Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in South Korea: Tracing out the U-shaped Curve by Economic Growth

This paper attempts to investigate the structural relationship between economic growth and female labor force participation in Korea. The recurring issue of whether women’s integration to the society is critical becomes salient once again, but with little consideration of its meaning and potential consequences. It extends further the research theme that the degree of female labor force participation relies on the extent to which social context is reflected in the time-series data for the country from 1980 to 2014. While multiple theories are being espoused in this research, effects traced across levels of analysis and over substantial temporality lead up to a system of dynamic causal relationships, using contingency table and log-linear analysis. It appears to be supported in the regression analysis that the country travels through the U-shaped curve over time whereas income inequality displays greater impact on women’s employment. The empirical estimates of social transformation credit this trend to family structure and wife’s education, as the second pivot that, at least, noneconomic causal factors are also operative.     

Determinants of fertility control in Korea

The objective of this study is to examine the socioeconomic and intervening determinants of fertility control in Korea. The conceptual framework applied here is based on the synthesis framework of fertility control developed by Easterlin and Crimmins. The data came from the 1974 Korean National Family Survey, which was conducted as part of the World Fertility Survey. The study focuses on the relative importance of the socioeconomic factors and intervening variables in the determination of fertility control. The most interesting finding is that there are only small differentials in fertility control by socioeconomic factors. The analysis emphasizes the importance of examining the determinants of fertility control in terms of the intervening variables, which include the components of natural fertility, desired family size, and costs of fertility control. These intervening variables provide general support for the theoretical predictions. Moreover, most of the coefficients for these variables are statistically significant at the .05 level. The analysis also shows that motivation for fertility control is an important factor in determining use of fertility control.     

The Quality of Life in South Korea

The AsiaBarometer survey of 1,023 respondents shows Life in Korea is highly modernized and digitalized without being much globalized. Despite the modernization and digitalization of their lifestyles, ordinary citizens still prioritize materialistic values more than post-materialistic values, and they remain least satisfied in the material life sphere. A multivariate analysis of the Korean survey reveals that their positive assessments of their standard of living and marriage are the most powerful influences on the quality of life they experience. Remarkable improvements in the objective conditions of life for the past three decades have failed to transform Korea into a nation of well-being.

中国城市人口增长的决定因素分析

文章从城市发展的基本理论出发,利用计量经济学模型,分析了中国20世纪90年代城市人口增长的决定因素。实证分析的结果表明:(1)中国城市的发展具有趋同性,即城市规模越大,人口增长率越低;(2)迁移的惯性对城市人口增长起促进作用;(3)对外开放能显著促进城市的发展,在经济还处于相对封闭状态的内陆地区,其作用尤为显著;(4)基础设施条件能显著影响城市人口增长的节奏。     

Envy and Pride: How Economic Inequality Deepens Happiness Inequality in South Korea

This paper examines how economic inequality at the local level affects individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) through social comparison in Seoul, South Korea. We implement a multi-level analysis combining asset inequality, calculated using the actual transaction prices of apartments, and public opinion surveys conducted by Seoul Metropolitan City between 2008 and 2016. Our analysis shows that inequality negatively affects SWB among respondents whose family income is lower than the median (the envy effect), but drives up SWB among the other half (the pride effect). Further analysis on the effect of inequality on subjective class awareness corroborates a social comparison mechanism: the haves embrace an upper-class awareness as local inequality increases, while the have-nots embrace a lower class awareness. These findings suggest that, despite concerns about economic inequality and its negative consequences, calling for policy reform to reduce inequality may be unpersuasive to the better off members of society, especially if doing so increases individual financial burdens.

