What Accounts for Inequality in Parental Child Care Time for Young Children? : A Longitudinal Approach in South Korea

Background and Purpose:

Parental child care time for preschool-aged children is known as a valuable source to promote children’s future school adaptation and socio-cognitive development. Several studies have revealed that the child care time gap between high- and low-educated parents has increased compared to the past. The literature suggests that socioeconomic and cultural changes play an important role in this diverging child care time gap, but empirical examination has been limited. Exploring the background of the widening gap is fundamental for supporting all parents to allocate a sufficient amount of time to their children. Therefore, this study sought to explore explanations for the increased inequality in child care time; whether it is related to parents’ socioeconomic or cultural factors. The analysis was held in the context of South Korea, a country in which time spent on parent-child interaction is shortest among OECD countries.

Methods:

This study used 2004(n=1,286) and 2014(n=973) Korean Time-Use survey among two-parent households with preschool-aged children. The ANOVA and chi-square test were conducted to identify whether the child care time gap between different education groups has widened, and to see if the socio-economic difference according to education level has increased over the past 10 years. Socio-economic variables were operationalized by the type of economic participation(full time dual-earner, part time dual-earner, single-earner), weekly working hours, household income, and mother’s income ratio. Moreover, multivariate regression was implemented to examine the longitudinal change in the relationship between parental child care time and household characteristics. The regression model included parents’ education level variable, socio-economic variables, and control variables(gender role perception, parental age, additional family member, and day of investigation (week or weekend)). Lastly, the study decomposed the total child care time gap between high- and low-educated parents by explained(socio-economic) and unexplained(cultural or unobserved) gap with Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition.

Results:

First, the child care time gap widened from 19.62minutes(F=1.90) to 62.31minutes per day(F=6.26**) between 2004 and 2014. Second, the difference in household characteristics among education levels did not changed noticeably. Third, some explanatory factors showed different associations with child care time between 2004 and 2014; Unlike 2004, the weekly working hour showed significant correlation with parental child care time in 2014, and the mother’s income ratio lost its previous negative association in 2014. Fourth, according to Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis, the explained gap changed from -11.53minutes(p<.05) to 17.82minutes(<.10), whereas the unexplained gap increased from 30.09minutes(p<0.01) to 44.49minutes(p<0.01).

Conclusions and Implications:

These findings suggest that inequality in parental child care time has increased over time in Korea between high- and low-educated parents. Aligned with an institutional effort to support general child care time, such as parental leave or flexible working hours, additional intervention is required to guarantee that those policies are reached to low-educated parents. Also, the difference in observed socio-economic characteristics and unobserved cultural observation both explained the recent widened child care time gap. This implies that substantial support to balance family socio-economic conditions and parenting culture and norms among parents of young childern is needed to alleviate the gap in child care time.