Socioeconomic Disparities in Adolescents’ Expected Occupational Status: A Comparative Study of South Korea and the United States

• In Event: A New Form of Educational Inequality in South Korea

Proposal

Objectives. Adolescents form their career expectations—defined as one’s realistic and achievable career goals— which significantly affect their future earnings and social status. Adolescents’ career expectations, however, are not formed in a vacuum, but shaped by various factors, including their socioeconomic background. Much literature suggests that adolescents from high socioeconomic status (SES) families have clearer and higher expected occupational status, compared to their counterparts from low SES families. However, we know little about whether the degree to which family SES is related to adolescents’ expected occupational status differs by country. In this study, we seek to fill this research gap by examining the relationship between SES and adolescents’ expected occupational status in Korea, in comparison with the United States.
Methods. This study drew on data from PISA. Administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , PISA has assessed the literacy skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science across countries every three years since 2000. Along with the literacy assessments, PISA collects a variety of information on students’ backgrounds, and school environments via student and school questionnaires. We used the most recent PISA 2018 data that were available when this study was conducted.
Results. In both the United States and Korea, students from high SES families exhibited significantly higher expected occupational status. However, the degree to which family SES mattered differed. In the United States, one standard deviation increase in the SES index was associated with 2.62 increases in adolescents’ expected occupational status. By contrast, the corresponding increase was 5.25 in Korea, suggesting that the magnitude of the SES effect on adolescents’ expected occupational status was about two times greater in Korea than in the United States. The strength of the relationship between family SES and adolescents’ expected occupational status indicated by R-squared also suggested that the relationship was two times stronger in Korea (R-squared = .046) than in the United States (R-squared = .022).
Conclusion. The current study extends our knowledge regarding how the size of socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ expected occupational status differs between the United States and Korea. Our analyses of 2018 PISA data showed greater socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ expected occupational status in Korea, compared to the United States. In the full paper, we will fully discuss what may explain these differences in the size of socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ expected occupational status differs between the two nations.

Authors

• Soo-yong Byun, Penn State University

• Suyoung Park, Pennsylvania State University

• Jilli Jung, Pennsylvania State University