• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.115-141
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• 2003

The aim of this paper is to describe a long-term trend toward earlier retirement and its reversal since 1985 in the United States, together with changes in socioeconomic conditions and social-policy programs which have contributed to this new development. The American people's recent propensity to retire at relatively younger ages was mainly a result of secular increase in individual wealth that had made it possible for them to enjoy higher standard of living without their participation in labor market activities at older ages. In addition to the introduction of compulsory retirement system, both social security retirement pension program and corporate pension system have also contributed significantly to the declining retirement age and its reversal around the mid-1980s. This paper pays full attention to the set of social policy programs which are currently being used to sustain the recent reversal in ages at retirement. The basic question to be raised here, however, is about whether or not the U. S. government will ave to continue to implement the social policies and programs used to discourage the elderly from retiring at relatively younger ages in the future. In this paper, it is argued that labor productivity growth and improvement in work attitude prior to retirement will help the elderly find little difficulties in having higher standard of living, despite their further lengthening of life expectancy at birth and post-retirement survival chances, the latter being often called the "third life". Most American people hope that the social-policy programs that have promoted early retirement will remain unchanged in the first part of the 21st century while they will put significant financial burden on their future descendants who have to work in the paid labor market. Taking this observation in consideration, this paper concludes that the U. S. government has to focus more on developing the programs that improve work propensity and labor productivity among the currently working-age population rather than continuing to implement the programs that sustain the recent reversal in retirement ages.ment ages.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-96
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• 2001

The recent economic crisis started at the end of 1997 has brought about changes in labor market practices. One of them is rapid increase in the ratio of workers with alternative employment arrangement, so-called contingent workers. This type of arrangement, unlike traditional employment arrangement, makes employers properly adjust employment to business cycles and it also makes it possible for employees to solve time and spatial constraints related to labor supply. However, recent experience has revealed its negative characteristics such as lower wage rate, deficient fringe benefits, insufficient job security. Using the data from the first and the second wave of the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey, this study focuses on change in the tendency of being contingent workers and decomposition of the wage differentials among regular and contingent workers by estimating the switching regression model. Results show that the recent crisis significantly contributed to probabilities of being contingent workers, especially for women, the young, the older, and the lowly educated. Decomposition shows that one quarter or one third of 35% of wage differentials are due to the price effect that the same productive characteristics are differently paid by the types of employment arrangements.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.55-76
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• 2020

The traditional occupational boundaries of human resources in science and technology (S&T) have quickly blurred in Korea. On the one hand, the knowledge-based economy has emerged and S&T proliferated beyond conventional areas, leading scientists and engineers to advance into various convergence fields. On the other hand, Korea's labor market is characterized by a higher percentage of highly-educated human resources and a relatively smaller number of high-quality jobs. As a result, the highly educated in S&T have flowed over the traditional careers into non-S&T careers. Focusing on doctorates in S&T, this paper analyzes changes in their career patterns and identifies main determinants. Specifically, jobs are categorized into traditional STEM occupations and the others in order to identify fluctuations in their share and to analyze factors affecting such changes. The analyses are based on data from the 'Survey on Careers and Mobility of Doctorate Holders 2012' conducted by the Science and Technology Policy Institute. The results exhibit marked changes in the occupational composition of doctorates in S&T. Occupational diversification has been proceeded faster in natural sciences, the private sector, and the younger generation than in engineering, the public sector, and the older generation.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.383-396
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• 2016

The most direct influence on the development of Yoseba Kotobuki was the end of World War II. As city rebuilding projects began vibrantly overlapping, the vitalization in Kotobuki was adopted by the laborers coming in from various parts throughout of the country. Just as the period of economic revival from the special demand created by the Korean War got underway, the aftermath of the worldwide economic recession due to the oil crisis had a direct effect on even the labor market. Moreover, as the vitality of the labor market gradually fizzled out from the long-term economic recession caused by the burst of the economic bubble, the labor base that had once been the pillar of the Japanese economy began to age and could no longer perform this role. As these aging laborers came to receive public assistance, the doya managers began repairing the doya and Kotobuki began to change again. The historical times which affected the changes in Yoseba Kotobuki's locality are in the lives of its members--the laborers--and the times themselves, which operate on the micro level; however, in those times, the national and the global time of the nation-state interact and are linked in multiple layers.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.558-576
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• 1996

Since 1978. China has progressed her reforms of her economy. In this process, refroms in rual area have been operated with top priority. The system of collective economy had been changed into that of private economy. Rural farming and land-use system had been changed also. The household responsibility system took the place of a People's Commune. That was the system that could inspire farm-household with a will to work, and hence, increase the productivity of agriculture. However, with the developement of market mechanism in the later 1980s, that system got inadequate to new situation. For instance, incentives of a will to work slowly decreased, agricultural productivity did not increase, and labor forces were tremendously transferred to non-agricultural sector. This situation created the demand for a new system of rural land policy and use. This paper intends to describe changes of new system of land use in rual China. Those changes are as follows. 1. The system of land-circulation has been spread widely. 2. 'Liangtianzhi' (the system of two kind land-use) divided the land into two kinds, 'kouliangtian' (the land of food) and 'zerentian' (the land of obligation). The one is allocated in proportion to the per capita, and to support farm-household' and function, the other is allocated in proportion to the labor force, in order to increase the commercial function of land. 4. 'Guimojingying' (management of scale): For overcomint the disadvantage of dispersal of land, the relative concentration of land was required. 4. 'Gufenzhi' (a joint-stock system) is practised for the purpose of establishing clear-cut lines of land ownership. 5. 'Sihuangpaimai' (auction the use right of four kinds of wasteland) is for full-using of the wasteland. It can be apprehended that these systems and policies were the process of adaption to market mechanism. In these, rural China could escape form the disorder due to rapid changes, and overcome the existing contradiction.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.103-119
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• 1993

