The Effects of Husband’s SES on International Marriage Migrant Partner’s Health and Life Satisfaction in South Korea

The present study examines the effects of Korean husband’s socioeconomic status (SES) on international migrant wife’s self-reported health (SRH) and life satisfaction in South Korea. Earlier studies show that spouse’s SES is an important factor for the respondent’s health-related outcomes. Due to their low SES and the commercialized international marriage process, migrant female spouses are presumed to have a high dependence on their Korean husbands and therefore suffer a resultantly unequal relationship within the marriage. Thus, we expect that the SES of the husband plays a significant role in determining marriage migrant’s health and life satisfaction. The data to be used is drawn from the National Survey on Multicultural Families 2009, conducted in Korea. This study analyzes Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese and Korean Chinese female marriage migrants aged 14 and over, living in Korea in 2009 (n=49,087). To address the independent effects of Korean husband’s SES, we include three dimensions of covariates: foreign wife’s characteristics, Korean husband’s characteristics and couple’s characteristics. The results from logistic regression models suggest that there are significant disparities of SRH among female migrant partners in relation to the Korean husband’s educational attainment .