major economies in the world, data showed Monday, in a sign of its high income inequality. The country’s relative poverty rate, referring to the percentage of people with an income below 50 percent of the median income, came to 16.7 percent [...]
SEJONG, Feb. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s household income inequality hit a record high in the fourth quarter of 2018, government data showed Thursday. An average household earned 4.6 million won (US$4,000) per month in the October-December period, up 3.6 percent from the previous year, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. The [...]
SEJONG, Oct. 24 (Korea Bizwire) – Top 1 percent of South Korean taxpayers earned an average 4.45 billion won (US$3.87 million) in investment income in 2016, data showed Wednesday. Their average investment income was 18.3 times bigger than the average income from salaries of top 1 percent earners, according to the data by the National [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — The scale of the company one works for (labor demand), not individual experience or level of educational attainment (labor supply), plays a significant role in widening the wage inequality gap among salaried workers, a research paper has found. The paper revealed that wage inequality attributable to labor supply began [...]
Seoul, Oct. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Despite a commonly spoken refrain that roughly translates to “the most pointless worrying in the world is worrying over celebrities”, a National Tax Service (NTS) document revealing the stark gap in earnings of the top 10 percent of entertainers compared to the rest of the field is challenging the [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Korea Bizwire) – In the last 34 years, the proportion of GNDI (Gross National Disposable Income) composed of company revenue has grown while the share of household income has shrunk, according to data from the Bank of Korea that was submitted to the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee. The GNDI is [...]
SEJONG, Oct. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — The monthly salary for the country’s top 0.1 percent earners averages 54.58 million won (US$48,088), a sum equal to the total earned income by 2.95 million people in the bottom 27 percent, statistics from the tax agency showed Wednesday. The annual salary for the top 0.1 percent, fewer than [...]
SEOUL, May 13 (Korea Bizwire) – Growing income inequality is dividing the prospect of home ownership in the nation as a recent survey suggests some could take as much as nearly ten years longer than others to buy their first home. Nearly one in three households in Seoul predicted it would take at least another ten [...]
SEOUL, June 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Nearly seven in ten Seoul residents say they have little to no hope of moving up the social ladder, giving social equality in South Korean society a score of 4.5 on a scale of one to ten. When asked about the prospects of improving their social and financial status [...]