     

Alvin Hansen on Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth

The driving forces of economic growth, according to the mainstream of classical economic thinking, are threefold: technological innovations, the opening up of new territories and discovery of new resources, and increase in population. In interaction, in an entrepreneurial market economy, these forces generate growth not only in the aggregate but also per capita. Evidence of their power was seen in the long stretch of rising living standards in the West over the nineteenth century, despite the ups and downs of the business cycle. However, the economic experience of the interwar years, and in particular the Great Depression of the 1930s, suggested that the forces were largely spent and hence that future economic prospects were gravely imperiled. The Keynesian revolution in economics was a response to the evident malfunctioning of the capitalist economic system, although the policy recipes it offered (for increasing demand and investment to levels capable of generating an equilibrium consistent with full employment of productive resources, especially labor) by no means commanded unanimity. The most prominent American contributor to and spokesman for the new line of economic analysis—often called “the American Keynes”—was Alvin H. Hansen (1887–1975), who took up his professorship of political economy at Harvard in 1937, just after the appearance of Keynes's General Theory. In that post, which he held until his retirement in 1956, he was one of the most influential economists of the era as a theorist, policy adviser, and teacher. Hansen interpreted the economic problems of the 1930s not just as the manifestation of a particularly sharp cyclical downturn, but as evidence of secular stagnation caused by the closing of the economic frontier, sluggishness in technological innovation, and, not least, “a drastic decline in population growth.” This “stagnation thesis” is most succinctly set out in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, delivered in Detroit, 28 December 1938, under the title Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth. The address is re‐produced below from the March 1939 issue of the American Economic Review. (The opening paragraphs of the address, and two paragraphs, immediately preceding the closing paragraph, in which Hansen discusses changes in US national income in the 1930s, have been omitted.) Hansen's analysis of the effects of declining population growth in many ways echoes the thesis set out by Keynes in his seminal Galton Lecture delivered to the Eugenics Society in 1937 (reprinted in the Archives section of PDR 4, no. 3): a demographic slowdown decreases opportunities for profitable investments and increases levels of attempted saving, hence pushes the economy toward a low‐growth equilibrium at which resources are underutilized and unemployment is high. Hansen puts special emphasis on demographically induced shifts in the composition of output. He suggests that, beyond its direct positive effect on investment and output, population growth also has an indirect enhancing effect on these factors by facilitating technological progress–contrary to the “older Malthusian view.” In his policy proposals Hansen was more interventionist than Keynes, advocating a more intrusive government role in the economy as a possible means of escaping the vicious cycle of low demand and high unemployment. As to government action to reverse demographic trends seen as deleterious, neither Keynes nor Hansen argued for policies to increase fertility, presumably because they saw them as both inappropriate and, in comparison to remedial economic policy measures, inefficient or unfeasible. The demands of the war economy in the years following Hansen's address took care of the employment problem, and the immediate postwar decades brought the stimuli of pent‐up consumer demand, an outpouring of technological innovations, a reopening of the economic frontier produced by a more liberal trade regime, and, also, an acceleration of population growth. The result was rapid overall economic growth and increasing levels of per capita income. Keynesian demand management played some role in this economic success story: by the end of the 1960s even US President Richard Nixon pronounced himself a Keynesian. But it offered no remedy for the stagflation that eventually followed. The growth‐promoting recipes favored in the last decades of the century (especially in the most successful developing economies) were anything but Keynesian: limited government, fiscal restraint, and globalization. Yet recent and anticipated demographic trends, especially in Europe—notably fertility decline and population aging—make Hansen, once again, interesting reading. Commitments of the modern welfare state for health care, retirement pensions, and job security command wide approval, but they have boosted governments' weight in the economy and made labor markets inflexible, unemployment high, and retirement early—developments that may increasingly impose a brake on economic growth and on improvements of living standards. Reform measures to ease these burdens are, in principle, straightforward, but their immediate social costs are heavy and their rewards are delayed, hence resistance to reform is strong and growing. This is likely to stimulate the search for alternative policies that offer politically more palatable tradeoffs—some of which may turn out to have an unmistakably Hansenian flavor. As to future population trends, Hansen, despite his reference to a “drastic decline in population growth” based on a comparison of nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century Western demographic change, envisaged a convergence to a stationary population or a tendency toward very slow decrease. Yet some economies are already locked into a demographic pattern that augurs sharper declines and more rapid population aging, enhancing the relevance of the issues posed by Hansen. In Germany, for example, in the absence of immigration, the population between ages 20 and 40 will decline from 21.6 million in 2005 to 16.3 million in 2025—a drop of 23 percent. Over the same time period, the population aged 60 and older will grow from 20.5 million to 25.8 million—an increase of 26 percent. Serious efforts to slow population decline and retard population aging by stimulating fertility would of course add another major burden to government budgets.     

