Dahye Kim

The COVID-19 pandemic required governments to balance restrictive containment policies with measures to mitigate their socioeconomic consequences, raising questions about the relationship between these policy responses and public confidence and trust. Existing research has largely examined containment and economic support separately, often within individual countries or during the pandemic's initial months. We constructed a global country-level panel by integrating administrative policy data with survey measures of public confidence from the Gallup World Poll, covering 144 countries from 2006 to 2023. Using regression models with country and pre-pandemic year fixed effects, this study examined how changes in institutional and government confidence were associated with lockdown trajectories (sustained low-level, rapidly easing, and sustained high-level) and the scale, breadth, and composition of social protection responses. We found that countries following sustained high-level lockdown trajectories generally experienced less favorable changes in confidence than those following rapidly easing trajectories. Under sustained high-level lockdowns, greater social protection spending and a larger number of social protection measures were generally associated with more favorable changes in confidence. Income protection spending was more positively associated with institutional confidence than job protection spending under sustained high-level lockdowns, but this distinction was not supported for government confidence or trust. These findings highlight the importance of considering containment and social protection jointly and suggest that income protection may be particularly relevant to institutional confidence during prolonged restrictions, with broader implications for governing large-scale crises. Points to Practitioners Restrictive crisis measures may be less likely to erode citizens' confidence in public institutions and government when accompanied by broad social protection. Income protection may be particularly relevant for sustaining confidence in public institutions during prolonged restrictions. Crisis strategies should consider containment and social protection together rather than treating them as separate policy domains.

As more countries transition to aging societies, widowhood is emerging as a broader social policy issue that heightens tensions between family and the state as key sources of support for older wido...

Objective: This study examines adult children's intergenerational support within families across parental widowhood phases in South Korea. Background: In aging South Korea, adult children remain the primary source of support for widowed parents amid rising rates of living alone and older adulthood poverty. Yet, little is known about how siblings distribute support across widowhood stages. Viewing parental widowhood as a process involving the dying parent, the widowed parent, and all adult children, this study investigates which child provides what types of support and who tends to withdraw. Method: Using data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (waves 1–9), we analyzed 676 mid‐ and older‐aged parents who became widowed during the survey period and their 2351 adult children. Multilevel regressions examined how changes in intergenerational support were associated with sibling position (gender and birth order) and gender‐specific sibship size. Results: Compared to other siblings, first‐born sons showed the largest increase in financial support to widowed parents during early widowhood, whereas first‐born daughters were most likely to provide caregiving to the dying parent. However, both forms of support were temporary. Later‐born sons showed lower involvement, being less likely to co‐reside with widowed parents in early widowhood and least likely to provide caregiving for the dying parent. Additionally, having more brothers was negatively associated with individuals' likelihood of providing caregiving to the dying parent. Conclusion: Our findings highlight that intergenerational support across widowhood phases is shaped by the interplay of sibling position, sibship size, and timing, extending beyond gendered patterns of support.

Objective: To identify changes over time in gendered patterns of intergenerational contact between older adults and their adult children in an Asian context.Background: Patterns of contact between older adults and their adult children have strong implications for older adults' health in societies with strong family values and gendered expectations for old age care.Methods: The authors utilized data from two waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2006 and 2016); 1,311 Korean older adults reported their frequency of contact (in‐person contact and mediated communication) with their 5,663 mixed‐gender adult children when they were aged 65–74 years and when they were aged 75–84 years, respectively. Latent transition analysis was applied to identify gendered patterns of contact among multiple children and examine transitions between waves.Results: More frequent contact with sons was twice as common as more frequent contact with daughters in 2006. However, these gender‐unequal patterns of contact were likely to transition to gender‐equal patterns in 2016. The onset of functional limitations was associated with transitions into equally frequent in‐person contact with sons and daughters, whereas the onset of clinically significant depressive symptoms was associated with transitions into more frequent mediated communication with daughters.Conclusion: The findings show a decline in traditional son‐preferential patterns of contact, in favor of gender‐equal contact among Korean older adults. Furthermore, mental health issues emerging in the transition from young‐old to middle‐old emphasize the role of daughters as kin‐keepers who support their parents emotionally.

Intergenerational contact is important to older adults’ quality of life, but less is known about within-family differences in older parents’ contact between sons and daughters, especially in countries with patrilineal traditions. Applying latent profile analysis to data on 3,228 Korean older adults’ frequency of meeting and communication with each of their children, this study identified within-family patterns of intergenerational contact. Nearly half of parents exhibited gender-balanced patterns of meeting across children, while 13% reported “more frequent contact with daughters” and 39% reported “more frequent contact with sons.” On the other hand, “equally high contact” (77%) was the most common pattern for communication. Multinomial regression results showed that the derived patterns were differentiated by parents’ education, marital status, region, economic satisfaction, health, and depressive symptoms. The results highlighted the enduring nature of patrilineal traditions as well as the differing patterns of contact that Korean older adults have with their children.

Objective: This study examines sibling inequality in inheritances and investigates the associations between inheritance share, intergenerational support, and patrilineality, as well as the potential interplay between support and patrilineality.Background: While Western studies take an exchange perspective linking inheritance division to intergenerational support, the picture in Asia is complicated by patrilineal norms, which are connected to both inheritance and support.Method: Utilizing the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this study employs family fixed effects regression to estimate the relationships between actual inheritance division, comprehensive measures of intergenerational support (financial, instrumental, associational, and structural), and patrilineality (gender and birth order).Results: First‐born sons receive the lion's share of inheritances, followed by first‐born daughters and later‐born sons, who receive a lesser share, while later‐born daughters receive the least. Meeting the parent frequently and caring for them before death were also associated with a larger share, and these effects were mostly uniform by birth order and gender.Conclusion: Patrilineal traditions continue to dominate inheritance division in contemporary Korea, with first‐born sons claiming the largest share regardless of their contributions to intergenerational support. Physical contact and caregiving increase a child's likelihood of receiving a larger share, but ultimately do not change the patrilineal order in inheritance allocations.

This study examines the impact of higher education on women’s bargaining power in the household in South Korea. Utilising the nationwide college expansion programs in South Korea in 1979 and 1981 as a natural experiment, this study uses 6181 married women born between 1943 and 1976 and adopts the birth cohort as an instrumental variable to identify women that benefitted from the programs. The results show that more years of schooling increased women’s property ownership and decision-making power at home, which is further explained by three channels. The first channel, related to women’s economic resources, indicates that education increased women’s likelihood of being employed, having a white-collar job, absolute income, and age at marriage. However, it did not increase women’s relative income compared to their husbands’. Second, consistent with the assortative mating theory, higher education encouraged women to marry a partner who has a prestigious job and is closer to their education level and age. Third, the channel of gender role attitudes revealed that more years of schooling led women to realize the need for financial independence from their spouses. These findings show how access to higher education for women improved gender equality in South Korean society.