Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
South Korea's elderly poverty rate falls to 37.7% as two in five over-65s now work
Statistics Korea says relative poverty among South Koreans aged 66 and over fell 2.1 points to 37.7% in 2024, still the OECD's highest. Part of the gain comes from government-created jobs for older people, so further declines depend on that spending continuing.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The share of older South Koreans covering living costs themselves or through a spouse rose to 74.7% in 2025 from 58.5% in 2015.
- The employment rate for people 65 and over reached 39.5% in 2025, up 1.3 points in a year and up from 30.4% in 2015.
- Households headed by someone 65 or older held net assets of 492.79 million won, up 26.85 million won from a year earlier.
- On 2023 figures, Korea's 39.8% compared with 14.5% in Germany and 15.0% in Britain, and only Latvia, at 34.3%, also topped 30%.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- exposure Older workers' incomes now depend partly on what the government spends on elderly job programs, so a cut there would reach the same incomes the poverty rate measures.
- constraint Net assets growing about 5.8% a year do not lower the headline rate, because relative poverty counts income below half the median; wealth helps only once it is drawn down as income.
- constraint Even if the 2.1-point annual pace holds, Korea needs about 11 more such years to reach Britain's 2023 rate, keeping it far above the large European economies into the mid-2030s.
Statistics Korea's report credits better income among older adults with part of the fall [4]. The share of older people paying their own way has risen by about 1.6 points a year for a decade [1], and money is the reason they give most often for working. Of the 58.7% of 65-to-79-year-olds who said they want to keep working [9], 50.4% cited help with living expenses and 38.7% the enjoyment of working [10].
The self-funded figure leaves open who pays the wage. Government programs that create jobs for older adults are seen as a factor behind the employment gains, according to Sedaily's account of the report [8]. Some of that income is public money, or more precisely public money that the statistics count as self-funded once it arrives as a wage [8]. The Statistics Korea official quoted on the outlook tied further declines to those programs. "There is room for the relative poverty rate among older people to fall, assuming the government maintains its job programs for the elderly," the official said [13].
If the cohorts now preparing for later life reach 66 with savings [11], the rate keeps falling whatever happens to the programs. If the job programs carry most of the decline, the rate moves with the budget. Public pensions may be part of it too. The coverage does not split the self-or-spouse category by source [5], so a wage, a pension payment and a withdrawal from savings look the same in that figure.
I think the job programs explain more of the 2024 drop than the self-funded label suggests, because they are the one condition the official put on further declines [13]. The counter-case is the preparation data. The share of older adults not preparing for later life fell from 53.1% to 35.6% over a decade [11], and that shift does not depend on a budget. "Attitudes toward retirement preparation among older adults are also changing," the official said [14]. If job-program funding stalls in some year and the rate still drops by around 2 points, the view is wrong.
On the 2023 comparison, Korea sits 25.3 points above Germany and 5.5 points above Latvia [5][6]. Set against Korea's 2024 figure, the Latvia gap is 3.4 points, though that puts Korea's newer number beside Latvia's older one [7].
What to watch
- A Statistics Korea breakdown of the 74.7% self-or-spouse funding share into wages, public pensions and savings.
- The next OECD comparison on 2024 figures, and whether Korea at its current pace drops below Latvia, the only other member above 30%.