Domestic labor division and employment over parenthood transitions: A longitudinal study in Korea

Longitudinal evidence from the West has shown gender inequality in domestic labor gets larger with couples’ transition to parenthood. Little is known about developed Asian countries, where expectations for traditional gender-roles still prevail. Using recent longitudinal data from Korea, we examine how transitions to parenthood relate to husband’s and wife’s domestic labor provision, and to their employment status. Data come from the 2007, 2008, and 2010 waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (N = 10,248 person-waves). Preliminary results from multivariate regressions show that, with the transition, women provide domestic labor proportionally much more than their husbands, which leads to greater gender inequality at home. At the same time, a significant proportion of women drop out from labor force while there was no impact on their husbands’ employment. Based on the findings, we draw implications for other developed Asian countries with low fertility. Copyright © 2017 Population Association of America Annual Meeting.