Single-person Households, Feel the Housing Consumption Expenditure the Most Burdensome

- The most frequent consumer problems arise from dining out services -

    As the number of one-person household rapidly increases*, it is gaining attention as a new growing consumer group. To delve into this consumer group, Korea Consumer Agency (www.kca.go.kr) conducted research on 1,000 single-person households in Korea on their consumer behavioral pattern.

* It is expected that one-person household will rise from 25.3% in 2012 to 34.3% in 2035. (Statistics Korea, 2012)

■ Among living costs, housing cost is the most burdensome

    According to the study, one-person households are burdened by housing cost the most among all living costs. 37.8% of respondents named the current biggest burden as housing cost and 24.9% of respondents said housing cost will be the heaviest growing burden in the future. In particular, 42.7% of respondents at the bottom income level* answered that they feel housing expenditure to be the biggest burden, showing that they feel the most burdened with housing costs than other respondents in higher income level.

* It refers to one-person household who recognize themselves as the bottom of income level.

    People in different income levels had different plans on what sector they will increase their spendings. Housing expenditure ranked the first for middle-income and low-income families (21.9% and 27.8% respectively) but, those at the top of the income level answered financial cost (33.3%) is the biggest burden.

■ Dining out service sector showed the highest rate in consumer problem experience, and that of highest cases reported was grocery.

    In terms of experiencing consumer problems*more than once in a recent year, dining service ranked the first (18.2%), logistics service (17.6%), and grocery (15.7%) followed showing that consumers experienced problems related to eating life-style were the highest.

*It not only includes consumer damage but also consumer complaints and other problems (e.g., quality inferiority, deceptive/exaggerated advertisement, false indication, non-performance of contract/improper transaction, physical damage and others) as well.

    Grocery sector ranked the highest in the number of consumer problem  cases reported (6.2 on average), followed by logistics service (5.3) and dining services (4.8).

     Depending on the age group, the highest consumer problems occurred in different sectors. Dining services (23.7% and 17.1% respectively) ranked the first for people in their 20s and 30s, and it was logistics service (21.7%) for the 50s showing the highest experience rate.

■ The priority for one-person household policy is ‘increasing the supply of small-sized houses’

    The number one difficulty that one-person household go through is ‘there are not various small portion products’ accounting for 53.7% of the total difficulties following by ‘small-quantity products prices are not reasonable compared to other ordinary products’(25.7%), and ‘there aren’t various places that have small-quantity products’(9.8%).

    58.7% of the respondents said ‘increasing the supply of small-sized houses’ to be the first priority in addressing consumption-style of one-person household followed by ‘the need for various small-quantity products’(15.7%) implicating that the need for small-sized houses were the highest as more people feel burdened by housing costs. Therefore, it seems that policy that focuses more on consumers regarding small-sized houses is needed.

    This research holds significance for the fact that Korea Consumer Agency officially conducted research on one-person households’ consumption pattern . Also, the research is going to be included in 「Korea consumption pattern index」to continuously produce and share it as data base in building one-person household policy and establishing related market policy.