• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.204-229
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• 1988

This paper documents and discusses trends and differentials in youth's participation in the labor force and employment. Youth in this study is defined asthe young aged 15-29. Youth passes through a series of life-course transitions,which include school completion own family formation(marriage and childbirth) .mandatory service in the army (by males) , and their economic activities are affectedby those life-course events. Accordingly we show how and to what extent youth'slabor force participation and employment varies with age and how the age patternhas changed over time.Throughout the 1980's and 1990's, youth's labor force participation showeddifferent trends by age group Labor fDrce participation rate of the 15-19 agedsteeply decreased, while that of the 25-29 steadily increased during the twodecades, the rate fsr the 20-24 aged showing not much variation. The former is dueto the increased rate of school enrollment among the age group, while the lattercould be attributed, in part, to the young women s increased and more steadyparticipation in the labor force over time.While labor force participation could be considered as a result of one's choicesand preferences, employment opportunities are more or less restricted by labormarket structure and institutions . This study documents how the structuralconstraints have interacted with individual and group attributes to differentiateemployment opportunities between individuals (educational background) and groups(especially sex diffrences) . One of the most salient feature of youth's em[ploymentstructure is the recent high unemployment rate of the college graduates. We discusshow that is related to the'credential society'in which one's educational credentials and it's social status play major role in determining who gets what in terms of job opportunities. Also is discussed the discordance between school and labor marketsupply and demand system, which is apparent in the prolonged oversupply of thecollege graduates, which is due to the consistently high rate of college entranceobserved since the early 1980's. Theoretically the job market for college graduates isviewed not as the'neoclassical'wage competition market but as job competition market in which one's (good) job opportunity is determined by one s position in thejob queue, which is in turn heavily dependent on from which college one get shis/her college degree as well as one's sex.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.107-137
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• 1996

Under-utilization of Korean women's education in the labor market has been observed and pointed out as a waste of valuable human resources. Although education provides women with positive returns when they work, it has been found that Korean women's education is not much related to the likelihood of women's labor force participation. This tendency cannot be explained by micro-economic theory, which says that educated women are more likely to participate in the labor force. Thus, in this analysis, a macro-level explanation is attempted to understand Korean women's economic behaviors in relation to education. Korea's rapid industrialization since 1960 has provided ample job opportunities mostly for less educated women. On the other hand, increasing demand for educated female labor has been moderate. Various restriction against women, especially married women, have prevailed in the Korean labor market. Restrictions against women and the marriage bar tend to be selectively applied to decent white-collar jobs, mostly affecting educated women. Furthermore, there has been no shortage of educated male labor due to its adequate supply. Since Korean women spend most of their adult lives in marriage, married women's low participation in the labor force is a critical factor for the low economic returns to women's education throughout their lifetime. Restriction against married women in the labor market also existed in the past of the United States and the Great Britain. However, along with the expansion of the service sector, married women in great numbers flowed into non-manual jobs. The post-1940 increase of married women in the labor force in those countries can be understood to be a result of a labor shortage for non-manual jobs. Also in Taiwan, which shares many common cultural and economic backgrounds with Korea, the marriage bar has been in decline since the late 1970s, along with an increasing demand for female labor in the service sector. In sum, the changes in the demand structure and the supply of educated male labor force will contribute to the lift of the marrige bar in Korea.

• Survey Research
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.59-83
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to understand why female labor force participation rates decline in early times after their marriage. Data were derived from the 4th(2001) to 9th(2006) Korea Labor & Income Panel Study. 194 Korean married women in twenties and thirties who had a job before marriage were analyzed. Survival analysis was used to explore the first labor force exit of married women longitudinally. The major findings are as follows. First, nearly half of them went away from labor market in the first 3 years after marriage. Second, child birth was the most significant factor in predicting women's labor force exit. Married women's employment discontinuity tend to be lowered after child birth, with working hour decreasing, and with the number of available family-friendly policies increasing. Married women's income encouraged them to hold on their career, though husband's income and household income were not significant. Third, married women tended to leave their job before giving birth. Women who remained in the labor market at child birth or until a year after birth were inclined to continue their job thereafter. Fourth, maternity leave and childcare leave diminished the probability of employment discontinuity. Many working wives could not use a maternity leave or childcare leave. This study shows married women usually underwent labor market exit in their newly married time. They cannot help facing conflict between the role of mother's and a worker's. Family-friendly policies could encourage working wives to rear child and continue work at the same time. The findings of this study could serve as fundamental material for further studies and would be a key to find effective solution for problematic issues on reconciling work and family.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.53-79
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• 2021

The recession caused by the COVID-19 crisis has features that could disproportionately harm female employment. Risk of infection and social distancing measures may have disrupted jobs in face-to-face industries, which have traditionally hired more women than men. School closures and a consequent increase in childcare and homeschooling demands may have discouraged labor market participation by working mothers. Using the Economically Active Population Survey, I examine how female employment was affected by each factor. I find that the gender gap in the Employment to Non-participation (E to N) transition rates is twice as large as the gap in the Employment to Unemployment (E to U) transition rates. Women's overrepresentation in the face-to-face industries accounts for most of the gap in the E to U transition but only a third of the gap in the E to N transition. The rise in non-participation is especially pronounced among married women aged 39-44, the group most likely to have elementary-school-age children.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.29-44
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• 2022

