Living Well, Not Just Living Longer
Editor-in-chief Ryu Dae-hoon
wherearetacos@naver.com
In 2009, the United Nations used an expression ‘Homo Hundred’ in their ‘World Population Aging’ report for the first time. ‘Homo’ means Homo sapiens, the progenitor of the human race. ‘Hundred’ refers to the fact that these days it is becoming more common to live up to the age of 100. According to the report, the UN expects that life expectancy will exceed 80 in 31 countries by 2020. Looking back on last year’s statistics, 39 countries now have a longer life expectancy than 80. The number exceeded the UN’s expectation thanks to rapid advancements in medical treatment. In the same report, the UN forecast that the number of people living over the age of 100 will increase tenfold to 3.2 million people by 2050.
However, this may not be good news in all aspects, especially to South Korea. This year, the average life expectancy in Korea reached 83.3. However, the age at which people first get employed is lagging further behind. Furthermore, companies press workers to retire faster. It is becoming more serious considering our country’s circumstances. In contrast to other developed countries, 70% of household assets consist of real estate, which is extremely high. This means there are only a few financial assets. It forces Koreans to live for about 30 years without any income after retirement. Of course, our country has various old-age social security systems. However, the system that plays a central role, the national pension, can now only replace 40% of income per month to individual workers. But even 40% is being threatened due to a rapidly aging society and COVID circumstances.
On the other hand, one positive aspect has come out of the coronavirus pandemic. The problem that Korean people had for a long time was about financial illiteracy. According to research carried out in 2015 by S&P, one of the world’s prominent credit-rating companies, Koreans only can interpret 33% of the global economic news. Korea was ranked 77th among 144 countries. It shows that even though Korea has the tenth biggest GDP in the world, people are extremely passive when it comes to managing their assets. But after COVID-19 struck the stock markets severely in March 2020, people have changed. Private investors’ balance on their stock accounts have more than doubled. Private investors have about 70 trillion KRW invested in the market these days. The increasing ratio of 20- to 30-year-old people looks so much more optimistic.
Living longer was a huge challenge for mankind in ancient times. Now it seems we have overcome the challenge, but that has left us with a new one, with the tasks. However, we faced a bigger problem, living well.