베이비 붐 세대의 노후생활에 관한 연구

Abstract

Recently, it began to be perceived primarily by the Western post-industrial nation that the senescence is a part of life cycle when the dynamic changes comparable to any part of life cycle can be experienced significantly in terms of self identity and entire human relationship. It is expected that our baby boomers' retirement would be a great social issue influencing the entire Korean society. So far, the image of retirement life has been featured negative or passive: loss of the roles, emotional alienation by bereavement of the spouse, health risks due to aging, perception of being subjects of social support and so on. However, the baby boomers born between 1955 and 1963 after the Korean War will begin to be aged 60 by 2015. Namely, it is only 9 years away from the aged society. As in Japan, baby boomers' retirement will be a serious social issue in Korea and therefore, at this juncture of time, it is deemed necessary to research into baby boomers' retirement. The purpose of this study was to compare our baby boomers' retirement life style with their Japanese counterparts in reference to the preceding studies and thereby, predict our future housing types for the retired baby boomers. The results of this study can be summarized as follows; First, our baby boomer generation are aged between 45 and 53 as of 1997. They account for 17% of the population, and they will retire at the age of 57 on average. Thus, they will retire beginning from 2011. The baby boomers aged 45 currently will live more for 33.59 years from now on. Thus, it is anticipated that retired baby boomers will live a second life different from that of their senior generations. Japanese baby boomers will retire about 5~10 years earlier than our baby boomers, and therefore, our baby boomers' retirement life will resemble their Japanese counterparts'. Second, like their Japanese counterparts, our baby boomers are expected to have such retirement life styles as pursuit of self realization, pursuit of new income through a second economic activity, pursuit of happiness through social volunteer services. However, because our baby boomers are less prepared for their retirement life compared with their Japanese counterparts, being less supported by the national pension, they are expected to live a life pursuing new income through a second economic activity. Third, since some 80% of our baby boomers are expected to attempt to live a retirement life for pursuit of new income through a second economic activity, they will like to live in the apartment houses near downtown assuring their investment and convertibility into cash, and some of them will prefer detached houses. The upper 20% of them will choose townhouse, terra house or high-class silver town when they are at the stage of 'asset management'. Considering the differences of retirement life style between Korean and Japanese baby boomers, it is desirable to focus on advantages of each of them to design our housing policies for our retiring boomers. It is hoped that this study focusing on retirement, senescence and solitary retirement life will be followed up by future studies which will more segment our baby boomers' retirement life in reference to their entire life cycle. In addition, since the apartment houses are expected to be favored by our baby boomers retired, it is deemed necessary to supply them with more decent apartment houses or those customized for their retirement life, and therefore, future studies are requested to focus on such an agenda.