우수논문 : 아동기 빈곤의 장기적 영향에 대한 연구 = The Effect of Childhood Poverty on Adult Attainment

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In recent years, about one in ten Korean children have lived in families in which cash income failed to exceed 50% of the korean median income. Although reducing child poverty is a supreme task of government, a range of child poverty policies which aimed at curbing child poverty do not link together and amount of government effort is not enough to attain a goal. It is important to study the consequences of childhood poverty to improve appropriateness and effectiveness of child poverty policy. However previous studies about child poverty can not fully explain about the consequence of childhood poverty in adulthood. Most of studies had focused on academic achievement in adolescence only. This study aim to estimate the effect of poverty in childhood(age 14, 17) on health, educational attainment and labor market achievement in youth adult(ages 20-26). Many studies have documented that adults who had experienced poverty at childhood attained low outcomes. I use 1999-2009 data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS), which has followed a nationally representative sample of households members residing in urban areas of Korea since 1998. Ordinary least squares(OLS), linear probability model, and sample selection model are used in this research to analyse the impact of child hood poverty on adult attainment. Controlling for demographic characters, poverty in childhood have a negative effect on the numbers of schooling years and whether child entered university. And controlling for demographic characters and family background, poverty in childhood increase weekly working hours(5.26 hours) and decrease wage(22.7%) in adulthood. These findings suggest that the effect of childhood poverty lasted in later life of those children. Given high education level, academic achievement can not enough to get high gain in labor market. Child poverty policies have to concentrate on support for increasing job ability of young adults growing up in poverty families as well as improving educational attainment. Anti-poverty programs, like National Basic Livelihood Protection Program should consider family who live with child. In other words, government support child growing up in poverty families in long term view and strategies.