Exclusion of Housewives in the National Pension Plan in South Korea and Suggestions for Improvement

This study examines the problematic fact that most housewives are excluded from receiving the benefits of the National Pension Plan in South Korea. The National Pension Plan assigns no value to housework or household production, which in turn discourages full-time housewives from participating voluntarily in the Plan. In this article, I propose to utilize Credit Splitting and Pension Sharing in order to take into account full-time housewives' economic contribution in the National Pension Plan. In this article, I also discuss the ranges and application methods of the Credit Splitting and Pension Sharing. For this study, I have analyzed the data of 11,967 unemployed married women living with spouses published in“Research Data on Everyday Life Time Usage”by the Korea National Statistical Office in 1999. The value of the full-time housewives' labor varies depending on the methods of estimation. However, all estimated values exceed the average value assigned to the housewives by the National Pension Corporation. It is clear that full-time housewives' unpaid labor contributes a great deal to the formation of household property and wealth, which is a valid reason for Pension Sharing and Credit Splitting. This article also provides logical factors to consider in the process of Pension Sharing and Credit Splitting, which can be used for developing computerized software to determine a full-time housewives' labor value at the time of divorce or for any other purpose.

주부의 연금수급권의 문제점과 개선방안 : 우리나라 국민연금제도에 기초하여