Intergenerational effects of shifts in women's educational distribution in South Korea: Transmission, differential fertility, and assortative mating

Reconstructing Prospective Intergenerational Educational Mobility in 12 Countries

In this article, we reconstruct prospective intergenerational educational mobility and explore fertility's role in this process for women born between 1925 and 1950 in 12 European countries. We do so by combining high-quality retrospective data (Generations and Gender Survey) and low-requirement prospective datasets using an inferential method developed and advanced in prior research. Our analysis shows that the negative educational fertility gradient partly compensates for the inequality in prospective mobility rates between lower and higher educated women and is most pronounced in high-inequality contexts. However, fertility's role is small and declining and thus does not account for much of the differences in mobility rates between countries. We also explore the relative importance of sibship size effects in mediating the effect of fertility gradient, finding it negligible. Finally, we explore the correspondence between prospective and retrospective estimates in the reconstruction of prospective mobility rates and suggest why the former, when available, must be preferred.

Impact of parental leave system on the childbirth plan among working married women: a three-year follow-up study of the Korean longitudinal survey of women and families

BACKGROUND

The Korean government seeks to balance work and family and alleviate low fertility by implementing a parental leave system. This study aimed to identify the impact of the parental leave system on childbirth among married working women in South Korea.

METHODS

This study used three-year follow-up data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (2016, 2018, and 2020). The number of participants was 324 at baseline. Logistic regressions using a generalized estimating equation model were performed to examine the impact of parental leave on childbirth. Sub-analyses of covariates, childbirth support, and parental leave systems were conducted.

RESULTS

Of workers covered by the parental leave system, 31.7% considered childbirth. Women covered by parental leave were 3.63 times more likely to plan childbirth (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.32-9.99). The tendency to plan childbirth was pronounced among those in their early 30s (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 7.20) and those who thought that having children was necessary (AOR, 4.30). Child planning was more influenced by leave support (AOR, 6.61) than subsidies.

CONCLUSIONS

Parental leave systems can have a positive impact on working married women's childbirth plans. Although this system was effective in a group interested in childbirth, it did not create a fundamental child plan. Time support is more important than money concerning childbirth plans. The parental leave system had an impact on childbirth plan. Appropriate parenting policies can effectively increase the fertility rate.

Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits

Positive correlations between mates can increase trait variation and prevalence, as well as bias estimates from genetically informed study designs. While past studies of similarity between human mating partners have largely found evidence of positive correlations, to our knowledge, no formal meta-analysis has examined human partner correlations across multiple categories of traits. Thus, we conducted systematic reviews and random-effects meta-analyses of human male-female partner correlations across 22 traits commonly studied by psychologists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, epidemiologists and geneticists. Using ScienceDirect, PubMed and Google Scholar, we incorporated 480 partner correlations from 199 peer-reviewed studies of co-parents, engaged pairs, married pairs and/or cohabitating pairs that were published on or before 16 August 2022. We also calculated 133 trait correlations using up to 79,074 male-female couples in the UK Biobank (UKB). Estimates of the 22 mean meta-analysed correlations ranged from rmeta = 0.08 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.03, 0.13) for extraversion to rmeta = 0.58 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.50, 0.64) for political values, with funnel plots showing little evidence of publication bias across traits. The 133 UKB correlations ranged from rUKB = -0.18 (adjusted 95% CI = -0.20, -0.16) for chronotype (being a 'morning' or 'evening' person) to rUKB = 0.87 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.86, 0.87) for birth year. Across analyses, political and religious attitudes, educational attainment and some substance use traits showed the highest correlations, while psychological (that is, psychiatric/personality) and anthropometric traits generally yielded lower but positive correlations. We observed high levels of between-sample heterogeneity for most meta-analysed traits, probably because of both systematic differences between samples and true differences in partner correlations across populations.

Multigenerational Social Mobility: A Demographic Approach

Most social mobility studies take a two-generation perspective, in which intergenerational relationships are represented by the association between parents' and offspring's socioeconomic status. This approach, albeit widely adopted in the literature, has serious limitations when more than two generations of families are considered. In particular, it ignores the role of families' demographic behaviors in moderating mobility outcomes and the joint role of mobility and demography in shaping long-run family and population processes. This paper provides a demographic approach to the study of multigenerational social mobility, incorporating demographic mechanisms of births, deaths, and mating into statistical models of social mobility. Compared to previous mobility models for estimating the probability of offspring's mobility conditional on parent's social class, the proposed joint demography-mobility model treats the number of offspring in various social classes as the outcome of interest. This new approach shows the extent to which demographic processes may amplify or dampen the effects of family socioeconomic positions due to the direction and strength of the interaction between mobility and differentials in demographic behaviors. I illustrate various demographic methods for studying multigenerational mobility with empirical examples using the IPUMS linked historical U.S. census representative samples (1850 to 1930), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968 to 2015), and simulation data that show other possible scenarios resulting from demography-mobility interactions.

