<Anchor> It
is a friendly economy time.
Today (20th) I will be with reporter Kwon Ae-ri.
Today's story is very interesting.
I heard that people in Korea tend to get married without looking at the other person's money?
<Reporter>
Yes.
That's right.
We talk a lot like that.
Marriage with a prince riding a white horse or Princess Pyeonggang, as seen in dramas, in reality everyone gets married to each other.
By the way, it was counted that there are quite a few cases in which Koreans actually meet princes or princesses.
Marriage between each other is actually common around the world, but we often meet and live with people with a large income difference, so it has the effect of reducing income inequality to some extent.
If Koreans marry each other a lot like other countries, inequality could be up to 15% worse than now, according to a study by the Bank of Korea.
Usually, inequality issues see a lot of the role of the country.
I collect taxes from the rich and use it to increase the welfare of the poor, and I do a lot of research on this part.
This time, we saw how much inequality can be exacerbated or eliminated through private marriages.
At this point, you might be thinking, “Ah, there are things I earn by working, but in fact, the most important thing is property.”
In general, the study found that property income, such as income from interest and gifts, did not account for a large portion of total income inequality.
<Anchor>
After conducting an investigation at the Bank of Korea, marriage tends to reduce inequality in Korea. What kind of conclusion did you come up with, then?
<Reporter>
Yes.
The inequality that can be resolved by marrying people with a large difference in income has outweighed the role the country is playing in inequality.
This is the result of analyzing household financial information collected by the National Statistical Office of each country for 34 OECD countries, including Korea.
In Korea, the income gap between individuals is quite large.
However, after starting a family, it was one of the countries where households' incomes were most similar.
If only high-income people and low-income people marry, income inequality will increase dramatically.
But when a high-income person and a low-income person get married, the two merge and become the middle.
We have a lot of such houses, so in the end, we are a society where living conditions are relatively similar.
I thought it might be because there are a lot of full-time housewives, so I looked at dual-income couples separately, but it wasn't too different.
In fact, our marriage patterns were almost random.
In a word, it is said that they relatively did not think much about money and showed the appearance of getting married.
<Anchor>
Are there any differences between men and women?
How is it?
<Reporter>
First of all, it was the same for us that there were many marriages between high-income men and women.
However, if you look at other major OECD countries, the better the husband earns, the more often the wife has a high income.
we are not
If the husband was earning well, her wife was relatively more likely to earn nothing or just a little.
However, even if you change the sexes, in other countries the husband does not earn money, then the wife is also a low-income earner.
However, in Korea, there were quite a few cases where men with no money or low income married women with medium income.
Marrying a high-income woman at all was relatively not so rare.
<Anchor>
Have you ever analyzed the reason why our country is like this?
<Reporter>
Actually, this time, a detailed analysis was not done.
Just a few speculations have been made. We believe that if the husband has a high income, there is a strong pattern that the wife takes full responsibility for housework and childcare and does not engage in economic activities. Depending on the situation, I thought this needed more analysis.
On the other hand, the reason why there are many combinations of low-income men and middle-income women is that if men earn less money, women in our country earn at least an hourly income by working for a long time to cover the household income and make a middle income.
However, this also remains something to be checked further.
Anyway, we are still living in marriage, and there are relatively few single-person households or single-parent families with no place to lean on.
However, the number of single-person households is also increasing.
An increasing number of families are giving up or postponing having children while working two jobs.
In the end, the government's efforts to address income inequality are needed in the future, which is the conclusion of this study.
In fact, in the case of the major OECD countries compared to us in this study, they often live with high-income families, but their birth rates are higher than ours.
It means that there are many families with children while earning as much as the women who earn well have been earning all along without interruption.
So, income inequality is a little worse than ours.
On the one hand, it can be seen that both earn high income and have a better environment in which they do not have to give up their children.
Anyway, it seems that a more careful analysis from various angles should be done.