Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

 Junghwa Moon, Minah Kang

 Research Professor, Ewha Social Science Institution, Ewha Womans University

Professor, Department of Public Administration, Ewha Womans University

Purpose 

South Korea is expected to face a crisis of shortage of labor force in the near future due to an increase in the number of unmarried people and a serious decrease in the birth rate. However, determining factors for youth’s intention to marry is not known well yet in previous literature. This study focused on how marriage intention are related to employment and health policy. The aims of this study are to examine the effects of employment precariousness on marriage intention and to investigate moderating effect of health on the relationship between employment conditions and marriage intention.

Methods

Data come from “2016 National Survey on Unequal Opportunity” published by the Circle Foundation. For this study, the data of 395 working youth (20~39 year old) were analyzed. Using a series of hierarchical multiple regression analysis, we investigate how and to what extent employment precariousness are related to marriage intention and how health moderates the relationship between the variables. Employment precariousness is measured in terms of risk of unemployment, opportunity for promotion, monthly earnings, and working status. For a more conservative test, multiple background variables are adjusted for (e.g., age, gender, education, socioeconomic status).

Results

Net of controls, among the various precarious factors in employment, opportunity for promotion is positively related to marriage intention. To the contrary, risk of unemployment in negatively associated with intention to marriage. And wage workers have higher marriage intention than non-wage workers. In addition, good health also implies higher marriage intention. As for the moderation effect of health, health moderates the relationships between risk of unemployment and marriage intention.

Conclusion

Our findings show that employment precariousness is significant predictor of marriage intention among youth. Our research also demonstrates that self-rated health status, which was not considered as an important factor for marriage intention was found to have a significant main effect as well as interaction effect, intensifying the effect of employment precariousness variables. This study highlights that policies to reduce employment precariousness and support good health of youth when establish family policy and low fertility policy.

Keywords

Marriage intention; youth; employment precariousness; health