Staff Reporter
Since the Asian financial crisis began in 1997, the income of middle-class households in Korea had been falling as a percentage of the country's total income, while the income gap continued to widen.
But for the past two years under the Lee Myung-bak administration it has seen a marginal rebound.
Statistics Korea said Tuesday that the disposable income of middle-class families accounted for 66.7 percent of all household income last year, up marginally from 66.2 percent in 2008 but down 3.4 percentage points compared to 70.1 percent in 2003.
Since 2003, the upper class gained 1.9 percentage points to account for 20.2 percent in 2009 and the low-income bracket added 1.5 percentage points to 13.1 percent.
The middle class is defined as those who earn between 50 percent and 150 percent of the nation's median income. The upper class makes more than 150 percent of the benchmark, and the low-income class makes less than 50 percent. Rural areas and single-person households are excluded from the survey.
"The proportion of the middle class started to diminish starting in the early 1990s and the speed accelerated when the Asian currency crisis hit Korea in the late 1990s," said an official at Statistics Korea.
"The increase of single-person homes and the rapid technological advances seem to have something to do with the shrinking middle class."
The data showed that technically, during the two-year presidency under Lee, the shrinking trend of the middle class has either stopped or marginally reversed.
The decline of the middle class goes hand-in-hand with the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots, amply demonstrated by such metrics as the Gini coefficient and the interdecile ratio.
Statistics Korea announced last May that the Gini coefficient here was 0.293 compared to 0.277 in 2003. The figure for urban workers amounted to 0.324 last year, the highest since the agency started to compile data in 1990.
The Gini index measures how well wealth is distributed across income brackets. Zero indicates perfect equality and one represents perfect inequality. Hence, a greater coefficient means increased wealth disparity.
The interdecile ratio was even worse, as the top 10 percent of households in terms of income earned 4.7 times more than the bottom 10 percent. The OECD average is 4.2.
Income polarization and the resultant contraction of the middle class does not bode well for Asia's fourth-largest economy.
"The Korean economy has been vulnerable to outside shocks because large-sized exporters single-handedly carry the country. Accordingly, observers claimed that the nation needs to nurture more local demand by fostering more middle class families," said Kim Sang-jo, a professor of economics at Hansung University.
"But the Seoul administration has failed to achieve the target. They actually staged a set of policies trimming the middle-class bracket. I think that a review of such an approach is urgent."
voc200@koreatimes.co.kr
빈부 격차 심화 속 중산층 엷어져
한국 가정의 수입 격차가 넓어지는 가운데 건강한 사회의 중추가 되는 중산층 가구가 사라져가고 있어 사회 불안 가능성에 대한 우려가 증폭되고 있다.
통계청에 따르면 지난 해 가처분 소득 기준 중산층 가정은 전 가구의 66.7%를 차지해, 전년의 66.2%에 비해 소폭 상승했으나 2003년 70.1%에 비해서는 3.4% 포인트가 떨어졌다.
같은 기간 상류층은 1.9% 포인트 오른 20.2%에 달한 가운데 빈곤층도 1.5% 포인트 늘어난 13.1%에 달했다.
중산층이란 국내 중간 수입의 50퍼센트에서 150퍼센트 사이를 버는 사람들을 말한다. 상류층은 150퍼센트 이상 버는 사람들이고 빈곤층은 50퍼센트 미만을 버는 사람들을 말한다.
이 조사에서 농어촌과 1인 가구는 제외됐다.
통계청 관계자는 “중산층이 1990년대 초를 기점으로 줄어들기 시작했으며, 90년대 아시아 외환위기가 한국을 덮치면서 가속화되었다”고 말했다.
