Abstract
Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families: The 2016 Annual Report
Jae-seon Joo
You-kyung MoonYoung-ran Kim
Young-taek Kim
Ki-Taek JeonChi-seon SongJin-young Han
Keun-tae Kim
Ki-soo Eun
Jin-sook Lee
Issues in women’s economic activity are not simply related to internal factors of the labor market but they are also closely related to external factors of the labor market, including the structure of families, decision-making structure and relationships in the family, and social and cultural rituals and practices. For this reason, a database on the overall areas of women’s lives should be established in the form of a longitudinal survey, rather than a cross-section survey, to precisely identify the effects and characteristics of policies.
The Korean Women's Development Institute has conducted the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF), a nationwide panel survey, in order to investigate changes in women's lives, family structure and jobs since 2006. Although a database on the longitudinal survey of changes in women’s lives has been partially established in the existing panel surveys, including the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study, most of these panel surveys failed to take into account characteristics of men and women or lacked cases of women. Therefore, they have limitations in meaningfully analyzing the sub-groups of women. Furthermore, as these surveys are not equipped with optimized survey tools for analyzing women’s lives, they have difficulties providing comprehensive information on women’s lives from multiple aspects.
To overcome these limitations of existing longitudinal surveys, the KLoWF is designed to keep track of changes in major social issues of Korean society, ranging from low fertility to aging, child care, work and family reconciliation, and family-friendly social environment. Since its first wave survey, the KLoWF has produced a broad range of research results and played a role of providing rudimentary data required for establishing policies on women and families.
Beginning with its first wave in 2007 to survey 9,997 women, ages between 19 and 64 years old, in 9,068 households across the nation, the KLoWF completed its second wave in 2008, third wave in 2010, fourth wave in 2012, and fifth wave in 2015. The 2016 research aims to further raise the utility of the data for policies as follows: First, considering the attrition of the existing panel, the research improves the quality of the panel by conducting replacement or addition of the panel. Second, it conducts the six wave main survey (1st), performs longitudinal data cleaning and grants cross-sectional and longitudinal weights on the existing first through fifth waves. Third, we released the results of the first through fifth wave data to the general public and held the fifth KLoWF academic symposium. The symposium proceeded as a comparative analysis of the panel by inviting domestic and international experts and overseas panel scholars. Fourth, we conducted in-depth analysis and longitudinal analysis of the first through fifth wave KLoWF data. Lastly, to publicize the characteristics of the KLoWF, we implemented major projects, including publication of Women and Family Panel Brief (biannually), management of the home pages in Korean and English, and hosting of panel forums.
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