Does family matter? Employment of mothers with young children in South Korea

Female labor force participation has been increasing past twenty years in South Korea. However, it still remains at the low 50%, the lowest among OECD countries, and from the life-cycle perspective, female labor market participation tends to drop signicantly at the ages of 25{39, displaying the M-shaped labor participation over the life-cycle of Korean women. These observations could be related to childcare burden for married women derailing Korean women’s careers. This paper studies the relationship between married women’s employment status and preschool children at home as well as their husbands’ time spent on home production and perception on wives working. We use the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families from 2007{2016, and our results show that preschool children at home are negatively associated with married women working, and husbands spending more time at home and being more supportive of wives working are positively related to married women working at market production.