• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.53-78
• /
• 2021

The concept of household labor is composed of housework and family care, and it provides a framework for understanding daily life from the perspective of work-life balance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the household labor time of Korean adults by gender and generation over the last 20 years. Data was taken from the five Statistics Korea Life Time Surveys from 1999 (t1) to 2019 (t5) (n=69,196). The major results are as follows: first, gender and generation were found to have a significant relationship with household labor time over the study period. Household labor time for females was 3.8 times that of males in 1999, but females' household labor time decreased over the next 20 years while males' increased, including both housework and family care. The female participation rate in household work also remained steady, while that for males increased. Second, in the younger and middle generations, a similar gender and generational pattern was seen. Third, in the older generation, household time and participation rates for both females and males increased. The family welfare policy and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.