This research examines the spatial development of rural industrial estates (Nong-gong Jigu) in Chonbuk province and gives insight into the strategies for economic development in the entire region. Selected location factors which are likely to pull new investment into the estates are examined by using questionnaires. Few loction factors except nonlocal factors can be found in explaining why location choices are made. The irrelevance of the analysis based on location factors suggests that an alternative approach should analyze changes in the spatial development of the rural industrial estates. Such an alternative is to understand the dynamics of the spatial organization of production by focusing on characteistics of plant closing in the rural industrial estates. To take into account of the characteristics of plant closing we provide the hypothesized relationships between employment size, organizational structure, inter and intra industrial linkage, characteristics of production processes, and availability of local labor market and the likelihood of closing. A logit model is then made to identify the selected factors which might influence the probability of plant closing. The results from the logit analysis and their implications suggest that the policy should be more concerned with the characteristics of firms, such as size and ownership, as well as of the local labor markets. Given that the Chonbuk region has experienced rapid population decline, together with its poor industrial base, it seems that the success of the policy in the declined rural areas in less certain.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.105-133
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• 2005

This paper attempts to verify that the economic gap between the workers in (large) firms with unions and those in (small and medium size) firms with no unions has recently been widened rapidly. A comparison of the wages of the workers belonging to the business establishments with and without trade union shows that the union premium has increased very sharply since 1997, after a relatively long periods with little changes. Also found is that union sector has witnessed a sharper decline in the share of the new entrants among workers as well as a faster increase of the average tenure of workers. These all indicate that the trade unions have forced a market equilibrium to move farther away from the competitive equilibrium in recent years.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.257-279
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• 2012

This study examined how employment status changes affects poverty transition of workable youth using 3years panel data from KoWePS(Korea Welfare Panel Study, 2007-2009). Findings and implications of this study as follows. First, although relative poverty rate of aged 18-34 is lower than other age groups, significant amount of youth experienced poverty once in 2007-2009(14.59%). This means that there are some of youth suffering for poverty and the aspect of youth poverty is very dynamic. Second, much of workable poor of youth had high level of education(45.9% in 2009) and they were unemployed or inactive in labor market(55.3% in 2009). These findings consistent with previous studies of youth poverty or youth employment. Third, workable youth who had changed employment status from employed to unemployed or inactive in labor market were likely to enter poverty and less likely to exit from poverty. Moreover youth who were non-standard employed had more possibility to be poor and less possibility to be not poor. These show that employment instability makes youth vulnerable to economic hardship, poverty. The result of this study suggest that anti-poverty programs which are related with the work-related programs and active labor market policy, should consider workable youth who have high level of human capital comparing other ordinary working poor. Because of much of youth are not poor in fixed time point, they can't be supported from existing social assistance program, like National Basic Livelihood Protection Program. As youth who experienced poverty in changing time need social support to prevent long-term poverty, government should contemplate adopting assistance program for workable poor youth.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.153-159
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• 2019

Job creation is the most important issue in the labor market these days, and the quality of jobs is also very important in order to resolve the mismatches that are taking place in the labor market. Kim Young-min (2014) developed the "2012 Quality of Employment Index" with twenty indicators in seven categories, including employment opportunities, to objectively assess the local labor market. This method presents the concept of the aggregate indicator, 'Quality of Work Index', and has the advantage of being easy to produce. However, it is difficult to statistically verify the adequacy of the constitutive indicators and, based on this, make them a single aggregate index through statistical techniques. Therefore, we developed an alternative '2012 Descent Work Index' and a confidence interval using Principal Component Analysis(PCA) and Unobserved Component Model(UCM) presented by Gi-Choon Kang & Myung-jig Kim (2014) and also calculated an alternative '2017 Descent Work Index' using the first half of 2017 local area labour force survey and compared its changes by region. The results of the empirical analysis show that the rank correlation coefficient between two methods of aggregating indicators, simple weight used in Young-min Kim's research, PCA method and UCM used in this study, were found to be statistically significant under 5% significance level. This implies that all methods are found to be useful. However, the PCA and UCM which determine scientific and objective weights based on data are preferred to Young-min Kim's approach. Since it provides us not only the level of aggregate indicator but also its confidence intervals, it is possible to compare ranking with the consideration of statistical significance. Therefore, it is expected that the method of constructing an aggregating indicator using UCM will be widely used in many areas in the future.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.158-175
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• 2022

This study discusses mass unemployment and job insecurity due to the 4th industrial revolution and technological progress. In particular, the construction automation service method can contribute to increasing work productivity, preventing on-site safety accidents, and enhancing the competitiveness of the construction industry according to rapid development and convergence between technologies. However, there is great concern that the position of workers will decrease and the income distribution will deteriorate. Therefore, this study is necessary to alleviate the anxiety of the labor market and to find a direction for the government and all walks of life to ponder. To carry out this study, in-depth interviews were conducted with two experts currently engaged in the construction field, and through analysis, we intend to derive meaning and identify current trends, identify necessary improvement measures and institutional areas and suggest research directions. As a result of the analysis, it is possible to suggest a response strategy in a total of three themes: purpose, implication, and strategy. Based on this, there are response strategies in four areas: (1) industrial site response, (2) worker response, (3) education, and (4) training response, and government and corporate response. Through this study, it is necessary to revitalize economic and sociological discussions in the future so that the improvement in productivity and efficiency of society as a whole due to technological innovation of construction automation services does not lead to social problems such as an increase in the unemployment rate and a decrease in jobs in the labor market.