Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the economic status of retired elderly households. This study especially looked for the differences in the economic status among retired elderly households and the level of subjective financial strain. The data were drawn from the data of 2000 Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) conducted by the Korea Labor Institute. The major findings are as follows: 1) The levels of income in the retired households were found to be lower than those of the employed elderly households, and the transfer income took the biggest portion out of 5 income types reflecting high economic dependency. 2) The levels of expenditure were found to be similar to the minimum living cost, and the food cost at home was 41.9% of the expenditure. 3) About 40% and 27.3% of households reported that they felt financial strain due to food expenditures at home and health care respectively. 4) Ninety percent of all assets were found to be real estate, reflecting the lack of asset liquidity. Further, retired elderly households were classified as 'not at all strained financially', 'moderate', 'seriously strained', and 'extremely strained' groups according to their subjective assessment. The last two groups showed the lower level of income and expenditures than the first two groups. In particular, 26.5% of retired elderly households belonged to 'extremely strained' group and showed very serious economic problems.
