Single-Person Households Spend More on Alcohol...Lower Income Brackets Purchase More Soju

High Consumption of 'Bread and Snacks' Regardless of Household Size
Beer Purchase Share Increases with Higher Income

The proportion of alcohol purchase expenditure by single-person households was found to be higher than that of two-person households. The photo shows soju bottles displayed at a large supermarket in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Kim Se-eun] It has been confirmed that the proportion of alcohol purchase expenditure by single-person households is higher than that of households with two or more people.

Additionally, an analysis showed that as income increases, the proportion of expenditure on beer purchases tends to increase, while that on soju tends to decrease.

The Korea Rural Economic Institute released the report "Changes and Characteristics of Processed Food Consumption Expenditure by Households in 2021" on the 8th.

The research team analyzed raw data from the Household Trends Survey by Statistics Korea to identify the average processed food expenditure by household size and the expenditure proportion by item last year.

As a result, both single-person households and households with two or more people showed the highest proportion of expenditure among all processed food items on "bread and other bakery products" and "hangwa and other snacks."

Meanwhile, single-person households had a higher proportion of expenditure on alcoholic beverages compared to other multi-person households.

For beer and soju, the expenditure proportion rankings for two-person households were 7th and 16th respectively, whereas for single-person households, they were 4th and 12th respectively.

The ranking for wine expenditure proportion was also higher for single-person households at 24th, compared to households with two or more people, which ranked outside the top 30.

Single-person households also ranked higher in expenditure on coffee (5th) and bottled water (14th) compared to households with two or more people (8th and 21st respectively).

The research team interpreted this as "the proportion of expenditure on alcoholic beverages and drinks being relatively large for single-person households."

The report also included information on the proportion of processed food item expenditure by household income level.

Across all income quintiles?from the 1st quintile (lowest 20%) to the 5th quintile (highest 20%)?"bread and other bakery products" and "hangwa and other snacks" ranked 1st and 2nd in expenditure proportion respectively.

Items whose expenditure proportion rankings decreased as income increased included dried chili peppers, ramen, gim (seaweed), and soju.

Conversely, the expenditure proportion rankings for other processed meat products, ice cream, and beer increased with higher income levels.

In particular, beer ranked higher in expenditure proportion for the 5th income quintile households (7th) than for the 1st quintile households (12th). Soju ranked higher for the 1st quintile (15th) than for the 5th quintile (18th).

The research team analyzed this to mean that as income increases, the proportion of expenditure on beer tends to increase, while that on soju tends to decrease.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.