• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.143-177
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• 2020

This paper investigates how the provision of full child care subsidy to infants and toddlers differently affected female labor supply and fertility rate depending on the level of supply of child care centers in the place of residence. Our results on labor supply show that the higher the supply rate of childcare centers in residential areas, the higher the probability of career maintenance for multi-child mothers who are more likely to be admitted to a childcare facility. The results on the fertility rate show that the first child's fertility rate has increased since the support of childcare expenses in areas with higher rates of childcare centers. In the places where the supply rate of publicly-funded childcare centers is high, the second child's fertility rate has also increased significantly since the support of childcare expenses. This suggests that the quality of child care is an essential factor in determining the birth rate. Our results suggest that the effects of child care support on women's labor supply and fertility rate may differ depending on the priority of entering child care centers according to birth order and the degree of quantitative and qualitative supply of child care centers in the place of residence.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.1-22
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• 2021

The effects of social distancing measures on income distributions and aggregate variables are examined with an off-the-shelf heterogeneous-agent incomplete-market model. The model shows that social distancing measures, which limit households' labor supply, can decrease the labor supply of low-income households who hold insufficient assets and need income the most given their borrowing constraints. Social distancing measures can therefore exacerbate income inequality by lowering the incomes of the poor. An equilibrium interest rate can fall when the social distancing shock is expected to be persistent because households save more to prepare for rising consumption volatility given the possibility of binding to the labor supply constraint over time. When the shock is expected to be transitory, in contrast, the interest rate can rise upon the arrival of the shock because constrained households choose to borrow more to smooth consumption given the expectation that the shock will fade away. The model also shows that social distancing shocks, which diminish households' consumption demand, can decrease households' incomes evenly for every income quantile, having a limited impact on income inequality.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.73-102
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• 2008

This paper investigates the possibility that children in school limit their mothers' labor supply. The theoretical background for the possibility is that mothers may choose to stay home if their time and monetary inputs on children's quality investment are poor substitutes for each other. The empirical findings suggest that labor supply of highly educated women and those with high household income is relatively suppressed by their children in school.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.95-123
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• 2016

As Korean society grows rapidly older, a systematic analysis of the determinants of labor supply behavior among the elderly becomes a prerequisite for designing more effective senior employment policies and income security regime for the elderly. Literatures review shows that a majority of previous researches have been ignoring the problem of "endogenous predictor" especially when it comes to the estimation of the effects of the two key variables, education and non-labor income, on labor supply decisions among older people. They have failed to take into consideration the unobserved heterogeneities which might affect both labor supply decisions of the elderly and their levels of education and non-labor income, which means, according to some econometric literatures, that the estimated coefficients of the two predictors can be inconsistent. The paper tries to redress the endogeneity problem by employing a panel logit model with data from the 1st. to 4th. wave of the KLoSA(Korean Longitudinal Survey of Ageing) to estimate the effects of key predictors on the probability of getting jobs among older people(ages of 60 or older). Both a random effects and a fixed effects model reaffirms that non-labor income has a negative effect on the chances of being employed. And a random effects model shows that the effect of education is also negative, as has frequently been reported by previous studies. That means the effects of education and non-labor income on elderly employment remain negative after the effect of unobserved heterogeneities is controled for and the problem of endogenous predictors is redressed through an appropriate panel data analysis. These findings mean, in turn, that when Korean baby-boomers, who had acquired an unprecedentedly higher level of education and were expected to enjoy ever-larger amount of non-labor income than their preceding generations, retires in near future, their incentives to work will become much weaker and the lack of labor-force and the burden of financing increased public pension expenditure will become more troublesome. The paper concludes with recommending some policy initiatives helpful to solve these expected problems.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.71-91
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• 2004

