Anchor: Considering inflation, South Korean families are found to have made less money and spent less as well. It marks the first time that the real income and spending both shrank since the 2009 global financial crisis. Worse yet, income polarization deepened as low-income families saw a sharper drop in their earnings.
Our Bae Joo-yon has more.
 
Report: Statistics Korea revealed on Friday that households earned an average of around four-point-four million won, or about three-thousand-887 U.S. dollars, on a monthly basis last year. 

That’s up six-tenths of a percent from the year before. However, considering price hikes, real income slipped four-tenths of a percent.
 
Households’ monthly spending, meanwhile, amounted to nearly three-point-four million won on average, or two-thousand-975 U.S. dollars, down four-tenths of a percent. Real spending fell one-point-three percent.
 
The last time households’ income and spending both saw a decline was back in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
 
The statistics agency found that spending on liquor and cigarettes surged five-point-three percent but spending on transportation, communication, clothes, shoes and groceries shrank.
 
The average propensity to consume, or the ratio of a household’s spending to its disposable income, reached a new low of 71-point-one percent.
 
The income quintile share ratio, which gauges the inequality of income distribution, grew from four-point-22 in 2015 to four-point-48 last year. A growth in the figure means that income polarization has deepened.
 
The Finance Ministry assessed that households’ income fell after employment conditions worsened due to corporate restructuring and spending shrank following a decline in transportation expenses resulting from a drop in global oil prices.
Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.