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As prices soar, especially low-income households are getting more and more difficult to live with.
Statistics show that the bottom 20% of income earners spend half of their income on food.
Reporter Jeon Yeon-nam reports.
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Mr. A, in his 60s, works as a daily construction worker. The only ingredients in the refrigerator are a few kimchi, tofu, and eggs. There is no meat or fish.
Earnings are getting smaller because prices are running much faster.
[Mr. A: If you catch one or two things, it costs tens of thousands of won, and then if you catch a little more, the person who earns and eats for a day just loses his daily wage.
Rather than eating a proper meal, let's just appease hunger...
.]
This situation was captured in statistics.
In the third quarter of this year, households in the bottom 20% of incomes spent half of their income, which they could spend at will, after subtracting taxes and interest from the money they earned, on food.
My disposable income is about 900,000 won, but I spent 430,000 won, or 47.5%, on food and eating out.
After paying about 200,000 won for electricity, gas, rent, etc., you will have less than 300,000 won left to spend on clothes and hospital visits.
The top 20% of households spent 1.27 million won on food, which is more than three times the amount, but it is in sharp contrast to only 15.9% of disposable income.
[Sung Tae-yoon/Professor ,
Department of Economics, Yonsei University: I think the problem of income polarization and consumption polarization centered on the poor could intensify as the economy slows down and inflation progresses.]
As prices have risen and public utility bills have been announced, the government needs to reduce the shock by closely taking care of jobs and social safety nets for low-income people.