KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Based on the predicted shapes of families twenty years after, this study attempts to explore new areas of women's and family policies and redesign main family support policies. As the first installment of the fourth-year study, this study examines the family environment and investigates the driving forces of family changes. The aims of the study are as follows.

First, the study attempts to predict the objective family environment in the future. To this end, it reviews the literature of future studies in Korea and foreign countries and examines family changes in OECD countries to try to predict future changes in the family by employing a variety of methods. Second, the study attempts to predict the subjective family environment in the future. The prediction is made by examining people's perceptions of the future and identifying how and to what extent they will accept a variety of predicted changes in the family type. Third, in light of these predictions, the study proposes the directions of women's and family policies in response to family changes in the future

This study uses various methods for the analyses above: literature review, analysis of statistical data, environmental scanning technieque, future population and household estimation through cohort component method, Delphi method and scenario technique, a survey on people's perception of the future of the family, advisory meetings and expert workshops. The results of the study are as follows. First, important changes in the family environment in OECD countries include the declining significance of institutional marriage and women's increasing participation in the labor market. Such a situation is generating a need to rebalance conventional gender role and producing widespread gaps in care giving. Second, the environment scanning analysis and expert survey shows that the driving forces of family changes in Korea include low birthrate, aging, women's increasing participation in the labor market, increasing migration, decreasing marriage rates, and increasing divorce rates. In particular, low birthrate and aging are the two important factors that all of the various analytical methods used point to in unison. Third, the future population and household estimation and expert survey this study uses to predict the shapes of future families generated by those driving forces shows first that the household size is likely to be reduced and marriage tension to deepen; second, that eating out is likely to increase, the contracting parties in a marriage are likely to take the initiative in the whole process of marriage, and the married couple is likely to be the center of the family relationship.

Fourth, the survey on the future shapes of the family people predict shows that parents' unlimited support of their young children and children's direct support of their aging parents, as practiced in the present, are expected to be reduced. IT is expected to reduce face-to-face contacts between family members. Regarding family rituals, the formal aspects of ancestral, burial, and marriage rites are expected to be reduced, while the rites themselves are likely to be maintained. Finally, the analysis of how people accept various family types shows that there is a large difference between different categories of people. The category that is most likely to accept various family types or abnormal family types accounts for about 40 percent of the sample. This category consists mainly of the so-called 2030 generation (people in their twenties or thirties), people of high income, or the highly educated.

Based on the above research findings, this study proposes the following policy directions. First, there need to be developed policies regarding low birthrate that take into full account the demands of the 2030 generation. Second, there need to be built infrastructures to resolve conflicts between generations, races, and classes. Third, marriage needs to be an attractive institution to women in order to resolve the family tension which is likely to be experienced by the generations of people who were born when sex ratio at birth was highly skewed to the male.

Fourth, residential welfare policies need to be expanded in response to the reduction of the household size and the increase of single person households. In particular, such policies must pay special attention to single old person households. Fifth, the welfare transfer system needs to be improved to enhance policy accessibility in response to the expected increase of households with no adult generations. Sixth, males need to play a more active part in the care of the family and the wider society should also take more responsibility for it. Seventh, to satisfy people's desire for community requires to provide various opportunities for family members to engage in common activities in the community where they live. Eighth, support programs regarding memorial service need to be provided in response to an expected increase in deaths of the members of single old person households.

Finally, as leisure time is expected to increase, there needs to be developed social leisure lest that income gaps lead to leisure gaps.