Double Poverty: Class, Employment Type, Gender and Time Poor Precarious Workers in the South Korean Service Economy

Abstract

Double poverty refers to the lack of both time and income. This study analyses precarious workers’ double poverty, focusing on the case of South Korea, where the characteristics of its labour market perpetuate the risk of double poverty. This study set less than two-thirds of the median free time and less than two-thirds of the median income as poverty lines. Using Korean Labour & Income Panel Study data, this article identifies the double poor, experiencing both time and income poverty in the Korean labour market. It then examines the effects of occupational class, employment type, company size, social wage, trade union membership, and gender on double poverty. It is found that double poverty impacts women workers, low-skilled service workers, and non-regular workers. This study contributes to the discussion of precarious work by analysing the double poverty of time and income of precarious workers. Time poverty limits workers’ capacity to escape income poverty as they are unable to work longer and invest in household production or human capital. Consequently, the workers’ lack of time deepens their precarity.

Key Words:

• Double poverty
• occupational class
• precariat
• service economy
• South Korea
• time poverty

Disclosure Statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 There is now a plethora of work defining precarious work and precarious workers. Among others, see Kalleberg (2000, 2009); ILO (2011); Standing (2011); Kalleberg and Hewison (2013); Kalleberg, Hewison, and Shin (2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-LAB-1250002).