Four out of 10 adult Seoul residents were unmarried last year, and the trend of marrying later in life has led to more single-member households.

According to statistics compiled by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the number of singles aged 25 to 49 in the capital has surged seven-fold from 215,184 in 1970 to 1,586,569 in 2010. The proportion of singles in the age group increased from 11.9 percent to 37.9 percent over the cited period.

As more adults get married later in life, the average age for first marriage climbed from 28.3 in 1990 to 32.2 for men and from 25.5 to 29.8 for women from 1970 to 2010.

Led by the increase in the single population, the number of one-member households surged from 156,207 in 1995 to 854,606 in 2010.

Of the one-member households in 2010, the unmarried population accounted for 60.1 percent or 514,000 households, followed by widows or widowers with 17.4 percent, and divorcees with 12.6 percent, data showed. Those who live apart from their spouses and families due to work or family took up 9.8 percent.

The number of those living alone after divorce rose 10-fold from 1995-2010. The number of people separated from their spouses and families due to workplace issues quadrupled over the same period.

Divorce late in life is more frequent than divorce early in marriage. The divorce rate for couples who have been married for at least 20 years rose from 6.6 percent in 1990 to 27.3 percent in 2010, while that for couples whose marriage was less than four years old decreased from 38.3 percent to 25 percent during the same period.

Of the divorcees, those in their 50s took the lion’s share with 49.7 percent last year.

Experts say that the rising social status of women and changes in the traditional view of marriage are the reasons for more people postponing marriage or divorcing late in life.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)