This paper reviewed the empirical research on the education and social mobility which have been published during the last several decades. Although these research can be classified into some detailed topics, this paper examined only the two education-...
This paper reviewed the empirical research on the education and social mobility which have been published during the last several decades. Although these research can be classified into some detailed topics, this paper examined only the two education-related topics: the inequality of educational opportunity and the returns to education. Each of these two topics includes two details respectively: the former is consisted of the inequality of academic achievement and of educational attainment, whereas the latter comprises both the returns in the labor market such as occupational and monetary and the returns in the marriage market such as cultural and monetary. Summarizing the various findings of previous research, this paper tried to show both the present status or level of inequality in Korea in comparative perspective and the temporal change of it over the recent several decades. It found the following distinct trends; first, the equality of educational opportunity, regardless of whether it is the inequality of academic achievement or of educational attainment, has deteriorated since the early 2000s. Second, all of the returns to education, regardless of whether it is the labor market returns or marriage market returns, have declined since the mid 1990s.