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The purpose of this study was to analyze the quality of life (QoL) of elderly women and the effect of social support on their QoL. The data were used ‘urvey on the Elderly in 2011’, which was held from ‘Ministry of Health & Welfare’ and ‘Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs’. Among the total 15,146 respondents, 3,880 of elderly women whose age was over 65, and who did not live together with their married children were included in the analysis. Multiple regression analysis and path analysis were used to analyze the research model. The findings were as follows. First, from the fact that the elderly women showed the highest mean in ‘contact frequency with friends’ among social support, it seemed that the elderly women contacted their friends more than their children in their old age. Among the support types from their children, elderly women received emotional support, physical support, instrumental support in order and irregular cash as a way of economic support. Second, from the regression results, the most critical factor that affected the QoL of elderly women was ‘subjective physical condition level’ and ‘subjective standard of living’ comes next. Third, the most important factor was ‘subjective standard of living’ from path analysis results, and ‘subjective physical condition level’ and ‘total amount of annual income’ in order. Also, social supports such as ‘phone call contact frequency with children’, ‘emotional support from children ‘phone call contact frequency with relatives’, ‘phone call contact frequency with friends’ positively affected the QoL of elderly women. Therefore, raising social supports from children, relatives, and friends positively contributes to improve the QoL of elderly women directly and indirectly. The results show that social supporters, which is a part of the structural aspects of social support, and types of social support, which lies in functional aspects, directly affect QoL of the elderly women and turn out to be factors that improve the QoL as mediating variables. It is concluded that the social supports can be the most important resources that make up declining personal and social resources in old age and maintain the QoL of elderly women.

The purpose of this study is to identify poorly understood factors related to the recent rapid decline in fertility in Korean society. Along with Becker’s child demand theory, personal psychological traits, such as independence, nurturance, and affiliation, were given special attention in this study. We examine the processes of resource transfers between married women and their parents on childbearing intention in order to verify the effects of both factors. Five hundred and seventy-six women in their early stage of marriage from the 2009 wave of the National Survey of Marriage and Childbirth were analyzed. Main results of the study are as follows. First, Becker’s child demand theory is not supported. Instead, the women who were not given economic support from their parents in getting a residence at the time of their wedding turned out to be more willing to have a child, potentially because they were more independent. Second, the women who provided caretaking and emotional support to their parents had higher childbearing intentions, potentially because they were more nurturing. In conclusion, these personal psychological variables are important in understanding the childbearing behavior of women. We suggest that the government should pay more attention to the micro-personal factors raised in this study when executing policies to reverse the current trend of low fertility.

This study aimed to identify differences in the level of work-life balance as well as the effect of independent variables, including family (sharing family work, support for working), organization (culture, support services and systems), and community variables (accessibility to and amount of work-life balance programs), on work-life balance in South Korea, Japan, and the U.K. For these purposes, data were collected from 311, 324, and 322 married, working women (from 30 to 50 years of age) from Korea, Japan, and the U.K., respectively. It was consistently shown that U.K. employees scored higher in work-life balance than Korean and Japanese employees. Compared with Japan and the U.K., Korean participants were significantly lower in terms of work-leisure balance and work-self-development balance. The regression analysis revealed that ‘sharing family work with partner’ was commonly important and a major factor in all three countries. A ‘supportive organizational culture’ predicted work-life balance for Korean and Japanese participants, while work-life balance programs had a powerful effect on work-life balance only for U.K. participants. In the case of community variables, there were no significant effects for U.K. participants with regard to work-life balance. In contrast, ‘the amount of work-life balance programs offered’ was shown to affect the work-life balance of Korean working women, while ‘accessibility to the programs’ was significantly influential in Japan. We interpret these results according to social, economic, political, and psychological factors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the career-interrupted lives of highly educated career-interrupted women. The participants were 11 women in their thirties who had graduated from university graduated and had a child. We collected the qualitative data using a focused group interview. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, in personal histories of the career-interrupted women, there were marriages and births, difficulties with child care, priority placed on the family, pressure to retire, and an absence of a layoff system related to births and child care. Second, with regard to their interrupted lives, while there was comfort and an absence of work-stress, there was child care stress, financial stress, anxiety due to career uncertainty, a loss of the social self, depression, emptiness, low self-esteem, dependence on husbands, regret, conflict in career choices, and envy of childcare support. Third, their reasons for seeking reemployment included the financial benefits, increased independence, self-realization in their

Dual-income family is becoming more common in today’s society. This study will look at how dual-income households balance between work and life. Specifically, it will study how the families allocate time for work, where they use labor power, and for domestic work and leisure, where they recharge labor power. The data source for this study was the 2009 Korean Time Use Survey. The main results of this research are as follow: The study confirmed that many husbands and wives they still spend much time working. There are differences to spend in restoring labor power; many husbands spend leisure time and many wives spend household labor. Generally in a typical dual-income household, the husband works and enjoys leisure and the wife focuses on working. It was found that the husband and wife in a dual-income family feel time deficient is due to long working hours.

This study compared types of time and money attitudes by respondents’ characteristics, and compared leisure consumption behavior and leisure satisfaction among different groups, which are classified by attitudes toward time and money. It also verified a structural model for the relationship of leisure satisfaction and the attitudes toward time and money, and investigated the moderating effects of leisure consumption behavior. Data were obtained from a questionnaire completed by 512 adult consumers. Using factor analyses and cluster analyses, this study classified the types of time and money attitudes. The time attitude was categorized according to four clusters: timeinsensibility, future- oriented, present-oriented, and past- oriented. The money attitude was divided into four clusters: future safety, stinginess/anxiety, diversion, and power/prestige. The major findings of this study were as follows: First, the propensity of leisure consumption behavior to seek fashion and conspicuousness was higher for time-insensibility group than for the others. However, the propensity of rational consumption behavior for leisure was higher for the future-oriented group. The level of leisure satisfaction was the highest for the time-insensibility group. Second, the propensity of leisure consumption behavior to seek fashion and conspicuousness was higher for those who considered money as tools for diversion and power/prestige. The propensity of rational consumption behavior for leisure was higher for the future safety and stinginess/anxiety groups. The level of leisure satisfaction was significantly higher for the diversion group. Third, from the results of structural analyses, the time-insensibility attitude showed a positive effect on the leisure consumption behavior to seek fashion and conspicuousness. The future-oriented attitude had a positive effect on the propensity of rational consumption behavior for leisure. The money attitudes of diversion and power/prestige had positive impacts on the leisure consumption behavior to seek fashion and conspicuousness, although they had negative effects on the propensity of rational consumption behavior for leisure. The leisure consumption behavior to seek fashion and conspicuousness had a positive effect on leisure satisfaction, although the rational consumption behavior for leisure had a negative effect.