earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to examine the allocation of time between work and leisure by the rural elderly in Korea. The data used for this study are collected from fm households during the peak (17th to 30th June) and off-peak ( 28th November to 10th December) farming seasons of 2005 using time diary. The sample for this study consists of 120 elderly over 65 years old living in rural area in eight provinces. The major findings are as follows. (1) The time spent of farm work by rural elderly in much longer than average work hours of elderly in general regardless of farming season. The indicates that the elderly farmers are the sustaining forces of agriculture as the urban industrial sector absorbs the younger labor force rural area. (2) There are significant differences in the work time(including form work, housework, and farm work plus house work) by gender, age, education, marital status, living arrangements. (3) The rural elderly spends less time in leisure compared to the elderly in general even during the off-peak season. (4) Especially during the peak season, time allocation between work and leisure by the rural elderly is heavily skewed, resulting in an inadequate amount of time for reproduction of labor. (5) There is only significant age difference in the amount leisure time regardless of farming season. (6) Male elderly farmers work approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour longer on farm than the females do, but the total work time (farm work plus housework) of female elderly is longer than that of the male elderly. There is no significant gender difference in the amount of leisure time during the peak season, whereas the men have more leisure than the women during the off-peak season. To conclude, the gender differences in time allocation among the rural elderly are minimal. However, the rural elderly of both genders suffers from excessive work hours and heavy workload compared to the urban counterpart.