One-person households accounted for a fifth of all households in Seoul, according to a report released yesterday by a city-funded research institute.
Some 675,000, or 20.4 percent of the total households in the capital, were people living alone, according to the Seoul Development Institute.
The SDI categorized those who live alone into four groups of professional singles, jobless youth, people who got divorced or had separated families, and senior citizens aged 65 or more.
"The percentage of one-person households is expected to reach 25 percent by 2030," said Byun Mi-ree, an SDI research fellow who wrote the report.
She noted that the city needs to come up with matching policies such as supplying a wide variety of small homes, creating more jobs for unemployed youth, helping unstable singles rebuild families and assisting senior citizens in poverty.
The number of white-collar, professional singles has constantly increased since the mid-1990s along with the changing views of marriage, social accomplishment and individualism, according to the report.
Others increased as well with the tight job market, the aging society and the rising number of children leaving home with their mothers to study abroad.
Forty-five percent of the one-person households earned less than a million won per month. Seventy-six percent made less than 2 million won per month.
More than half of the people who live alone had blue-collar jobs such as sales service (26 percent) or manual labor (10 percent).
Fifty-one percent said they mostly used the mass transportation systems and lived along the subway line No. 2.
By Kim So-hyun

(sophie@heraldcorp.com)