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The effects of social infrastructure and gender equality on output and employment: The case of South Korea

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  • Oyvat, Cem
  • Onaran, Özlem

Abstract

This paper examines the short-run and medium-run impact of spending in social infrastructure, defined as expenditure in education, childcare, health and social care, wages and gender pay gap on output and employment of men and women for the case of South Korea. Based on a gendered post-Kaleckian feminist macroeconomic theoretical model, we estimate the macroeconomic effects of social expenditure, wages and gender pay gap using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) analysis for the period of 1970–2012. The results show that an increase in the public social infrastructure significantly increases the total non-agricultural output and employment in South Korea both in the short and medium run. Moreover, we find that higher social infrastructure expenditure increases female employment more than male employment in the short run and raises both male and female employment in the medium run due to increasing output. Finally, the results show that South Korean economy is gender equality-led in the medium run, although the effects are economically small in comparison to the strong effects of increases social infrastructure spending. The results indicate that sustainable equitable development and a substantial increase in employment requires a mix of both labour market and fiscal policies.

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  • Oyvat, Cem & Onaran, Özlem, 2022. "The effects of social infrastructure and gender equality on output and employment: The case of South Korea," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:158:y:2022:i:c:s0305750x22001772
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105987
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    Cited by:

    1. Hiroshi Nishi & Kazuhiro Okuma, 2023. "Fiscal policy and social infrastructure provision under alternative growth and distribution regimes," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 259-286, September.
    2. Aashima Sinha, 2023. "The Road to Gender-Equitable Growth: A State-level Analysis of Social Reproduction in the U.S," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2023_03, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    3. Zuazu-Bermejo, Izaskun, 2024. "Reviewing feminist macroeconomics for the XXI century," ifso working paper series 30, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Socioeconomics (ifso).
    4. Small, Sarah F. & van der Meulen Rodgers, Yana, 2023. "The gendered effects of investing in physical and social infrastructure," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    5. Hiroshi Nishi & Kazuhiro Okuma, 2023. "Social common capital accumulation and fiscal sustainability in a wage-led growth economy," Working Papers PKWP2305, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).

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