Financial Sector Development Indicators and Economic Growth in Cameroon and South Africa

This study seeks to identify, compare and appreciate salient differences in the financial sector development and economic growth experiences of Cameroon and South Africa. A comparative study is often conducted in the early stages of development of a branch of science in order to help research to progress from the initial level of exploratory case studies to a more advanced level of general model invariance, such as causality. Furthermore, a comparative study can also help in understanding the root cause of the development and/or weakness of one system (economy). A comparison between the financial sectors of Cameroon and South Africa will help to identify whether or not the level and structure of a financial sector can explain differences in terms of the effects of the latter on economic growth. The paper first compares the economic growth experiences of Cameroon and South Africa and examines the development of their financial sector. This is to assist in understanding their economic situations, in order to acknowledge the experiences of the two countries, which may explain the nature of the development of their financial sectors. The paper then analyzes the further development of their financial sectors using various indicators of financial deepening. This is to evaluate how all the policies implemented in order to restore the economic situation in these countries have impacted on their financial sector, either in terms of the number of players (financial widening), or in terms of their efficiency (financial deepening). Implications and conclusion are then included. It has been suggested that in Cameroon, during the pre-reform period, the country as well as the financial sector, excelled the most, partly due to the discovery of oil in 1978. However, the mid 1980s economic shock experiences of Cameroon significantly affected the financial sector. Subsequent financial sector development policies of Cameroon have failed to improve the economic situation. In the post-reform period, the banking sector was unable to efficiently collect savings and allocate these to the economy, possibly because of the loss of confidence in the banking sector although few efforts were made to attract savings from the economy. Furthermore, real interest rate, which reflects the real cost of funds to the borrower and the real yield to the lender, was almost negative throughout the period under review, and did not attract savings, even when it was positive. For South Africa, throughout the period under review, there has been a trend of an increase in almost all the indicators of the financial sector development selected. Savings have been better mobilised and effectively allocated to the economy and the financial sector has done well since the liberalisation of the sector.     

The Determinants of Child Health in Pakistan: An Economic Analysis

This paper estimates linear structural models using LISREL and employs MIMIC models to find out factors determining child health in Pakistan. A distinction has been made in permanent and transitory health states that lend support to Grossman’s (1972) stock and flow concepts of health. The paper addresses the issue of health unobservability and finds out that latent variables using MIMIC models best represent underlying child health states. To overcome problems of poor income data, factor analysis is applied to extract measures of housing and durables as indicators of socio-economic well-being of children in Pakistan. The results of the study show that child health states, both permanent and transitory, are affected significantly by factors such as parental education, socio-economic conditions, and health care variables.     

韩国人口老龄化对劳动生产率的影响

世界上任何国家一旦进入低出生-长寿命的人口老龄化时代,便对劳动生产率产生波及效应。有趣的是,围绕着人口结构老龄化对劳动生产率的影响,学术界存在着老龄化会降低劳动生产率与老龄化会提高劳动生产率两种截然不同的观点。本文根据韩国雇佣结构现状及特征,运用实证方法分析20世纪韩国雇佣结构的高龄化对劳动生产率的影响以及对未来劳动生产率将产生的影响。     