This study compares the wage equation in Korea to those in other countries, focusing on the wage returns to adult education and training (AET) participation. It is found that the wage compensation structure in Korea is associated mainly with job characteristics such as tenure and workplace size rather than with worker characteristics such as AET participation and cognitive abilities. It is also found that Korea's AET participation is skewed toward non-job-related AET, relative to the situations in other countries. These findings imply that the link between a worker's productivity and wage should be strengthened in order to incentivize workers to invest in AET relevant to the labor market.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.131-169
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• 2010

I develop a matching model in which risk-averse workers face borrowing constraints and make a labor force participation decision as well as a job search decision. A sharp distinction between unemployment and out of the labor force is made: those who look for work for a certain period but find no job are classified as the unemployed and those who do not look for work are classified as those out of the labor force. In the model, the job search decision consists of two steps. First, each individual who is not working obtains information about employment opportunities. Second, each individual who decides to search has to take costly actions to find a job. Since individuals differ with respect to asset holdings, they have different reservation job-finding probabilities at which an individual is indifferent between searching and not searching. Individuals, who have large asset holdings and thereby are less likely to participate in the labor market, have high reservation job-finding probability, and they are less likely to search if they have less quality of information. In other words, if individuals with large asset holdings search for job, they must have very high quality of information and face very high actual job-finding probability. On the other hand, individuals with small asset holdings have low reservation job-finding probability and they are likely to search for less quality of information. They face very low actual job-finding probability and seem to remain unemployed for a long time. Therefore, differences in the quality of information explain heterogeneous job search decisions among individuals as well as higher job finding probability for those who reenter the labor market than for those who remain in the labor force. The effect of the extended maximum duration of unemployment insurance benefits on the aggregate labor market and the labor market flows is investigated. The benchmark benefit duration is set to three months. As maximum benefit duration is extended up to six months, the employment-population ratio decreases while the unemployment rate increases because individuals who are eligible for benefits have strong incentives to remain unemployed and decide to search even if they obtain less quality of information, which leads to low job-finding probability and then high unemployment rate. Then, the vacancy-unemployment ratio decreases and, in turn, the job-finding probability for both the unemployed and those out of the labor force decrease. Finally, the outflow from nonparticipation decreases with benefit duration because the equilibrium job-finding probability decreases. As the job-finding probability decreases, those who are out of the labor force are less likely to search for the same quality of information. I also consider the matching model with two states of employment and unemployment. Compared to the results of the two-state model, the simulated effects of changes in benefit duration on the aggregate labor market and the labor market flows are quite large and significant.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.107-126
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• 2000

In this study I am concerned with the impact of training for the unemployed on reemployment in Korea. The data is based on the survey that was conducted on those who participated in training programs in 1998 and those who did not. The matching criteria was the length of the spell of nonemployment that preceded entry to training programs. This data design allows to apply the quasi-experimental evaluation method. My estimation results indicate that the participation in training raises the hazard rate into reemployment, but training characteristics such as training contents, agencies do not affect the hazard rate significantly. This results imply that training participation increases reemployment possibility by preventing withdrawal of participants from the labor market, but training programs make little contribution to improving skills.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.718-728
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is how the semi-elderly have been participated in the elderly employment program, and to find what are the factors influencing their keeping on the work since retired from the Lavor market. To convert the Row-data obtained from Korea Labor Force Development Institute for the aged, 13,370cases were used to analyze finally. The date analysis was applied with Frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, correlation and Logistic regression using program of SPSS 18.0. The analysis is shows that semi-elderly who had participated in more than 270 days a year in elderly employment program formed 41.2%. The most important factor that the semi-elderly have been participated in working is payment, and others are gender, solitary life, motivation of working and type of elderly employment program. Based on the results of this study, We conducted policy suggestion to achieve the purposes of elderly employment program and to make income from it, for semi-elderly retiring from the labor market.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.223-249
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to classify OECD countries in regard to levels of supporting fathers' care work. Several meaningful conclusions were reached. First, examining the level of supporting fathers' care work and the strength of the traditional bread-winner model, OECD countries can be classified into 5 different clusters. The result is different from the mainstream typology of welfare states and suggests the new typology of welfare states. Second, the level of supporting fathers' care work and the strength of the traditional bread-winner model were found to be related to total fertility rates and women's labor market participation rates. Third, in regard to the level of supporting fathers' care work, Korea was the lowest among OECD countries. This result points to one of the important reasons to the low level of total fertility rat, and low rate of women's labor market participation in Korea.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.113-143
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• 2002

This research explores the effect of Korean women's human capital on their employments. The first research question is which Korean women's human capital increase the rate of women's employment. And then the second research question is which Korean women's human capital affect the kind of women's job. In general, women's representative human capital indicates the educational attainment, the training of job skill, the certificate of job, and the their health. Human capital theoriests insist that individual's human capital determines the participation into the labor market, the type of job and wage. But in Korea it is well known that highly educated women's rate of employment is very low. The method of this research is logit analysis and regression analysis, using the cross-sectional data. We find in this research that women's human capital does not have a positive effect on women's employment rate. The longer women's schooling period is, the less women's participation rates into the labor market are. Women's training of job skill, certificate of job and health does not also have a statistical significance on their employment rate. Besides women's human capital does not affect the kind of job. So human capital theory is very limited explanation on Korean women's economic activities.