Basic Research for Establishing User-Centered Youth Support System based on Life Course Perspective

Abstract

Motivated by the need to decide the direction of a user-centered policy support system for young adults, this study takes a life course perspective on the spatiotemporal contexts of young Korean adults’ lives and how their life experiences have shaped their present, exploring the experiences of disadvantages they have faced and/or continue to face. To that end, this study combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results of our quantitative analysis highlight the need for a multidimensional approach to policy support for young adults. Also, our qualitative analysis provides a detailed understanding of the life course of disadvantaged young adults. Young adults’ current life is a result of the interaction among various factors in the specific time and space they have lived. The different ways in which these interactions have panned out and individual choices had significant effects on the lives of young adults who seemingly started out from similar places. Based on our analysis, we propose: (1) redefining the roles of the social policy system and enhancing its accountability for young adults, (2) introducing more specific and refined measures of policy support that reflect the diversity of young adults’ situations and needs, (3) revisiting the security and consistency of young adult policy support and the social security system at large, and (4) developing a realistic index of social security for young adults and applying it to policy monitoring.