Freeing Daughter-in-Law? Reshaping gendered elderly care in South Korea

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Families and Aging

Abstract

Who cares for the elderly in an ageing society, and can welfare intervention reshape gendered care burden within families? In East Asian contexts, filial responsibility is normatively assigned to sons but practically enacted through daughters-in-law, whose caregiving is structurally obligated rather than reciprocity based. As a response to population ageing Public long-term care insurance (LTCI), public services and cash-for-care programs have expanded unevenly across regions in South Korea, raising the question of whether state intervention can de-familiarize the most obligated caregivers and, if so, in which domains of care. Drawing on pooled cross-sectional data from the Korean National Survey of Older Koreans (2020-2023), this study conceptualizes elder care as a heterogeneous set of tasks with distinct temporal constraints. It distinguishes between personal care (time-bounded and largely un-shiftable) and instrumental care (relative more flexible and shiftable). The unit of analysis is constructed care parent-child-activity level, enabling task-specific comparisons of intensive caregiving among sons, daughters, and daughters-in-law. Using generalized estimating equation (GEE) logit models, the analysis links caregiver type to province-level variation in service provision and cash-for-care expenditure. Results show a clear and selective policy pattern. Greater availability of social care services is associated with substantially lower odds that daughters-in-law serve as the intensive caregiver relative to sons in both instrumental and personal care. By contrast, cash-for-care does not reduce daughters-in-law’s involvement; once regional context is controlled, it is positively associated with daughters’ instrumental care, suggesting compensation may enable discretionary care rather than substitute structurally obligated care. Taken together, these patterns suggest that de-familialization is not uniform: service-based provision weakens the institutional link between patrilineal hierarchy and women's unpaid care burdens, while cash benefits operate within, rather than transform, existing family obligations.

Author

• Sungeun CHOI, Yonsei University