• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.1-34
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• 2016

We estimate the effect of an increase in the minimum wage on employment. In Korea, there is no exogenous variation in the minimum wage across regions or industries. One single minimum wage is applied to every worker in the whole country. In this paper, we exploit arguably exogenous variation in the proportion of workers affected by the minimum wage across worker groups defined by age, sex, education, tenure and establishment size. Using the data from the Survey on Labor Conditions by Type of Employment (SLCTE) from 2006 to 2014, we find that a 1% increase in the minimum wage decreases the full-time equivalent employment by about 0.14%. The effect is heterogeneous across workers; we find the effect is more adverse for female workers, low-educated, younger and older workers, workers with a shorter tenure, and workers in small- and medium-sized establishments.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.109-137
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• 2007

One of the key features of the Korean labor market is that, even though the central axis of employment has shifted from manufacturing sector to service sector, the ratio of part-time work is very low. Its major reasons are low wage rate, insufficient fringe benefits including social insurance, and deficient job security, even though part-time work has positive characteristics. This study examines whether part-time work would be a decent one and an alternative to full-time work by answering two questions: one is who chooses part-time work and another is whether part-time work is satisfactory. Analyses of 3,971 wage workers in the 8th wave of the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey reveal that, as expected, part-time work is prevalent among the young, married women, and the old supporting the results from previous studies and that choosing part-time work on one's initiatives has a significant positive effect on job satisfaction for women while it is not for men. Form the result, it can be concluded that part-time work can be an appropriate alternative for full-time work if one chooses it voluntarily.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.89-117
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• 2014

Employing female in the field of science and engineering is becoming increasingly important with diversity and creativity emerging as key factors to build Creative Economy. Under these circumstances, it is necessary to recognize and discourage gender discrimination in the labor market by analyzing wages - the market value of labor which determines one's economic status. This study uses the Oaxaca-Ransom decomposition (1994) to analyze the gender wage gap and identify factors influencing the pay gap in science and engineering labor force. The results of this study are as follows: First, the average wage of female scientists and engineers reaches only 65% of that of male labor force, and the male scientist and engineers are superior in terms of personal attributes, for instance, education background. Second, looking at the factors that influence wages, wage premiums are associated with higher education background, older age, longer period of service, and weekly working hours for both male and female in managerial positions. Third, the wage decomposition shows that in the case of science and engineering labor force, the productivity difference by personal attributes reaches about 58%, and gender discrimination by the characteristics of the labor market stands at about 41%. This means the wage gap by productivity level in science and engineering labor force is wider, and the gender gap is smaller compared to non-science and engineering fields. However, the results of an analysis on specialties and education background of male and female scientists and engineers suggest that the discrimination against women is more serious when the percentage of the female labor force is low and the percentage of temporary workers in the labor market is high. In order to eliminate this discrimination, it is necessary to reduce the imbalance of female scientists and engineers in the labor market, among others, while female scientists and engineers, themselves, need to make continuous efforts to strengthen their capabilities.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.339-350
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• 2017

In December 2014, the study analyzed the wage level of Long-term Care Facilities reported by the National Health Insurance Organization Database. From 2008 to 2014, 1,231.357 people in Korea were acquired qualification for care worker. This study tries to the wage of 1,221,085 care workers. We found out that 91.3% of all are women, and 41% out of care worker qualification were between 50-59 years old. And only 14.8% were employed as care workers. About 73.2% of the nursing care workers had less than 3 years of service at the current job, and their wages were 129.2 million won per month for Nursing Home and 6,421 won per hour for the home care center. In order to investigate care workers, it needs to distinguish between Nursing Home and home care center, and it was also confirmed that wage increases was not reached. In addition, we can question the effect of improvement allowance for better working condition, and suggest fundamental problems for care workers' wage and status.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.647-659
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of children's elementary school entrance to working conditions of employed mothers. The data from 4th to 8th wave of Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) were used for analysis. Specifically, we examined changes in wages, working hours and regular employment of employed mothers after their children entered elementary schools. We adopted Heck selection model for unbalanced panel data after controlling sample selection bias, and compare results of analysis for unbalanced and balanced panel data. The results showed that children's elementary school entrance reduces employed mothers' wage, working hours and regular employment. These results indicate that mother tend to leave regular job and could not entry into decent job when their children are in elementary school.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.1029-1044
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• 2021

