Speaker: Hyunjoon Park (Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania)

Time: 02:30pm-04:00pm, 25 Sep 2023 (Monday, HK Time)

Venue: Room 422, Sino Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong & Zoom (ZOOM Link will be sent to registered audience after finished the e-registration.)

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/mycuform/view.php?id=2052540

Abstract:
Although falling marriage rates and rising divorce rates, along with the increase of population living alone, are well documented trends in South Korea, less known is divergence in those family behaviors between the more and less educated. Tracing family changes differently for those at higher and lower ends of educational hierarchy. This study highlights growing educational differentials in family behaviors over the last three decades in contemporary Korea. It is more challenging for those without a college degree to form a family through marriage, compared to their college-educated counterparts. The risk of family dissolution through divorce has increased more substantially at the lower end of educational hierarchy than at the higher. The rise of living alone is more visible among the less educated than the more educated. In short, it is increasingly difficult for those at the lower end of educational hierarchy to form and maintain a family, making the Korean family as a ‘luxury good.’

About the speaker:
Hyunjoon Park is Korea Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. Park is interested in family and social stratification in cross-national comparative perspective, focusing on South Korea and other East Asian societies. In recent years, he has studied changes in marriage, divorce, and living arrangements as well as consequences of demographic and economic trends for education, well-being, and socioeconomic outcomes of children, adolescents, and young adults in Korea. Park has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals including Demography, Social Science & Medicine, Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, Annual Review of Sociology, and Demographic Research, among others. He is the author of the book, Re-Evaluating Education in Japan and Korea: De-mystifying Stereotypes (2013 Routledge). A new book, Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America, coauthored with Phoebe Ho and Grace Kao, has been published from the University of California Press in 2022. Park published a book on intergenerational social mobility in Korea in Korean. He also coedited two books on Korean families and education, respectively.