Care Policies and Status of Care Workers in South Korea

1. An Overview of Care Policies and the Status of Care Workers in South Korea Ito Peng, University of Toronto Seung-Eun Cha, Seoul National University Hyuna Moon, Seoul National University presented at Care Work and the Economy Annual Meeting Glasgow, Scotland; 30 June – 2 July 2019

2. Contents of the paper 1. Overview of the Current Care Policies and Systems • Childcare/ECEC • Elder care / LTCI 2. Status of Care Workers 3. Conclusion: Knowledge Gaps and Research Agenda

3. Overview of the Current Care Policies and Systems Contexts: Huge socio-economic and political changes since the late 1980s: • political democratization (1987/88) – strong civil society movement; contentious politics; active electoral competition with social policy often a key electoral issue. • 1997-98 Asian economic crisis – leading to regime shift from conservative to progress government, focus on redistributive policies and gender equality; beginning of the awareness of low-fertility and ageing society and the need for policies on work-family balance. • 2003 – lowest fertility rate recorded in 2006; Roh Moo-hyun government pushes for progressive policy reforms; expansion of on public childcare; beginning of LTCI policy idea and pilot projects in 2006. • 2008 to present – continuing expansion of social care.

5. Table 2: Percentage of People 65+ Living with Adult Children Sources: Japan - Cabinet Office; Korea - Korean Statistical Information Services; Taiwan - Ministry of Interior, Accounting and Statistics Department. Singapore - MOSFD 2015

6. Transformation of the care infrastructure in South Korea since the 1990s A steady expansion of publicly funded and mainly privately provided care services for children and the elderly, financial support for families with young children, and family support programs such as maternity and parental leaves and family care leaves. Childcare/ECEC • Expanded maternity and parental leaves with income support • Expansion of kindergartens since the 1980s, and publicly funded childcare since the 1990s. • Free childcare and ECEC to children 0-5 since 2013 (noori-curriculum) Elder care • LTCI 2008 and subsequent enlargement of elderly people receiving LTC services. • % elderly people receiving LTCI services: 3.1% (targeted 2008) 8.0% (2017) • Total budget: 1,737 billion Kr Won (2009) 5,148 billion Kr Won (2017) • % GDP on LTC: 0.3% (2008) 0.9% (2017)

7. Kindergartens/ECEC figures – 1980-2017 Source: Korea Statistical Information Services (KOSIS)

8. Childcare figures, 1990-2018 Source: Korea Statistical Information Services (KOSIS)

9. Features of Korean social care policies • Pragmatic and instrumental ideational underpinning • Advanced by both progressive and conservative governments • Demographic imperatives + rising public demand • Idea of win-win-win strategy: care as a driver of new economy, employment creation, antidote to fertility decline, and gender equality. • Private market focused • publicly funded; privately provided (-for profit) • Inadequate institutional framework to support the rapid expansion – particularly in the case of the elder care • Women at both supply and demand side • Vast majority of care workers are women • Much of the demand is coming from women • Most of the elder care recipients are women • Rapid expansion but low wage and precarious employment • Care work remains a marginalized and precarious sector of the labour market • Increasing use of migrant co-ethnic care workers at the margin • mainly in the elder care

10. Status of Care Workers Care is now the largest employment creation sector in Korea: • 2004 – 2019: A total of 1.58 million jobs created in the human health/social services sector of the economy (KOSIS n.d.). • 2004 – 2012: The human health/social services sector accounted for as much as 38.1% of the total net [employment] gain, and contributed to 77.5% of the growth in women’s jobs (Keum 2013: 3). • Studies show: 1) women make up over 80% of human health/social services workers; 2) human health/social services workers in general tend to be younger than workers in other industries; 3) they work fewer hours per week compared to workers in other industries; 4) a higher proportion of these workers are non-regular employees as compared to workers in other industries; 5) they tend to have lower unionization rate; and 6) a significant gender wage gap (51%) exists within the human health/social services sector (Keum 2013).

11. Characteristics of care work in Korea • Low wage, Poor working condition • Partly due to undervaluation of care work; partly due to non-standard employment condition; partly due to informal market • Full-time LTC workers were paid monthly wage of about $3000 in 2012, long working hours, poor working conditions, and face abuse (KOSIS 2015). • High turnover rate • Annual turnover rate of 41% among long-term care workers (Park et al 2017). • Amongst a total of over 1.5 million trained and certified elderly care workers in Korea, only 364,391 (24%) were working in long-term care in 2017 (NHIS 2019) • Age-specific • Younger women (20s-30s) tend to work in childcare; older women (40+) tend to work in the elder care (Peng 2011) • Multiple work-related stress and health impacts • studies show that for unpaid family care workers, heavy workloads created physical, emotional, social and financial burdens”, resulting in high level of “distress and caregiver burden” (Kim et al 2018). • Increasing use of migrant co-ethnic care workers in elder care

12. Conclusion: Knowledge Gaps and Research Agenda Three areas of research needed: • A more comprehensive measure of care work • An investigation of paid and unpaid, and formal and informal care work caregiving and receiving • An in-depth time-use analysis of care workers

13. Appendix 1: Child Care Related Policies

17. Thank you