Dynamics of Asset Poverty in South Korea

Studies of economic insecurity tend to focus on changes in incomes and transitions in and out of income poverty. Yet family economic conditions are shaped by more than just income. Levels of assets and wealth, and changes in these over time also play a role. To identify which groups of the poor have been structurally trapped in poverty over time, using the Korean Welfare Panel Study, we examined the dynamics of asset poverty from 2005 to 2014. We defined three asset poverty lines by operationalizing assets as resources for either future consumption or development. Findings show that asset poverty experience in a previous year significantly increased the probability to incur asset poverty by 5–12% for all analysis samples. In addition, the probability of incurring asset poverty decreased with home ownership, higher disposable income, and greater diversification of the household portfolio. Our findings suggest that the asset poor are likely to fall into structural and persistent poverty over time, and an asset-building approach is needed to improve the asset poverty status of households in South Korea.

     

人口效应及其对中国经济增长的影响

对于人口增长与经济增长的关系,理论界存在着多种争论。本文首先在现代经济增长理论基础上建立了一个简单的逻辑框架,进而得出了关于人口增长与经济增长关系的预测,然后利用大量的经验数据初步证实了上述判断;虽然受各种因素的影响,人口增长的经济效应可能依时间、地点而有明显的差异,但无论是从长期还是短期来看,人口增长对经济增长都有一定的促进作用。因此,在目前的背景下,应当适时地调整现行的人口管理政策,以维持我国经济的持续增长。     

International marriages in South Korea: The significance of nationality and ethnicity

International marriage has increased drastically in South Korea in recent years, and by 2005, 13.6 per cent of marriages involved a foreign spouse. The purpose of this study is twofold: to explore the demographic demand and supply of foreign spouses in the marriage market in South Korea, and to examine how social positions of foreign wives vary by their place in the marriage market as determined by their nationality and ethnicity. Data show that the demand for foreign spouses is particularly strong among rural never-married and urban divorced Korean men. Among foreign wives, Chinese, especially Korean Chinese, tend to marry divorced Koreans, partly because many of them have also been married before. The Korean Chinese are the most autonomous among five groups of foreign wives examined, showing the highest rates of Korean citizenship, divorce-separation, and employment. Southeast Asian women tend to marry rural never-married men, and they are the most adaptive to the host society in the way they show among the highest rates of Korean citizenship and employment (after controlling for their poor Korean proficiency and short duration in Korea). Their divorce-separation rate is the lowest regardless of such control. This study demonstrates that marriage migrants adaptation to the host society differs significantly by nationality and ethnic origin.     

The Role of Family Behaviors in Determining Income Distribution: The Case of South Korea

In this article, we examined what has contributed to the worsening income inequality and poverty between 1996 and 2011 in South Korea. We used a rank-preserving exchange method and a conditional reweighting method to assess the roles of family behaviors—including female labor force participation and family structure—characteristics of household heads, and men’s earnings. The results showed that the change in men’s earnings was a dominant factor in accounting for the increasing income inequality and poverty. The change in age and education among household heads also contributed significantly to the worsening income distribution. The change in family structure mainly affected the income disparity among lower-income families and increased poverty. The rise in women’s labor force participation improved the income distribution but not considerably. The distributional roles of family have not worked to prevent or reverse the worsening income distribution in the past few decades in South Korea.     

长三角地区城市增长的影响因素

文章以国内外城市增长的相关理论和研究为基础,基于长三角地区地级及以上城市面板数据,利用城市经济增长、人口规模、劳动生产率三个指标来研究1990²010年间城市增长,发现长三角地区城市发展呈现出明显的趋同趋势,并且人口迁移和城市经济集聚存在显著的双向因果关系,人口迁移通过增加当地市场潜力、规模经济和外部性等促进了城市经济集聚,而城市经济集聚进一步吸引了大量的人口迁移。为了促进长三角地区城市发展,建议充分发挥市场机制作用,减少制度性限制,促进要素的自由流动,充分发挥城市的经济集聚功能。     

