빈곤독거노인 기구의 식품소비형태

Food Consumption Behaviors of the Poor Elderly Single-person Households

The elderly single-person households are increasing with the growing aging population and the single-person households. However, most of elderly single-person households suffer from poverty. Low economic wealth, high physical disease rate, and psychological insecurity seem to cause insufficient food intake of the households. Under the circumstances, it is important to know how the poor elderly single-person households consume food for designing adequate food and welfare policies. The results of this study are as follows. First, the poverty gap ratio (PGR) of elderly single-person households are most rapidly increasing. Second, the poor elderly single-person households’ ratio of expenditure spent on regular meals is much higher than that of the ordinary households, but the size of the expenditure is no more than one half. Lastly, the poor elderly single-person households prefer the finished food. The expenditure ratio on the meat and fishery, the main protein intake, is the lowest among food items. So, there seems to be the nutritional unbalance in the intake of protein. For reliable and consistent supports and the expansion of financial resources for the fragile but seemingly dominant households in the future, the food assistance policies need be transferred from the local governments to the central government.