The National Basic Livelihood Security System implemented from October 2000 has expanded cash assistance to cover the poor households that have work ability. The cash assistance for the households with work ability has positive aspects of providing basic livelihood security for all people, but many people have worried about its negative aspects such as the decrease of labor supply among the low-income people with work ability. However, there has been few study that evaluated the effects of the NBLS implementation on labor supply. One of the reason for this may be related with the difficulty of research methodology that there were neither program group nor control group, because NBLS was implemented for all the people at the same time. This study suggests alternative program groups and control groups based on work ability and education. Using wave1 to wave5 data of the Korean Labor and Income Survey, this study estimated the effects of the NBLS implementation on employment and work hours. A difference-in-difference approach was applied to these alternative program and control groups. I found that the implementation of NBLS did not have any statistically significant effects on employment an work hours. It is too early to conclude from this result that cash assistance for the poor households with work ability does not induce any labor supply decrease in Korea. Rather, I interpret this result as reflecting that the NBLS system was too limited to induce any sizable decrease of labor supply or that the work requirement imposed on the recipients with work ability was effective in deterring work disincentive among the low-income population. Future research need to explore better program and control groups and investigate long-term effects.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1043-1051
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• 2013

We use a structural vector error correction model of the labor market to investigate the effect of shocks to Korean unemployment. We associate technology, labor demand, labor supply, and wage-setting shocks with equations for productivity, employment, unemployment, and real wages, respectively. Subsequently, labor demand and supply shocks have significant long-run and contemporaneous effects on unemployment, respectively.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.97-124
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• 2001

Co-residence is a type of intergenerational private transfers of resources: money, time and space. Adult daughters and their elderly parents decide to co-reside, depending on their utility levels before and after co-residence that mainly depend on the health status of the elderly. Therefore, co-residence implies positive net benefits to both parties in the sense that, when they co-reside, elderly parents share childcare and adult daughter provide elderly care. In other words, formal (paid) care can be substituted with informal (unpaid) one. Both marriage and giving births are considered as the major obstacles to labor market attachment of women who bear burdens of home production and childcare. Co-residence can be a solution for married women to avoid career interruption by sharing burdens with their elderly parents. However, most previous studies using the U.S. data on intergenerational private transfers focused on elderly care and have concluded that they reduce government expenditures associated with public subsidies to the elderly. This study focuses on adult daughters and it examines effects of co-residence on labor supply of married women in Korea, who face limited formal childcare programs in terms of both quantity and quality. It applies the Tobit model of married women's labor supply to the data from the Second Wave of the Korean Labor and Income Panel Survey( 1999), in order to investigate effects of co-residence and the work and health status of the co-residing elderly as well as their own health status. Four specifications of the empirical model are tested that each includes co-residence with elderly parents, their gender, or their work and health status. Estimation results show that co-residence, co-residence with female elderly, and co-residence with not-working female elderly have significant positive effects on labor supply of married women while poor health status of co-residing female elderly does not bring about any negative effects. However, co-residence with male elderly, regardless of their work and health status, has no significant effect The results indicate that co-residence is closely related to sharing of home production among female elderly and adult daughters who are married and, through intergenerational private transfers of resources in terms of time, it helps women avoid career interruption.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.57-77
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• 2017

To prevent the disincentive of labor supply under the current welfare system, we suggest the safety income system, a Korean version of negative income tax. Under the proposed system, for example, a household with four members whose annual income is less than 50 million wons will get financial support from the government. Under the safety income system, labor supply increases and so does the gross domestic product. The disposable income of low-income households increases, which alleviates the income gap among households. Analyzing the Household Income and Expenditure Survey data, we show that under the safety income system the disposable income differentials among households are reduced much more than under the current welfare system or under the universal basic income system.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.39-64
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• 2020

Typical business cycle models have difficulties in explaining key macroeconomic labor market variables, such as employment and unemployment, as they usually consider labor hour choices only. In this paper, we introduce labor market search and matching frictions into a New Keynesian nominal rigidity model and estimate it by Bayesian methods to examine the dynamics of the key labor market variables and business cycles in Korea. The results show that unemployment rates are largely explained by technology shocks, which affect the labor demand side, as well as labor supply shocks. In addition, wage bargaining shocks originating from the bargaining process between firms and workers have non-negligible negative effects on output and employment growth, and careful measures need to be taken to limit their adverse effects.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.1-31
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• 2021

This paper estimates the employment effects among 55~59 years old men of delayed mandatory retirement act between 2016 and 2019. Although the positive employment effects appear to have reclined during the period, they have remained non-trivial and may have encroached youth employment. The results suggest that wages should be flexibly adjusted in the market so that labor demand can sufficiently expand to accommodate the increased labor supply among the old without hurting the young.