Are the Highly Educated Women Escaping from the Family? Individualization of South Korean Women

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Education and the Changing Family

Abstract

Individualization, a social tendency enabling and/or forcing individuals to manage their lives on their own rather than with social institutions, is a notable phenomenon in post-industrial societies. Regarding the transformation of family institution, it is closely coupled with later marriage and childbirth, which is a growing trend even in highly family-oriented societies such as South Korea. In the process, modern education has played a crucial role, specifically as changing women’s work-family life, values, and socioeconomic status. This study investigates the effects of education on the timing of marriage and childbirth of South Korean women married between 1971 and 2000. To examine the longitudinal trend, I constructed a dataset incorporating time-varying covariates by using the retrospective information collected in 2003 through the National Survey of Fertility, Family Health and Welfare. Methods including Chi-square test, t-test, OLS multivariate regression and discrete-time event history analysis were employed to examine direct and indirect effects of education. The analyses verified that college education delayed the age at first marriage directly and indirectly through work experience; however, it had only an indirect effect via employment status on the rate of first childbirth. The research also shows that educational achievement of South Korean women since 1970s brought corresponding increases in their employment rate before marriage, but most of them quit their job after marriage or childbirth; the negative effect of being employed on the rate of first childbirth became distinctive over time, suggesting compatibility between work and childcare is the foremost issue in dealing with lowest-low fertility.

Author

• Min Young Song, Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs