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By Lee Hae-rin
Yoo Jae-mun, a 33-year-old office worker who has been living alone for three years and recently moved to Gangneung, Gangwon Province, has been struggling to find healthy food to eat.
He said he has difficulty eating healthy because he finds it hard to buy vegetables and other ingredients in small enough portions for one person at grocery stores. Most items usually come in bigger quantities suitable for at least two people. He faces similar problems when he dines out and orders delivery foods.
A Seoul-based office worker, who wished to be identified only by her surname Kim who has been living alone for 10 years, also admitted a problem facing single-person households.
"People may think that living alone wouldn't require doing a lot of chores, but the amount and variety of housekeeping tasks are equivalent to those of multi-person households. And there is no one to share the load," Kim said, explaining how skipping a few days of doing housework on busy days could easily mushroom.
Like Yoo and Kim, a recent article by in the Korean Journal of Family Practice (KJFP) by a research team from the department of family science at Asan Medical Center found that single-person households are more likely to experience a lower quality of life than people living with others, while single men tend to have it worse than single women.
The research analyzed the health data of 17,478 adult Korean nationals from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2016 to 2018.
Among the survey participants, 2,162 were single-person households, while 15,316 lived with others.
The research team assessed the participants' quality of life using the EQ-5D scale, which measures health status in five categories including mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain and discomfort, and anxiety and depression.
The results showed that single-person households tend to score lower in the five factors compared to multi-person households.
The lowest-scoring factors differed according to sex, as men showed difficulties in self-care, and women were most likely to lag in social activities, including work and leisure. Men scored lower than women in all categories, indicating an overall lower quality of life.
Researchers said that men who adhere to stereotypes of traditional gender roles may have more difficulties due to expectations of women taking charge of housework.
"This result shows that more health policies to improve single-person households' quality of life are needed, as the number of single-person households continues to increase," the research team said.
