40% of Young Couples Can't Afford Own Home

Four in 10 young couples cannot afford their own home five years into their marriage, according to a study out by Statistics Korea on Sunday.

Statistics Korea studied 212,287 couples who registered their marriage between November 2014 and October of 2015 and found that 40.7 percent still did not own a home in 2019 as prices soared ever further out of their reach.

Some 28.7 percent bought their own home the moment they got married, which was possible because prices at the time were still relatively cheap and home loans were easier to get.

Whether they were homeowners also affected their decision to have children, with 82.9 percent of couples who bought their homes straight away having children, compared to 80.7 percent for couples who did not.

Single-income households had more children than double-income ones with 86.4 percent to 82.3 percent, though which is the chicken and which the egg is unclear.

But 62 percent of double-income couples owned a home while the proportion was only 54.3 percent for single-income couples.