Middle-aged residents of Seoul consider 3.21 million won ($2,290) per month to be an adequate household living cost, according to a new survey. The same respondents said they need at least 1.96 million won a month to get by and about 5.4 million won for a comfortable lifestyle.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to use the findings — part of the country's first quality-of-life index for middle-aged residents — to shape policies on employment and retirement preparation for people in that age group.
Kye Bong-o, a sociology professor at Kookmin University, conducted the online survey together with the Seoul50Plus Foundation, polling 2,058 Seoul residents between the ages of 40 and 64 over two months through last month. The detailed results will be presented at a forum themed "Diverse Middle Age, Diverse Work — Seoul's Solutions," scheduled for Sept. 15.
Kye measured how stably people in middle age navigate major life changes — including retirement, shifts in health and caregiving burdens — across three broad dimensions: foundational capacity, daily-life capacity and transitional capacity. The three dimensions are broken down into 12 domains and 75 sub-indicators, designed to enable a multifaceted assessment.
Foundational capacity covers household finances, employment and housing; daily-life capacity covers health, well-being, caregiving and cultural leisure; and transitional capacity covers career transitions, retirement preparation and digital adaptation.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government described the index as "the first domestic attempt to comprehensively measure the lives of middle-aged residents through a single integrated framework, rather than looking at individual statistics or specific areas in isolation."
The survey's living-cost benchmarks for the average sample household came out at a minimum of 1.96 million won, an adequate level of 3.21 million won and a comfortable level of 5.4 million won per month.
The figures were derived by asking middle-aged residents what they felt they needed to spend, then statistically filtering out the tendency of higher-income respondents to report higher required costs.
"Unlike existing statistics that tally actual consumption and expenditure, this index shows what middle-aged residents themselves perceive as genuinely necessary for their lives," a Seoul city official said. "We plan to use this index to measure how citizens' lives actually change each year, compile the results as data, and reflect them concretely in middle-aged policy."
Kye will present the full research findings at the forum. Also presenting will be Choi Young-seop, a professor at the HRD Graduate School of Korea University of Technology and Education, who will share research on identifying suitable jobs for middle-aged workers, job-specific training and pathways into employment.
Song Min-hye, a senior researcher on the policy research team at the Seoul50Plus Foundation, will outline directions for education and training for middle-aged adults, while Kang So-rang, the team's head, will propose ways to expand Seoul's middle-aged policy services based on data.
The panel discussion following the presentations will be moderated by Hwang Seon-jae, a sociology professor at Chungnam National University, with Kim Ji-hyeon of the Seoul50Plus Foundation policy research team, Yun Ye-ji, chief executive of Dacube, and Yang Hong-mo, deputy director at the Korea Information and Communication Qualification Association, participating as discussants. The forum will be held Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. in the international conference hall on the 20th floor of the Korea Press Center and will also be livestreamed online. Registration is available through the Seoul50Plus LifeMongtang website.
Kang Myeong, chief executive of the Seoul50Plus Foundation, said the forum is "a place to look at the diverse lives middle-aged people have lived through data, and to collectively explore how to open up new possibilities for work in industrial settings and in everyday communities." He added that the city would use the forum's discussions to develop Seoul-style policies for middle-aged residents.
ken@heraldcorp.com
