In response to persistent low-level fertility, the Korean government in 2006 embarked on the Basic Plan on Low Fertility and Aging Society, which, since its implementation, has substantially increased public childcare support. But the total fertility rate remained low (as low as 1.19 in 2013) and the sharing of housework and child care still remains unequal between men and women, with many working parents still struggling to balance work and family. This study is set out to examine changes taken place in time spent on housework and child care during the period 1999~2009 and their policy implications. We used Statistics Korea's Time Use Survey in our analysis of changes occurred over the sample period in the amount of time spent by Korean parents on child care and housework. The sample of analysis are married Korean men and women aged 20~59. The dependent variables used in this study are "time spent on housework" and "time spent on child care."In analyzing the factors that brought about changes in time spent on housework and child care during the period 2004~2009, we employed the Oaxaca-Blinder approach, the Juhn-Murphy-Pierce (JMP) method and the Unconditional Quantile Regression model. The factors regarded as responsible for changes in time spent on housework and child care were decomposed into "structural" and non-structural" components using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique. The JMP and the Unconditional Quantile Regression methods were used to estimate changes in time spent on these activities by different time-use groups.
