서강대학교

초록/요약

Poverty is not a gender-neutral condition in Korea. Male-headed households and their female-headed counterparts experience poverty in distinct ways. This thesis discusses poverty and its development in Korea from the perspective of gender. It describes the characteristics of poverty for working populations based on gender and other household attributes. Poverty is measured relative to the mean and median incomes of the population in three ways: headcount, poverty gap, and poverty severity. This study uses the Probit model to estimate the incidence of poverty and the Heckman sample selection model to analyze the poverty gap and the severity of poverty. The empirical results are based on unbalanced household level panel data obtained from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study covering the period 2006-2016. The results indicate that multiple factors, including issues related to the labor market and demographic characteristics, contribute to women’s vulnerability to poverty. Within the working population, women are less likely to be poor than men because of their partners’ incomes. However, single female workers with children are among the poorest demographic groups. In terms of labor-related variables, ‘part-time job’ is a critical factor in determining one’s poverty status, while ‘work years’ and ‘the quality of occupation’ have crucial impacts on the incidence and severity of poverty.