Rent poor households estimated at 27,000 to 31,000 in Seoul
February 9, 2014 Leave a comment
Rent poor households estimated at 27,000 to 31,000 in Seoul
Ko Jae-man
2014.02.07 17:12:48
The rent poor refer to those who barely make their ends meet by spending most of their income on pricy housing rents. Generally, those whose housing rents represent over 30 percent of their total income fall into the category of the rent poor.
The number of the rent poor households reached around 270,000 to 310,000 in Seoul alone. According to the Seoul Institute Friday, there are around 267,000 households in Seoul which spend over 30 percent of their incomes in paying housing rent (including loan interest payment, 3.18 percent of conversion rate of Korean-unique Jeonse leasing system jeonse to monthly rent), representing 7.6 percent of the total households in Seoul.
311,000 households have incomes below the minimum cost of living after paying rents, accounting for 8.8 percent of the total in Seoul.
In Seoul and its neighboring areas, the rent poor households numbered 463,000 based on housing rent portion and 690,000 based on residual income.
Based on housing rent portion, 62 percent of the rent poor are low income bracket, at 40th percentile or below, but 20 percent of high income earners, at 70th percentile and above, also belonged to the category. This means a large share of high income earners paying expensive jeonse and monthly rents was the rent poor.
Meanwhile, based on residual income, 96 percent of low income bracket fell into the rent poor category.