(image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Jan. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Young married women with jobs who hold less household assets but higher earned incomes are more likely to become “time poor,” an expression used to describe groups of people who tend to have longer working hours due to wage labor, housework and childcare while suffering from a lack of leisure and free time, a study showed Wednesday.
An academic paper published by the Korea Employment Information Service analyzed the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study’s household and personal data and the 2014 supplementary data.
The paper classified the people whose free time was less than 60 percent of the median free time of those in the sample.
The free time was calculated by deducting paid labor hours (wage labor, commuting etc.), unpaid labor hours (childcare, housework etc.) and essential hours (sleeping, eating and personal sanitary care etc.) from 24 hours a day.
On the basis of the sample group of 11,679 people, those classified as ‘time poor’, whose daily free time was less than 80 minutes, accounted for 8.5 percent of the total.
By age, the people aged from 15 to 20 years whose free time was less than 141 minutes were classified as time poor.
Among those aged from 30 to 59 years and those over 60, individuals with free time of less than 77 minutes and 116 minutes, respectively, were classified as time poor.
The ratio of time poor individuals was the highest at 10.8 percent among middle-aged people, followed by the elderly at 8.1 percent and young people at 7.4 percent.
The paper noted that regardless of age, women are more likely to become time poor, reflecting the unfair parallel between unpaid housework and paid labor.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
