South Koreans on average gave 52.7 points out of 100 in a recent survey on satisfaction with their lives, a report showed Monday, with their wealth the aspect they were least content with.
Lotte Members, an affiliate of the Lotte Group in charge of customer management, conducted a survey of 5,000 adults to assess how satisfied they were with their lives.
The respondents in their 20s and 30s gave an overall score of 53.8, those in their 40s and 50s gave 51.2 points, while the respondents in their 60s gave the highest score of 54.1.
Respondents gave the highest scores to their living environment and human interaction, each with 58.8 and 58.4, while health (49.6) and "consumption and assets (49) scored the lowest.
Both the 40s and 50s group and the 60s group gave the highest scores to their current living conditions -- 58.1 and 61.7, respectively -- while the 20-30 group gave the highest score to their personal relations.
The lowest scores of both 40s and 50s group and the 60s group were in the consumption and assets category, each with 47.5 and 49.5. The 20-30 group gave the second lowest score of 50.8 in that category, but gave the lowest 49.7 points to their contention with health.
In the remaining two categories of leisure and work, the overall scores were 54.3 and 54.
Koreans' relatively low satisfaction with their consumption and assets mabe connected to a tendency among Koreans to underestimate their own income. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines the middle class as households with income between 75 percent and 200 percent of the median national income, meaning anyone making between a monthly average of 2.73 million won -- 75 percent of national monthly average income -- and 7.28 million won belongs to the middle class.
Last year's data by Statistics Korea showed that 62.3 percent of the households belonged in this particular group in 2023.
But a 2022 survey by NH Investments and Securities on 761 people in this middle class grouping showed that 45.6 percent misperceived themselves as being in the lower-income class, while 0.7 percent thought they were in the upper class.
Although the survey focused on income, and not wealth and consumption specifically, the results imply that the Korean middle class are much more likely to underestimate their relative financial standing.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
