• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.147-174
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• 2007

This study examines how path dependency of working poor labor market segmented from the primary and the secondary labor market affects employment and quality of employment of working poor. It Further examines how path dependency makes working poor to remain in the labor market and makes it difficult for them to escape from a vicious poverty cycle. Data is based on the $3{\sim}7th$ Korea Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS). Markov's transition probability and discrete-time hazard analysis are used for analysis. This study finds that Korea labor market is divided into three parts; the primary labor market, the secondary labor market and the working poor labor market. The proportion of employed poor has been reduced, but the proportion of non economically-active working poor has been increased and has become the main group among the working poor. This shows that labor demand of working poor is fundamentally lacking and there are structural barriers that block working poor's employment itself. The regression analysis shows that the longer working poor labor market participation is, the lower poverty-exit rate. This is an evidence of vicious poverty cycle that the poor have little chance to exit from working poor labor market, once they step into it. Therefore, the longer their participation in poor labor market, the more likely they would move only within the closed working poor labor market. Consequently, it is necessary to fundamentally reform labor market structure and to alleviate negative perception and discrimination about the poor labor while activating labor demand.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.47-88
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• 2010

Focusing on the Korean experience, particularly a recent amendment which extends maternity leave and increases financial benefits during maternity and childcare leave, this paper evaluates how such an expansion of benefits affects the employment and the hourly wages of young wages of childbearing age. Empirical results from a difference--in-difference-in-differences model having older warren, older men, and young men simultaneously as the control group suggest that neither the employment nor the hourly wages of young women are affected. This implies that the law change does not cause shifts in the labor supply curve and the labor demand curve for young women.