Colloquium in Jan. 2022
Lee, Sang-Jic (Researcher, National Assembly Futures Institute, South Korea)
This study investigates structural changes in transition to adulthood between the year 1998 and 2017, during which Korean society went through changes in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. The study’s research question is how and to which extent transition to adulthood has changed in Korea for the recent 20 years. More specifically, the study aims to find convergence or divergence in the transition between genders, and how the relationship between Korean youth’s (re)production status and their parents’ socioeconomic resources has changed over time.
To answer these questions, the study analyzes the first and 20th wave data of Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, and compares the transition to adulthood of those aged 15 through 34 in 1998 and in 2017. According to the analysis, while the transition in 1998 could be described ‘gendered in production and universal in reproduction’, the transition in 2017 seems to become ‘universal in production and divergent in reproduction’. And this gender convergence of the transition in production (education and paid labor) could be intertwined with divergence of the transition in reproduction (family).
Can we see this divergence as classification? Although not directly answered in the study, this question challenges the conventional paradigm of class inequality research that has regarded the male ‘household head’ as a unit of analysis.
♣ Please let us apologize for not uploading the photos for this virtual colloquium.
