This study explores the short-term effects of COVID-19 on marriage and divorce rates in Korea. We document a 9.6–13.9% reduction in the provincial crude marriage rate in March-June 2020 after the surge in COVID-19 cases. On top of this overall decline, a one-unit increase in the number of confirmed cases per 1,000 people in a given province decreased the marriage rate by 3.8–6.2%. The crude divorce rate decreases by 3.2–7.1% after the surge of COVID-19. Our results imply that the decline in marriage rates due to COVID-19 can lead to a significant decrease in fertility rates in the near future.

This study explores how the distinctive Korean age reckoning, the Confucian age culture, and the school-entry-cutoff date affect the decisions of parents on both birth and school-entry timing for their children in Korea. There is a traditional method of age calculation in Korea that all people get one year older on January 1. Korea also has a distinctive age culture influenced by Confucianism. I find a substantial amount of birth and school-entry timing selections around the Korean age-cutoff date, January 1. The estimation results show that children born in January and February delayed school entry by 18.2–21.2 percentage points more than those born in November and December and 24% of births moved from one week before January 1 to one week after when the school-entry cutoff was March 1. After the school-entry cutoff has changed to January 1, children barely delay school enrollment, while more births are moved from December to January: 42% of births are shifted within the 7-day window. These behaviors are made by two motives: (1) parents want their children to have the same Korean age with their classmates because of the Confucian age culture; (2) they also want their children to be relatively older to have academic advantages.

Using province‐level establishments and employment data from the Korean Employment Insurance Database, this paper investigates how the regional spread of COVID‐19 affects local businesses and unemployment by establishment size and industry. We find that the number of small establishments declines substantially after the COVID‐19 pandemic through a decrease in new establishment creation and a surge in establishment closures. By contrast, large establishments are not affected significantly. Examining the numbers of unemployment benefits (UB) applicants, an indicator of unemployment, we find that the higher the rate of COVID‐19 confirmed cases in a province, the higher the number of UB applicants, regardless of their previous workplace size. Our analysis of employment insurance subscribers further confirms that the regional spread of COVID‐19 leads to a significant reduction in employment and job mobility in small establishments. Regarding industry heterogeneity in the COVID‐19 effects, we find that local COVID‐19 outbreaks affect local industries more through the reduction in establishment creation and new employment than through an increase in establishment closures. Industries that require face‐to‐face operations, such as lodging & restaurant, experience a substantial adverse impact in the early phase, and the impact also tends to last longer as COVID‐19 situations prolong.

This study estimates the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on life satisfaction and stress and examines whether these effects vary across different sociodemographic groups using a nationally representative sample in South Korea. We estimate the causal effects of COVID-19 on psychological well-being by exploiting regional variation in the spread of the pandemic in South Korea. While the number of confirmed cases was very small in other provinces in the first half of 2020, the coronavirus spread rapidly in Daegu after an outbreak in one church. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares changes in people’s life satisfaction and stress before-and-after the initial surge of COVID-19 cases in Daegu and other provinces. Our results show that the proportion of people who are dissatisfied with life increased by 2.8–6.5 percentage points more in Daegu than in other provinces after the COVID-19 outbreak. During the same period, the proportion of people who reported feeling stressed increased more in Daegu than in other provinces by 5.8–8.9 percentage points. Our results also suggest that the negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on psychological well-being is significantly greater for men, young adults, middle-aged adults, self-employed workers, and middle-income individuals. On the other hand, the proportion of people who report feeling stressed among the highest-educated (a master’s degree or higher) and high-income individuals decreased after the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak.