Human Ecology Research

The Korean Home Economics Association (대한가정학회)
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Gender Differences in Contribution to Domestic Work and Childcare Associated with Outsourcing in Korea

가사 및 자녀돌봄 서비스 이용과 부부 간 노동 분담의 관계

  • Ryu, Soomin (School of Public Policy, University of Maryland-College Park) ;
  • Kim, Jinhee (Department of Family Science, School of Public Health, University of Maryland-College Park)
  • 류수민 (매릴랜드 대학교 공공정책학과) ;
  • 김진희 (매릴랜드 대학교 가족학과)
  • Received : 2020.02.20
  • Accepted : 2020.05.18
  • Published : 2020.08.30
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Abstract

This paper examines the associations of having a helper for domestic work or childcare and time spent on it by couples in South Korea. We use five waves of panel survey data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (KLoWF), which allows longitudinal changes within couples over time that account for potential selection effects and unobserved heterogeneity among individuals. With fixed effects, we find outsourcing is associated with a decrease in wife's time spent on domestic work or childcare by 1 hour per week. However, the decrease is concentrated on the unemployed wife's time, but not employed wife's time. In addition, outsourcing is not a significant factor for husband's time and the husband's share of total contribution. This may be because wives are the main provider of domestic work and childcare in Korea regardless of employment status or having any helper. Due to unequal contributions between husband and wife, using outsourcing also neither alleviates the employed wife's contribution nor changes the husband's contribution. However, the results may be underestimated because there are more common and diverse types of outsourcing in a broad sense, such as going out for dinner, buying prepared food, and using dry cleaning services. We expect future studies to consider more broad types of outsourcing and examine how relations with the couple's time use at home are different by type.

Keywords

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