Education, Work, Job and Life Satisfaction, and Transition to First Marriage in Korea: A Gender Comparison

Yean-Ju Lee, University of Hawaii at Honolulu

In East Asian countries, marriage is still an important demographic event affecting both fertility and mortality. The literature commonly cites increased levels of education and labor force participation among women as the cause of late ages at marriage and very low fertility rates. Recent studies in the US, however, find a trend seemingly contradictory to such assumption: women as well as men who attained higher socioeconomic status are more likely to marry than are less achieving counterparts. Using data from 10 waves of the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study, this study examines the effects of educational and employment characteristics on transition to first marriage. In addition, it examines how job and life satisfactions mediate the effects of work characteristics on transition to first marriage, and also how job and life satisfactions change over the period of marriage transition. The event history analysis and multi-level analysis models will be used.