By Choi Sung-jin
Koreans’ life expectancy is 83.1 years but their “happy lifespan” is 74.9 years, showing a gap of 8.2 years, a survey says.
The happy lifespan of married people is 3.2 years longer than unmarried people and that of people with children is 4.4 years longer than childless ones, according to the survey of 1,552 economically active people aged 20 or older by the Life Insurance Social Contribution Committee.
The survey, conducted with Seoul National University’s (SNU) Translational Gerontology and Retirement Research Center, asked 40 questions in four categories -- health, economy, activity and relationship.
It found the female respondents’ happy lifespan was 76.3 years compared with 74 years for the men. Those who live in their own homes and have higher incomes also enjoyed longer “happy life” years.
“The wide difference between happy lifespan and life expectancy points to the difficulty aged Koreans experience in maintaining a happy life,” said Choi Hyun-ja, an SNU professor who led the research. “Happy lifespan allows us to compare it with life expectancy, stressing the importance of preparing for old age.”
The survey also found the respondents’ assets at the time of their retirement were less than their financial needs in post-retirement life. For instance, the respondents said they will need 2.11 million won ($1,895) a month, on average, for living expenses, but expected pensions of only 780,000 won a month. Those surveyed also expected they would need an average of 19.84 million won to treat grave diseases and pay for nursing services.
Separate research has confirmed that elderly couples need an average of 2.17 million won a month to live.
According to the analysis of data from 12,429 people by the National Pension Service, men’s expected living costs of 2.28 million won a month compared with women’s 2.11 million won.
The degrees of their later-life preparations were far lower than expected, however. The score of the entire research target stood at 248.9 points, on average, out of 400, indicating they were not properly prepared for old age. Especially poor were their preparations in terms of income and assets. To calculate the scores for later-life preparation, the researchers confirmed the targets’ expected pension amount, present profession, income and assets and applied different weight to each element, with the advice of experts.
By age, the 40-something targets’ average score was 256.4 points and those for people in their 50s and 60s remained at 258.8 points and 243 points, respectively.
By region, those living in Seoul and its surrounds had higher marks in the health and leisure areas while those in provinces fared relatively better in social relationships. There were little meaningful differences in income and assets.
In a related development, even the meager pensions are not reflecting inflation as pensioners, particularly poorer ones, feel it, a research shows.
According to a paper written by Park Jun-beom, a researcher at KPRG, a financial think tank affiliated with Kyung Hee University, poor elderly people feel that consumer prices are an average of 20 percent higher than the inflation rate released by the government.
To calculate inflation as felt by people aged 60 or older, Park produced a “consumer price index for the aged” by increasing the weight for health care and decreasing that for education, food and lodging, and separately produced indexes for poor aged people.
According to this calculation, the consumer price index for the aged from 2010-2014 was 2.37 percent, 0.29 of a percentage point higher than the official consumer inflation rate of 2.08 percent. That for poor aged people was even higher at 2.54 percent. All this means aged people feel price hikes 1.14 times higher than headline figures and poor elderly people, 1.22 times higher, Park said.
The gap in actual and effective inflation can reduce the effects of pensions as the safety valve for aged people because public pensions are being linked to consumer price indexes. If they fail to reflect the effective inflation rate, pensioners will be receiving money with less purchasing power in proportion to the gap, he said, adding that in the case of poor aged people, their purchasing power can drop by 7 percentage points for men and 8 percentage points for women.
“The recipients of basic pensions, who get a maximum 200,000 won a month, will find it difficult to maintain even basic living if their purchasing power drops 7-8 percentage points,” Park said. “The pension service needs to calculate consumer price indexes for aged people anew and apply them to their payment of public pensions.”