Working Paper 22-11: Why gender disparities persist in South Korea's labor market

20.500.12592/gjx6tb

Working Paper 22-11: Why gender disparities persist in South Korea's labor market

8 Jul 2022

This increase in the share of the elderly population will require a significant expansion of employment in the professionalized elder care sector and/or a significant increase in the number of family members taking on the daily tasks of looking after elderly and frail relatives. [...] In light of the dramatic aging of the South Korean population, this low level of total (public and private) spending on the older population may be fiscally sage, but it gives South Korea the highest level of old-age poverty in the OECD. [...] Taking advantage of the panel aspect of the KLIPS data, we calculate the number of years working over 2000–19 for all men and women in the data and estimate the same gender wage gap regressions as above for 2019 only, segmenting by age group and adding dummy variables for previous years working. [...] GENDER WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT GAPS: THE ROLE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY STATUS The M-shape in South Korean women’s labor force participation over the lifecycle described in section 1 and the large increase in regression-adjusted gender wage and employment gaps for women in their late 20s and 30s estimated in section 3 suggest that family responsibilities are important factors behind women’s labor market. [...] We see a large gender employment gap for the last group and no gender employment gap at all for the second group.27 Given the rapid aging of the Korean population, and the minimal provision of old-age care described in section 2, elder care is likely to be a large and growing obstacle to women’s labor force participation.

Authors

Karen Dynan, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Anna Stansbury

Pages
42
Published in
United States of America

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