The influence of educational level in peri-menopause syndrome and quality of life among Chinese women

Objective: To investigate the influence of education level in the peri-menopausal symptoms and quality of life (QoL) among Chinese women.Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional study of 1632 peri-menopausal women (age 40-60 y) who visited Hangzhou Women's Hospital from November 2018 to November 2019. The menopausal symptoms were evaluated by modified Kupperman index (KI). World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire was used to evaluate the QoL.Result: In total, 1501 women were included in the analysis. The mean age of natural menopause was 49.63 years in China. The five most frequent symptoms in menopausal women were Hot flash (75.53%), sexual problems (72.62%), insomnia (67.29%), fatigue (65.56%), and irritability (61.89%). Natural menopausal age, parity, BMI, bone mineral density, depression, skin formication, total score of KI, and the score of WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire were different in different educational background women (p < .05).Conclusions: The results of the study suggest that education level is associated with the age of natural menopause and menopausal symptoms. A high educational level is correlated with a better score of WHOQOL-BREF in peri-menopause women.

Educational Reproduction in Germany: A Prospective Study Based on Retrospective Data

This study examines educational reproduction of East and West German men and women born between 1930 and 1950. In a prospective design, we study the importance of mobility and fertility pathways of reproduction, considering not only the social reproduction of education as an attribute but also the demographic reproduction of individuals who carry this attribute. Using data from NEPS and SOEP, we introduce a method that estimates prospective models based on retrospective data commonly available in surveys. The analysis offers new estimates of the expected number of high- and low-educated children born to men and women of different levels of education. Findings show that the importance of the fertility pathway of educational reproduction was higher in West than in East Germany, higher for women than for men, and higher for earlier than for later cohorts. For West German women of earlier cohorts, the fertility pathway tempered educational reproduction among the high-educated and reinforced it among the low-educated. Population renewal models show that differential fertility slightly lowered educational attainment and slightly increased inequality in educational attainment in the offspring generation. Across cohorts, the fertility pathway declined in importance, a result of fertility convergence between education groups and educational expansion in postwar Germany. We conclude that prospective designs advance our understanding of educational reproduction. The method that we introduce substantially reduces the data requirements of prospective analysis, facilitating future prospective research on social stratification.

Cohort Trends in the Association Between Sibship Size and Educational Attainment in 26 Low-Fertility Countries

Children with many siblings have lower average educational attainment compared with children raised in smaller families, and this disadvantage by sibship size has been observed across many countries. We still know remarkably little, however, about how sibship size disadvantage has changed within countries and how such trends vary across countries. Using comparative data from 111 surveys from 26 low-fertility countries, we find an overall trend of growing sibship size disadvantage across cohorts in the majority of countries: between the 1931–1940 birth cohort and the 1971–1980 birth cohort, 16 of 26 countries showed a statistically significant increase in sibship size disadvantage in education, while only two countries showed a significant reduction in sibship size disadvantage. The disadvantage in years of education associated with having an additional sibling increased remarkably in post-socialist (0.3) and East Asian countries (0.34) and, to a lesser extent, Western European countries (0.2). In contrast, this disadvantage showed little change in Nordic countries (0.05) and even decreased in Anglo-Saxon countries (–0.11). We discuss explanations and implications of our comparative evidence in the context of the intergenerational transmission of education.

Growing educational differentials in the retreat from marriage among Korean men

Applying discrete-time hazard models to person-year data constructed from 1% microdata sample of 2010 Korean Census, we explore how men's education affects their transition to first marriage, and how the relationship between education and marriage has changed across three 10-year birth cohorts of Korean men born from 1946 to 1975. Drawing on Oppenheimer's theory of marriage and review of changing educational and economic contexts of Korean men, we develop a hypothesis on growing educational differentials in marriage. We find that the high educated delay marriage until later ages but catch up to the extent to which they are eventually more likely to marry than the low educated. There is a continued trend across cohorts toward the delay and avoidance of marriage at all educational levels. However, the trend of retreat from marriage has been more substantial for men with high school or less education compared to men with a university degree, leading to growing educational gaps over time in marriage. Among the three cohorts, the youngest cohort, among which low educated men's economic prospects have particularly deteriorated due to rapid educational expansion and economic crisis, shows most pronounced decline in marriage.

Changes in the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Position and Maternal Depressive Symptoms: Results from the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC)

Maternal depression is a common health problem during the perinatal period. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the relationship between socioeconomic position and maternal depressive symptoms from prenatal to 3 years postpartum in Korean women. Prospective cohort data were collected from the Panel Study on Korean Children between 2008 and 2011. Maternal depression was assessed using the Kessler 6-Item Psychological Distress Scale. Socioeconomic position indicators used were maternal education, paternal education, maternal occupation, paternal occupation, and household income. Repeated-measures analyses with a generalized estimating equation approach were used to investigate relationships between socioeconomic position and maternal depressive symptoms during the study period. Low socioeconomic position was associated with greater levels of maternal depressive symptoms between 4 months after childbirth and 3 years postpartum, but the association was not evident between 1 month before and after childbirth. The magnitude of the significant association between socioeconomic position and maternal depression was the greatest at 1 year postpartum but then became smaller. Among the five socioeconomic position indicators included, maternal education, paternal education, and household income showed graded inverse relationships with maternal depressive symptoms, while no significant relationship was found for paternal occupation over the study period. Socioeconomic inequalities in maternal depressive symptoms emerged in early childhood in a prospective study of Korean mothers. These emerging inequalities may contribute to socioeconomic inequalities in childhood health and development.