Earticle

This study analyses the effects of caring grandchildren on Korean grandparents' health using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging from 2006 to 2012. We investigate how caregiving is provided and analyze the effects of caregiving on grandparents' physical, mental health and health related behaviors. As elderly people's health is generally frail, whether the provisions of child care deteriorate their health is not clear. We control endogeniety of caregiving by individual fixed effect (FE) model and instrumental variable-fixed effect (FE-IV) models. Using these models, we find endogeneity of caregiving and show the significant effect of caregiving on health disappears as we control endogeneity in FE and FE-IV models. Even after controling endogeneity, we find caregiving increases the probability of feeling pain as well as the number of different types of pain. Further, caregiving increases the probability of having restrictions on daily activities because of pain. On the other hand, caregiving reduces depression symptom. In health related behaviors, caregiving reduces the probability of physical exercise and having meals regularly. Our results imply that although caregiving has a positive effect on mental health, increase in physical pain and non-healthy behaviors potentially may lead to the deterioration of the caregiver's long term health, which in turn may increase medical costs of the elderly. Potential policy alternatives are discussed in the paper.

This study focused on the time use of a dual-earner working group with preschool children on working and nonworking days using 2014 time-use survey data provided by Statistics Korea(KOSTAT). We collected the time-use data recorded in a 2,158 time diary. We divided the time use into 4 parts ; paid work, household labor work (including caring work), leisure and living essentials. For the statistical analysis, we used SPSS 18.0 packages, i.e., descriptive statistics, T-test, Anova with Duncan test and regression for the impact off the independent factors. The results verified gender differences in time use and recognized the usefulness of the time-allocation analysis for the diagnosis of Work and Life Balance(WLB). In the conclusion, we suggest increasing men's time allocation for household labor as a crucial solution to the WLB of dual-earner working groups. And the follow-up study should include the various factors that affect the time allocation of dual-earner groups, such as type of labor and job and children's ages.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the participation in social activities of full-time housewives with infants and preschool children. The data in this study comes from “1 percent free sample” of ‘the 2010 Population and Housing Census’ collected by Statistics Korea. The statistical methods for this study were percentage, chi-square test and logistic regression analysis. The findings are as follows. First, there are differences in participation in social activities, according to the groups by the number of infants, the number of preschool child and the number of elementary schoolchildren. Second, there was the difference in participation of social activities between full-time housewives and full-time wives’ husbands. Third, factors like full-time housewives’ age, educational level, the number of preschool children and elementary schoolchildren, the number of rooms and occupancy status affected the participation in social activities of full-time housewives. These result shows that full-time housewives were under pressure on participation in social activities from care giving labor but participated religious and educational activities actively.

This study investigated the attitudes toward childbearing and the need for policies supporting childcare according to the mothers’ employment status. Data from 6 employed and 6 unemployed housewives with 1 child were collected using in-depth interviews. The main results from the data analysis comprised 4 themes: 1. the ideal and the real about childbearing; 2. changed experiences after bearing the first child; 3. the meaning of parenting; and 4. husband’s division of household/caring labor. A difference between employed and unemployed housewives was founded in their attitude toward childbearing. Furthermore, it was verified that the respondents were not satisfied with present policies and services for childbearing and childcare and they required existing policies to be more effective. The implications for related polices are suggested on the basis of these findings.

This study investigates the potential for multi-cultural youths, given their innate bilingual and dual culture, to be trained as the competent ODA professionals. For the purpose of collecting information, we organized two different kinds of FGI in 2015. The first FGI was conducted with a group of 10 expert participants from August 17 to September 25. The second FGI was conducted four times, from October 5 to October 23, with 13 adolescents from multi-cultural families from Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Japan, and China. The semi-structured interview items were passed through a formal review process of the Institutional Ethics Committee. Furthermore, with the participants’ pre-consent to recording, all recorded data were categorized through the transcription process. The results are as follows. While the potential for nourishing bilingual and dual cultural capabilities are high for the adolescent children of multi-cultural families, the expert group also emphasized the negative aspects of these capabilities being suppressed due to the relatively oppressed family environment. The expert group therefore suggests the following: building parent awareness of ODA human resources, developing an educational career transition roadmap, and providing institutional incentives for ODA. In addition, to some extent, the researchers were able to detect some positive self-esteem among the adolescent children of multi-cultural families as a result of the bilingual and dual cultural competencies required to be ODA personnel. In sum, the research provides insight into the need for national social support for the adolescent children of multi-cultural families, so that their strengths are not extinguished, in order that they might grow up as competent ODA personnel.

