Korean Journal of Policy Studies
Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University
Article

Precarious Working Youth and Pension Reform in the Republic of Korea and Italy*

Sophia Seung-Yoon Lee1, Yunyoung Kim2
1Assistant Professor, Department of Social Science, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. E-mail: sophia.sy.lee@ewha.ac.kr.
2Department of Social Science, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. E-mail: yunyoung kim@gmail.com.

© Copyright 2013 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Oct 10, 2013; Revised: Oct 18, 2013; Revised: Nov 30, 2013; Accepted: Dec 02, 2013

Published Online: Dec 31, 2013

Abstract

This paper focuses on two aspects of the welfare state: the old age pension system and the labor market, where the majority of youth are working in precarious jobs. We discuss the interplay between pension funds and the increase in young atypical workers by studying the case of Italy and the Republic of Korea, closely analyzing the projected benefit level of both standard and non- standard workers among the youth population in Korea in order to assess where young workers will find themselves after retirement age and what Korea can learn from the case of Italy.

Keywords: Pension reform; labor market; nonstandard job; precarious youth