The household condition of the elderly, which is to be represented by the distribution of the elderly population by the household type they belong to subdivided by their age, sex and marital status, was estimated for the years 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990, and was projected for the years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010, using the population census tabulations and the future population by age and sex projected in 1992.
First, the projection of the elderly population by marital status was conducted by "cohort growth rate ratio method", which utilizes the stability of the ratio of the marital status-specific cohort growth rates to the cohort growth rate for the total (marital status-combined) population for each five-year age group and sex of the elderly. The result of the projection reveals, first, the remarkable increase of the married by 1.98 times for males and by 2.53 times for females aged 65 and over from 1990 to 2010, and second, the notable decline of the percentage widowed for females aged 65 and over by 20.3% from 54.3%to 34.0% over the same period.
Second, the percentage of the elderly belonging to the specific household category by age, sex and marital status was projected by extrapolating the trends in the census tabulations; and third, the percentage was multiplied by the above-mentioned population by marital status, yielding the intended final outcome, the elderly population by household category. For types of households are distinguished: (1) one-person household, (2) couple-only household, (3) household with the elderly's child, (4) other household and (5) institution. The main observations of the projection are as follows.
The population aged 65 and over belonging to the "couple only household" (5.905 thousand) is projected to surpass the population belonging to the "household with their child" (4,260 thousand) in 2010 for males, while the latter will be still more (6,812 thousand) than the former (5,115 thousand) for females in the same year.
The elderly population aged 65 and over in one-person households is projected to increase more remarkably for males than females. The projected increase for males is 3.25 times from 308 thousand to 1,002 thousand from 1990 to 2010, and for females 1.92 times from 1,310 thousand to 2,516 thousand over the same period. The elderly population in couple-only households is projected to increase by 2.73 times to 5,905 thousand for males and by 3.44 times to 5,115 thousand for females in 2010. Therefore, the growth rate of the population in one-person households will be larger than that of the population in couple-only households for males, while the relation between the two growth rates will be the reverse for females.
The projected percentage of the elderly in households with their child, i.e. the percentage corseting with their child, declines by 18.4% from 58.3% to 39.9% from 1990 to 2010. The decline of the percentage coresiding is almost the same with that over the 20 years from 1970 to 1990.