South Koreans no longer count on upward mobility for their children(hankyoreh)
South Koreans no longer count on upward mobility for their children
#social_mobility #inequality #Korea #멍멍꿀꿀
Long-term survey finds growing pessimism about hard work as a way of improving social status across generations
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Comparison of views on inter and intra-generational social mobility. Respondents with optimistic views (Unit: %)
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The results of recent research show that most members of South Korean society do not expect themselves or their children’s generation to be able to raise their social status.
Statistics Korea collected and analyzed data from more than 200,000 people surveyed in a study conducted from 1999 to 2015. The study is particularly noteworthy as a rare academic attempt to read society’s “awareness of possibilities” by means of long-term time series data. In a paper titled “South Koreans’ Thinking about Upward Mobility: Focusing on the Effects of Age, Period, and Cohorts,” presented jointly at a conference held by the Korean Sociological Association, Lee Wang-won, a researcher at Korea University’s Center for Applied Cultural Sciences, and Kim Moon-jo, professor emeritus of sociology, summarized their findings by saying, “Everywhere in South Korean society we find that people believe that no matter how hard an individual works, he cannot better his social status, and furthermore, neither will his children.”
The research team used the results of the survey of people’s thinking about intergenerational and intragenerational upward mobility. The questionnaire used included such queries as: “Is it possible for a member of our society to raise his or her socio-economic status by working hard at it?” “To what degree do you think the next generation can raise its socio-economic status to a level higher than that of the parents’ generation?” The first question focuses on the effectiveness of individual effort, while the second seeks to learn what expectations respondents have for changes is the distribution of resources. The researchers said, “These items are important because they show the individual’s awareness of and interpretation of social structure and milieu.” Of the data, the research team analyzed a sample of 224,715 respondents aged 18 to 80.
The 15-year average of those who thought that intragenerational upward mobility is possible was 29.4 percent, meaning that since 1999, only about one in three South Koreans have been optimistic about that possibility, while more than two-thirds did not believe it was possible. There was little change in these attitudes over the 15-year period. In terms of age groups, respondents in their early 20s who were still in university or had just graduated, and were thus less worldly-wise, were the most optimistic, whereas the number of those with a positive attitude about upward mobility decreased with age.
On the other hand, the 15-year average of those who thought that intergenerational upward mobility is possible was a considerably higher 40.6 percent. The researchers say, “This means that about 40 percent of Koreans, even after the financial crisis of 1997, believed that their children would be able to reach a higher status than they had.” The percentage of respondents who said their children would be better off reached a peak of 48 percent in 2009, right after the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, but afterwards the figure dropped steeply, falling to 32 percent in 2015, meaning that only about a third of Koreans think the next generation will be better off than themselves.
The difference in expectations for intragenerational versus intergenerational upward mobility has diminished over time, and the two figures are now converging. This gradual convergence began in 2006 and in recent years the fluctuations in the two trends have been similar, with both of them dropping continuously since 2008. This seems to indicate that even those whose attitude about their children’s generation had been positive right after the financial crisis have come to have greater doubts.
The researchers say, “We can infer that people lost faith in the possibility of upward mobility during the long slump that came after the initial upbeat outlook for the economy after the 2008 crisis.”
The researchers are particularly concerned about today’s youth, who pessimistically talk of abandoning their ambition for many things and even resigning themselves to remaining at the level of their parents’ generation. As a frustrated, depressed generation that has lost hope for the future, they need to “think deeply about the ill effect their negative attitude about upward mobility is having on South Korean society.” If all means of raising one’s social status have been obliterated from South Korean society, we need to ask ourselves whether this might not mean that we have already set out an a path that leads back to feudalism. We should think deeply about what could await us at the end of such a path.
By Kang Hee-cheol, staff reporter
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