This study is about the happiness of married women from the baby boom generation. The study aims to understand the impact of the married life of such women on the happiness index and to improve the happiness of married women by improving married life. The data for this study were drawn from the National Women and Family Panel Survey (4th year data) carried out by the Korean Women's Development Institute. The subjects for the final analysis totaled 885 married women from the baby boom generation, born between 1955 and 1963. Of these, 550 were married women in a dual income family, and 335 were married women in a husband-income family. IBM SPSS Statistic 21.0 was used. The findings from this study are as follows: First, the women’s happiness index was higher in cases where the women had a more positive view of their husbands, the more often they were involved in leisure activities, the better their conflict resolution whenever there was a clash of opinions, and the more satisfied they were with the division of household labor. Second, in the case of dual income families, the women’s happiness index was higher where they had a positive view of their husbands, their conflicts were better resolved, and the more satisfied they were with the division of household labor.Third, in the case of married women in a husband-income family, their happiness index rose the more positively they perceived their husbands, the more often they were involved in leisure activities together, and the more satisfied they were with the division of household labor.

The aims of this study are to investigate the impact of the experience of exposure to domestic violence(witnessed interparental conjugal violence and child abuse) on mental health among college students, and to explore whether social support acts as a moderator between domestic violence and mental health. Through this process, I intended to provide a reference base to suggest substantial interventions for family welfare by helping students to overcome negative domestic violence exposure experiences and adapt as healthy members of society. To achieve this goal, the study established a conceptual framework by considering the mental health of adolescents with domestic-violence exposure experience as a dependent variable, domestic violence exposure experience (witnessed interparental conjugal violence and child abuse) as an independent variable, and social support as a moderator of the relationship between these two variables. The subjects composed 747 college students in 8 colleges in Seoul. The main summary of this study is as follows: First, according to the analysis of domestic-violence exposure experience, all the subjects of this study had substantial experience of violence at home and witnessed interparental conjugal violence. These students scored 3.83 points in social support, higher than the median of 3, implying that these students had a higher awareness of social support. Moreover, their mental health score was 3.50 points, which is higher than the median of 3, indicating a somewhat positive tendency toward mental health. Second, to explore the moderating effects of social support between child violence experience and mental health, gender, age, financial status, academic-performance, child abuse and social support were input in the first step, and then buffering effects were examined by entering an interaction term to the first step in the second step. There was a significant interaction between social support and mental health. Therefore, social support was identified as having moderating effects on the relationship between child violence and mental health. Third, the analysis of moderating effects of social support between witnessed interparental conjugal violence and mental health revealed that social support had a positive influence on mental health in the first step. By contrast, the interaction term of witnessed interparental conjugal violence and social support showed no significance, indicating no moderating effect of social support in the second step. To sum up , social support served as a moderator for mental health among college students with child abuse experience, but had no moderating effect on witnessed interparental conjugal violence experience.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between family-friendly policies in working places and the childbearing intentions of married-employed women. The analysis included 415 married working women from the 2012 wave of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Family. The factors influencing the childbearing intentions of the women were age, education, number of children under age 18, childbirth leave, childcare facilities, and flextime. The women whose work-places provided childbirth leave had stronger childbearing intentions. The women under age 35 had stronger childbearing intentions when their work-places had flextime policies. In conclusion, my recommendation is that the government should pay more attention to the micro-personal factors, such as the Family-friendly Workplace Practices proposed in this study, when executing policies to reverse the current trend of low fertility.