Awards 2024
Prizewinner: Dahye KIM
For her paper ‘An Equal Right to Inherit? Inheritance Rights and Gendered. Intergenerational Transfers in South Korea, 1971–2010’ (Forthcoming in Population 2-3/2024).
Dahye Kim is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. As a public policy scholar, she is interested in the role of social policies against the backdrop of Asia’s changing demographics, including evolving gender norms, shrinking family size, and aging. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Issues, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, and Research on Aging. She is currently working on research projects, including the impact of COVID-19 social policies worldwide, the financial vulnerability of widowhood, childless aging, Community Care and Long-Term Care, and welfare attitudes in East Asia.
Abstract
Despite amendments to inheritance laws aimed at promoting gender equality in many countries, the effectiveness of gender-equal inheritance rights remains uncertain. This study focuses on South Korea, which reformed inheritance rights toward gender equality in 1991. The research uses data from two nationwide household surveys to examine intergenerational transfers (inheritance and inter vivos gifts) over a 40-year span (1971–2010) and categorizes three groups on the basis of when the heirs’ father died: before reform, shortly after reform, and long after reform. Results reveal that the gender gap in intergenerational transfers did not narrow—even after reform—among the small number of individuals who reported receiving inheritance or gifts. Inter vivos gifts became a more prevalent method of passing wealth to sons shortly after reform. Equal legal shares also proved ineffective in dividing inheritance, as many households continued to experience unequal division through wills and family negotiations. These findings highlight that eliminating discriminatory clauses in inheritance laws is just the initial step toward achieving gender equality in intergenerational transfers, with norms and cultural contexts often taking precedence over legal reforms.
The international jury 2024
President: Marianne Kempeneers (Université de Montréal, Canada)
Members:
Bruno Schoumaker (Université catholique de Louvain
, Belgium)
Laura Bernardi (Conseil national de la recherche du Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique, Lausanne, Switzerland)
Non-voting members:
Damien Bricard (IRDES, France)
Géraldine Duthé (INED, France)
Delphine Remillon (Ined, France)