Housing Cost Burdens and Parental Support for Young Renters in South Korea

Hyun-Jeong Lee,Yoon-Seo Hwang

doi:10.3390/su131911105

Abstract

In Korea, the housing issues faced by young renters negatively impact both their parents and themselves. This study aimed at exploring young renters’ situations whereby they receive financial support from their parents in order to pay current housing expenses, and their perception of housing cost burdens. Additionally, this study examined the influences on the reception of parental support and their perceived housing cost burdens. In February and March of 2021, an online questionnaire survey was conducted amongst young renters living independently from their parents and 385 responses from Jeonse renters and monthly renters with deposits in private rental housing units were analyzed. The major findings are as follows: (1) among the subjects, 43.4% had experienced receiving parental support in order to pay for housing expenses since their first instance of independent living, and 35.6% were still receiving parental support. (2) A discriminant model with a linear combination of the variables of age, income, residential location and rental deposit was found effective in predicting the receipt of parental support with 66.5% accuracy. (3) A linear combination of the variables of gender, rental deposit and monthly cash housing expenses was found to explain 5.8% of the total variance of perceived housing cost burdens. The results imply the necessity to expand the provision of public housing and housing subsidies to alleviate the financial burdens of young renters and their parents.

Highlights

Achieving residential independence from the parental home has been considered as an important goal for most young adults
As this study focused on the housing cost burdens of young renters, the residential locations were limited to the capital region (CR) (Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi-do), and the five non-CR
As this study focused on housing expenses, it was decided to exclude the 115 cases who had tenure types other than Jeonse or monthly rentals with deposit or who lived in public rental housing from further data analysis, mainly in order to minimize complication

Summary

Introduction

Achieving residential independence from the parental home has been considered as an important goal for most young adults. While the proportion of young people living in their parents’ homes for longer than was typical in the past continues to increase, more severe pessimism about life is prevailing among the younger generation, who had enjoyed their free lives with a higher level of education than their parents’ generation. This is in addition to experiencing social imbalance and unfairness amid the fierce competition stemming from a scarcity of employment opportunities and housing shortages. It was found that the quality of life of young people was worse when compared to that of their parents’ generation, and high housing prices have often been pointed to as the main reason for this [1,2,3,4]

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion