Have you heard of the \u201cspoon class theory\u201d, a term widely used among online communities in South Korea? It refers to the idea that individual\u2019s success in life solely depends on being born into parents of high socioeconomic status. According to this ‘theory’, the influence of parents’ socioeconomic status on children’s becomes greater these days, and is especially strong in Korean society. With increasing youth unemployment rates and more competitive race in education in South Korea, research has been conducted on whether the \u201cspoon class theory\u201d is valid in reality.<\/p>\n
An individual\u2019s socioeconomic status is usually measured by job privilege, education level, and economic status. The \u201cspoon class theory\u201d argues that these variables have direct impact on children’s life chances, and society is considered to have high levels of inequality if this impact increases. In the case of South Korea, it has been long considered that high levels of education can overcome the impact of parents\u2019 socioeconomic status and furthermore lead an individual to a successful life. In relation to this, according to Chang (2016), Korean students\u2019 reading literacy increased from 2000 to 2009 , and their reading literacy in 2009 was high in terms of both average and percentage of high\/low scoring students among those of OECD countries. The effect of parental socioeconomic status on children\u2019s reading literacy in South Korea was much lower than in other OECD countries in both 2000 and 2009, although the rate increased in between. This means that the inequality of educational opportunity deteriorated in Korea during the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
To be more specific, with parents\u2019 and children\u2019s education levels, Choi and Lee (2018) show that the gap by parental education in the completion of any types of colleges (junior and 4-year) widened until the 1960s\u2019 birth cohort and then began to narrow. The gap in the completion of 4-year colleges widened for a little bit longer until the 1970\u2019s, when it started to decline. The results show that the influence of parents\u2019 education level on children\u2019s decreased. When evaluating the P80\/P20 gap, the influence is found to be more stable. At least, the education inequality is not especially increasing these days, and not exceptionally serious in South Korea in relative terms, unlike in the \u201cspoon class theory\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References:<\/p>\n
Chang, Sang-soo. 2016. “Widening Gap: The Increasing Influence of Parental Socioeconomic Status on Children\u2019s Academic Achievement in Korea.” Korean Journal of Sociology\u00a0<\/em>50(5): 107-140.<\/p>\n Choi, Seongsoo and Subin Lee. 2018. “Has Inequality of Educational Opportunity Grown in Korea?: Cohort Trends of Gaps in Educational Attainment by Parental Education over the 20th Century.” Korean Journal of Sociology\u00a0<\/em>52(4): 77-113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you heard of the \u201cspoon class theory\u201d, a term widely used among online communities in South Korea? It refers to the idea that individual\u2019s success in life solely depends on being born into parents of high socioeconomic status. According to this ‘theory’, the influence of parents’ socioeconomic status on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[21,17,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inequality.kr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}