Below-replacement fertility: Determinants and prospects in South Asia

Although 10 countries and two of China’s special administrative areas, totalling 1,528 million people or 44 per cent of Asia’s total population, are now characterized by fertility rates below long-term replacement levels, no such countries are yet found in South Asia. This paper first examines the characteristics of 12 Asian administrations with very low fertility at various stages of their fertility declines and then compares the findings with the present situation in three South Asian countries, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. This allows a prediction of when the South Asian countries will reach replacement fertility in accord with the trends in two key criteria, the percentage of girls in secondary school and the infant mortality rate. These conclusions are then buttressed for each country by the findings of anthropological demographic research programs in which the authors were involved. The predictions are that all three countries will attain a total fertility rate of 2.1 within the next 30 years and that the UN2000 Revision of the medium population projection is plausible in that regard. However, the authors part company with the UN projection in their assessment that the nature of these societies means that they will all subsequently fall to still lower fertility levels.     

The Decline of Son Preference in South Korea: The Roles of Development and Public Policy

For years, sex ratios at birth kept rising in South Korea despite rapid development. We show that this was not an anomaly: underlying son preference fell with development, but the effect of son preference on sex ratios at birth rose until the mid‐1990s as a result of improved sex‐selection technology. Now South Korea leads Asia with a declining sex ratio at birth. We explore how son preference was affected by development and by public policy. Decomposition analysis indicates that development reduced son preference primarily through triggering normative changes across society—rather than just in individuals whose socioeconomic circumstances had changed. The cultural underpinnings of son preference in preindustrial Korea were unraveled by industrialization and urbanization even as public policies sought to uphold the patriarchal family system. Our results suggest that child sex ratios in China and India may decline before those countries reach South Korean levels of development, since the governments of both countries vigorously promote normative change to reduce son preference.     

The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth

We assess quantitatively the effect of exogenous reductions in fertility on output per capita. Our simulation model allows for effects that run through schooling, the size and age structure of the population, capital accumulation, parental time input into childrearing, and crowding of fixed natural resources. The model is parameterized using a combination of microeconomic estimates and standard components of quantitative macroeconomic theory. We apply the model to examine the effect of a change in fertility from the UN medium‐variant to the UN low‐variant projection in Nigeria. For a base case set of parameters, we find that such a change would raise output per capita by 5.6 percent at a horizon of 20 years and by 11.9 percent at a horizon of 50 years. We conclude with a discussion of the quantitative significance of these results.     

Social Relations and School Life Satisfaction in South Korea

This study pays special attention to adolescents who are at the critical stage of social, cognitive and emotional development and their satisfaction with school life which is important for their educational experience and adult life. The purpose of this study is to examine how students’ relationships with friends, teachers and parents are associated with their school life satisfaction. We conducted hierarchical linear modeling with nationally representative data on 3,790 high school seniors in the consideration of different school types (general and vocational high schools) reflecting the contextual characteristics of South Korean education system. Our findings show that all those relations are associated with school life satisfaction and that some distinctive dimensions of each relation matter for students’ school life satisfaction. In particular, teacher-student relationship was found to shape students’ satisfaction with school life both at individual and school level. In spite of several limitations, the broad investigation of students’ social relations provided a policy implication for improving adolescents’ satisfaction with their school lives.     

人口转变的经济增长效应研宄新进展:一个综述

关于人口转变对于经济增长的效应研究由来已久,但是研究大多只考虑了人口数量和人口增长率对于经济增长的效应.近二十年来,许多经济学家在揭示"东亚奇迹"和中国经济腾飞等一系列经济现象的原因时,发现了人口年龄结构对于经济增长的重要贡献,并提出了"人口红利"的概念以解释经济发展.本文将具体介绍近二十年来理论界对于人口转变影响经济增长的相关机制的研究以及经验分析,并对这些研究的政策含义和有待深入研究的问题作出简要评述.