This research was conducted to investigate the prevalence of depression and convergent factors related to depression in male and female wage workers. Using data from the 2014 and 2016 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 3,763 adults (1,888 males, 1,875 females) between the ages of 19 and under 65 were analyzed. Depression was measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the depression (PHQ-9≥10) of all workers was 4.1% (3.2% for men, 5.0% for women). Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the depressive factors of male and female wage workers. In male workers, work-related characteristics such as employment type and working hours per week were found to be significantly related to depression even after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics, health-related characteristics, and life style characteristics. However, in female workers, work-related characteristics did not expose a significant relationship, showing a difference from male workers. Therefore it is necessary to develop and implement workplace counselling or mental health promotion programs that take into account the gender characteristics of depression risk factors. Also, as health-related characteristics (diagnosis of depression, suicide plan, perceived stress level, unmet medical services, self-rated health status) were found to be related to depression for both male and female workers, continuous management of these factors is required.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.1-36
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• 2013

This study examines how the unobserved heterogeneity of workers, measured by residuals of the wage equation, affects the entry into self-employment using KLIPS 1998-2008. Following Joona and Wadensjo(2013), we treat the residuals as unobserved ability and find that both workers with higher and lower ability are more likely to become self-employed. However, this U-Shape relationship no longer holds when the sample is divided into males and females. The study also finds that the relationship between ability and entry into self-employment has changed over time, and that ability is positively associated with the performance of self-employed.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2007

Using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study 2001 (KLIPS 2001), this paper examines gender differences in the return to education in Korea. On average, there is little difference in return to education between male and female workers. However, this paper provides evidence that the impact of education on wages is greater for female workers compared to that for male workers using three different estimation strategies. First, a simple cohort analysis shows that the estimated returns to education for male and female workers have different patterns by age cohort and this is the main reason we observe little gap in average returns to education between men and women. Second, we find that college degree has a significant impact on women's labor market outcomes, while there is little gain for men in terms of wage levels by having college degree. Finally, when controlling unobservable individual ability level with test scores, education has no significant impact on male workers' wage levels, while the impact of education on wages is considerably large for female workers. All three findings support that the impact of education on labor market outcomes is greater for female workers compared to that for male workers as many researchers have found in other OECD countries.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2012

This paper estimated the first-born effects on wage among wage and salary workers born in 1954 to 1973 with the 2003 KLIPS data set. The first-born effect on wage was estimated as 7.3% with the parsimoniously specified wage function using age and gender. Adding various variables as independent variables, the effects were estimated statistically insignificantly differently, the effect was estimated as 7.6% with adding education, tenure, marital status, father's education, the number of siblings, and health. The effect is not statistically significantly different from that of the parsimoniously specified wage function. We estimated the first-born effects of male, and female wage and salary workers separately. The first-born effects of male wage and salary workers were estimated as 5.9~8.8%. The first-born effects of female wage and salary workers were estimated as 8.8~9.9%.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.1-38
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• 2019

This paper investigates the relationship between the occupational gender wage gap and the proportion of high wage earning female workers in Korea. The main idea is that an increase in the number of high wage earning female workers in the workplace could lead to a decrease in the gender wage gap by eradicating the prejudice or reducing the statistical discrimination on female workers. We constructed a panel dataset by using the raw data from the Korean Survey Report on Labor Conditions by Employment between 2009 and 2016. The result shows that greater presences of high wage earning female workers in male dominant occupations have statistically significant negative impacts on residual gender earning dispersion.