Does Having a Daughter Shape Parents’ Views on Mathematics’ Importance for Career Success? Insights from South Korea’s Context; Beyond the Wallet: Cash Transfer and Social Engagement of Older Adults

Does Having a Daughter Shape Parents’ Views on Mathematics’ Importance for Career Success? Insights from South Korea’s Context

Mathematical skills play a crucial role in shaping career prospects and economic outcomes, raising concerns about persistent gender disparities across the globe in mathematics-related outcomes, especially in students’ interest and confidence, which often diverge further during the transition to middle and high school. Scholars have investigated the influence of parents’ attitudes and gender-stereotyped beliefs, associating mathematics with men and boys, on children’s mathematics performance and beliefs, reinforcing gender disparities. However, existing literature primarily treats parents’ attitudes as fixed, focusing on their impact on children rather than exploring how these attitudes are formed. In contrast, we examine the reverse relationship: does having a daughter affect parents’ perspectives on mathematics? We assess whether parents of daughters perceive mathematical knowledge and skills as more or less important for today’s labor market, compared to parents of sons, within the context of South Korea, where gender norms and disparities in socioeconomic outcomes, including STEM fields, remain prevalent. We use data from 15-year-old Korean students and their parents who participated in the PISA 2022 survey. Using OLS analysis, we find that parents of daughters place less emphasis on mathematics for career success than those of sons. This connection between the child’s gender and parents’ views on mathematics is more evident among mothers than fathers. Given that having a daughter is nearly random, we interpret the differences between parents of daughters and sons as reflecting experiences of raising a daughter versus a son. We discuss the implications of our findings for persistent gender disparities in mathematics-related outcomes. 

Abby Lim is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines how educational systems and cultural beliefs shape social stratification, with a focus on gender, education, and intergenerational mobility in cross-national perspective. She uses large-scale international datasets, including PISA, PIAAC, and NLSY, to study how structural inequality and cultural narratives about intelligence, creativity, and merit reproduce educational and occupational inequalities. Her current projects include: (1) a study of gendered fixed mindsets about intelligence and creativity across about 70 societies using PISA data, (2) a paper on how daughters influence South Korean parents’ views of mathematics and career success, (3) comparative research on “some college” leavers in the U.S. and abroad using PIAAC data, and (4) Pathways to Education Development & Their Consequences: Finland, Korea, U.S., a Penn Global Research Grant–funded project led by Hyunjoon Park. She is an active member of the RC28 Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility and the American Sociological Association. She has presented her work at ASA, RC28, and other international conferences, and her research has been supported by competitive travel and research grants. Her broader intellectual interests span education and inequality, gender and stratification, and intergenerational mobility.

 

Beyond the Wallet: Cash Transfer and Social Engagement of Older Adults

Cash transfers have reemerged as a prominent policy tool. Recent large-scale initiatives—the OpenResearch Unconditional Income Study, the Compton Pledge, the BIG:LEAP pilot in Los Angeles, and COVID-19 relief—underscore growing interest in the “causal effects of income.” Yet two gaps remain: most evidence comes from populations below the poverty line or from developing countries, and social well-being has received less attention than economic or health outcomes despite its centrality to overall welfare. We address these gaps using South Korea’s Basic Pension Scheme, which provides monthly transfers to the bottom 70% of older adults. Its broad eligibility permits assessment across a wider socioeconomic spectrum, and a 2014 reform that nearly doubled the maximum benefit offers plausibly exogenous variation. Leveraging this natural experiment, we implement a two-stage least squares design to estimate how changes in monthly benefits affect social engagement—specifically, (i) in-person meetings with nearby close contacts and (ii) participation in organized group activities. Because socializing can entail out-of-pocket costs, we also examine dining-out and leisure expenditures as potential mechanisms. Our estimates show that higher transfers increase both the likelihood and annual frequency of meeting close contacts. Transfers also raise the likelihood of participating in group activities, with no detectable change in frequency. Greater social engagement is resource-intensive: more frequent interactions are associated with higher dining-out and leisure spending, and additional benefits are translated into these categories. Together, the results indicate that income support can tangibly strengthen social connectedness among older adults by easing the costs of engagement.

Hwiyoung P. Lee is a doctoral student at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a research fellow with the Institute of Education Sciences. His research focuses on identifying causal factors that promote social engagement. Recent projects have examined the long-term effects of mandatory school-based community service on adult civic participation, the impact of unemployment on prosocial behaviors, and how oral health influences social interaction among older adults population. Hwiyoung holds a BA in Social Welfare and Economics and an MA in Social Welfare from Seoul National University.