"There was nowhere to leave my child, so I eventually gave up on returning to work." The sigh of Lee, whose return to the workplace fell through amid daycare waiting lists and closures, lays bare the structural reality in which a "childcare cliff" tying down married women feeds directly into household income polarization.
According to the Korea Data Agency's household trends survey released Tuesday, the average monthly nominal income of dual-income households in the fourth quarter of last year (October-December) rose 7.1% from a year earlier to 8,532,345 won. This is the highest figure for any quarter since the relevant statistics began in 2019.
By contrast, the average monthly income of "non-dual-income households," which include single-income and jobless households, edged up just 0.7% to 4,229,347 won. Given that prices rose 2.4% in the fourth quarter of last year, real income effectively declined. As a result, the ratio of dual-income household income to non-dual-income household income reached 2.02 times in the fourth quarter, crossing the 2x threshold for the first time.
The burden of essential living costs that must be paid out of earned income also weighed far more heavily on single-income households. The ratio of essential living costs — including food, housing, utilities, transportation and dining out — to disposable income for single-income households stood at 41.9% in the fourth quarter of last year. This is the highest level in seven quarters since the first quarter of 2024 (43.3%). For dual-income households, by contrast, the ratio stood at just 32.1%, leaving them with relatively more breathing room.
The picture also diverged sharply when it came to surplus funds, or money left over. The surplus of single-income households fell 6% from a year earlier to 860,527 won, turning negative for the first time in three years. Dual-income households, meanwhile, built up their cushion by reining in consumption spending more tightly than their income growth rate, posting a 9.8% increase in surplus to 2,592,231 won.
As pressure from stagnant income mounts on single-income households, demand for married women to work is higher than ever. Yet the very infrastructure for leaving children in care is collapsing — a "childcare cliff" that holds them back.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the number of daycare centers in Seoul plunged year after year, from 5,049 in 2021 to 4,712 in 2022, 4,431 in 2023, 4,212 in 2024 and 4,010 in 2025. In just five years, more than 1,000 daycare centers have closed.
Over the same period, the number of childcare staff also fell from 52,263 to 48,026. As facilities themselves shrink in the wake of low birth rates, an extreme dynamic has emerged in which childcare demand instead concentrates on remaining preferred facilities such as public daycare centers, intensifying waiting lists.
Even for those who break through the care gap and rejoin the workforce, what awaits married women is the reality of degraded employment quality and low wages. According to a report by the Korea Labor and Society Institute titled "Inequality Beyond Employment Rates: An Analysis of Quality Gaps in Employment for Women with Career Interruptions," labor market treatment declines in stages in the order of "men → women without career interruptions → women with career interruptions."
As of the first half of last year, the employment rate among those aged 15 and over stood at 70.9% for men and 55.6% for women, a gap of 15.3 percentage points. In particular, women's experience of career interruption surged starting at ages 30-34 (9.1%), the marriage and childbirth years, reaching around 27% in their 40s and beyond.
The wage gap is also stark. With the wages of male regular workers set at 100, female regular workers without career interruptions earn 78.1%, but the wages of female regular workers who have experienced career interruptions drop sharply to 65.3% — on par with male non-regular workers. The situation is even worse for non-regular workers: the wages of female non-regular workers with career interruption experience amount to just 42.5% of those of male regular workers, and one in three earn only minimum wage.
Even among young people (aged 19-39), the share of non-regular workers among women with career interruption experience stood at 36.2%, 9.5 percentage points higher than for men (26.7%). They tended to move downward into small workplaces, short-term contract positions, or social welfare services and simple labor occupations. As childcare and caregiving responsibilities are concentrated on one gender, a "care penalty" is being applied to the labor market in full force.
Experts point out that the perspective of treating single-income status as a matter of individual choice must be abandoned. The point is that an environment where a second income cannot be generated, even when desired, is being formed first. Experts stressed that the burden of essential living costs such as utility bills and rent is felt far more keenly by single-income households with lower income, and emphasized that only by preventing the collapse of childcare infrastructure at the government level and devising effective support measures can the vicious cycle of the income cliff for single-income households and low birth rates be broken.
