Poor And On Their Own, South Korea’s Elderly Who Will ‘Work Until They Die’

Over the past 50 years, South Korea has had one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world. In the 1960s, GDP per capita was comparable to poorer countries of Africa and many Koreans lived in deep poverty.

Rapid economic growth is usually thought of as desirable, but rapid growth brings changes that challenge social customs and arrangements at many levels. 

Between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and 2014, life expectancy in South Korea jumped from 48.2 to 81.9 years. At the same time, the country’s birth rate plunged from 38.0 births per 1000 population to 9.1 births per 1000 population.

Increasing life expectancy and declining fertility inevitably lead to significant population ageing. People aged 65 or older made up 13.1% of the population in 2015, but the ratio is projected to reach 40.1% in 2060.

Korea has also had one of the most rapid increases in divorce rates in the world: "Social changes that took decades in the West or Japan occurred in Korea in a matter of years."

Not all aspects of social life have adjusted to these changes: Korea's wage gap between permanent female and male workers in 2009 was 38.9%, the largest among OECD countries, and about 2.5 times higher than the OECD average.

This article is an account of one of the most salient results of the difficulty of dealing with rapid economic and social change. Some of the oldest and poorest people in Korea started their working lives and their families in what was effectively a different world.

Korea has the highest rate of pensioner poverty in the OECD, with nearly half of households with a head aged 65 years and over being in "relative poverty" (having an income below 50% of median household income). This is not surprising given that many older Koreans cannot be expected to have fully shared in the benefits of the Korean "economic miracle".

This is an article that shows the human consequences of these changes, with implications for other developing economies.