• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.430-458
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• 1990

Care is a central concept of nursing. Nursing would not exist without caring. Care and quality of life are closely related. Human behavior is a manifestation of culture. We can say that caring and nursing care are expression of culture. The nurse must understand the relationship of culture with care for ensure quality nursing care. But knowledge of cultural factors in nursing is not well developed. Time and in - depth study are needed to find meaningful relationships between culture and care. Nurses recognized the importance of culturally appropriate nursing There are two care systems in culturally based nursing. The folk care system and the professional nursing care system. The folk care system existed long before the professional nursing care system was introduced into this culture. If the discrepancy between these two care systems is great, the client may receive inappropriate nursing care. Culture and subcaltures are diverse and dynamic in nature. Nurses need to know the caring behaviors, patterns, and their meaning in their own culture. In Korea we have taken some first step to study cultural nursing phenomena. It is not our intent necessarily to return to the past and develop a nationalistic of nursing, but to identify the core of traditional caring and relate that to professional nursing care. Our Assumptions are as follows : 1) Care is essential for human growth, well being and survial. 2) 7here are diverse and universal forma, expressions, patterns, and processes of human care that exist transcul - turally. 3) The behaviors and functions of caring differ according to the social structure of each culture. 4) Cultures have folk and professional care values, beliefs, and practices. To promote the quality of nursing care we must understand the folk care value, beliefs, and practices. We undertook this study to understand caring in our traditional culture. The Goals of this study were as follows : 1) To identify patterns in caring behavior, 2) To identify the structural components of caring, and 3) To understand the meaning and some principles of caring. We faised several questions in this study. Who is the care-giver? Who is the care-receipient? Was the woman the major care -giver at any time? What are the patterns in caring behavior? What art the priciples underlying the caring process? We used an interdisciplinary team approach, composed of representatives from nursing and anthropology, to contribute in -depth understanding of caring through a socicaltural perspeetive. A Field study was conducted in Ro-Bong, a small agricultural kinship village. The subjects were nine women and one man aged be or more years of age. Data were collected from january 15 to 21, 1990 through opem-ended in-depth interviews and observations. The interview focused on caring behaviors sorrounding birth, aging, death and child rearing. We analysed these data for meaning, pattern and priciples of caring. In this report we describe caring behaviors surrounding childbirth. The care-givers were primarily mothers- in -low, other women in the family older than the mother - to- be, older neighbor woman, husbands, and mothers of the mother-to- be. The care receivers were the mother-to-be the baby, and the immediate family as a component of kinship. Emerging caring behavior included praying, helping proscribing, giving moral advice(Deug - Dam), showing concern, instructing, protecting, making preparations, showing consideration, touching, trusting, encouraging, giving emotional comfort, being with, worrying about, being patient, preventing problems, showing by an example, looking after bringing up, taking care of postnatal health, streng thening the health condition, entering into another's feelings(empathizing), and sharing food, joy and sorrow The emerging caring component were affection, touching, nurtuing, teaching, praying, comforting, encouraging, sharing. empathizing, self - discipline, protecting, preparing, helping and compassion. Emerging principles of. caring were solidarity, heir- archzeal relationships, sex - role distinction. Caring during birth expresses the valve of life and reflects the valued traditional beliefs that human birth is given by god and a unique unifying family event reaching back to include the ancestors and foreward to later generations. In addition, We found positive and rational foundations for traditionl caring behaviors surrounding birth, these should not be stigmatized as inational or superstitious. The nurse appropriately adopts the rational and positive nature of traditional caring behaviors to promote the quality of nursing care.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.105-138
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• 2009

Although the decline in fertility rate is generally observed along the history of economic development throughout the world, the continuing decline hitting below the replacement level in Korea over the recent years gathered serious social concerns on the ground that it accelerates the process of population aging. The total fertility rate in Koreareached 2.08 in 1983, and gradually fell to the levels of 1.08 in 2005 and 1.26 in 2007. The policy debate over the role of the government has been focused mainly on the level of theoretical discussion without substantial basis on firm empirical evidence and the determinants of fertility. The objective of the paper is to empirically investigate the fertility effect of the female wage, which is understood as one of the most important determinants of fertility in Koreasince 1980 focusing on one aspect of fertility, namely birth spacing. Using the Korean National Fertility Survey conducted in 2006, I estimate a duration model of first and second births taking into account individual heterogeneity, which turned out to be an important factor to control for. Compared with previous studies in the literature on the Korean fertility, the study has an advantage of using the complete pregnancy history of women in a more representative sample. Unlike the previous studies, the analysis also deals with the endogeneity of marriage by treating a certain age, rather than age at marriage, as the time in which a woman becomes exposed to the risk of pregnancy. The study shares the common problem in the literature on birth spacing of lacking relevant wage information for respondents in a retrospective survey. I estimate the wage series as a function of the basic characteristics using the annual Wage Structure Survey from 1980 to 2005, which is considered as a nationally representative sample for wage information of employees. The results suggest that the increase in female wage by 10 percent leads to a decrease in second birth hazard by 0.56~0.92 percentage points and that the increase in spouse's wage by the equal amount is accompanied by the increase in second birth hazard by 0.36~1.13 percentage points. These estimates are more precisely estimated and of smaller magnitude than those presented by the previous studies. The results are robust to the different specifications of the wage equation. The simulation analysis based on the predicted values shows that about 17% of the change in the second birth hazard over the period 1980 to 2005 was due to the change in the female wage. Although there is some limitation in data, the results can be viewed as one estimate of the role of female wage on the recent fertility decline in Korea. The question raised by the paper is not a normative one of whether a government should promote childbearing but a positive one thatexplains fertility decline. Therefore, if there is a wide consensus on promoting childbearing, the finding suggests that the policies designed to reduce the opportunity cost of women in the labor market would be effective. The recent movement of implementing a wide range of family-friendly policies including child care support, maternity leave, parental leave and tax benefit in developed countries should be understood in this context.