Pathways from economic hardship to couple conflict by socioeconomic status during COVID‐19 in Korea

• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Author: Jaerim Lee,Jaeeon Yoo,Meejung Chin,Seohee Son,Miai Sung,Young Eun Chang
• Date: 01 February 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12771

RESEARCH

Pathways from economic hardship to couple conflict

by socioeconomic status during COVID-19 in Korea

Jaerim Lee

1

|Jaeeon Yoo

2

|Meejung Chin

1

|

Seohee Son

3

|Miai Sung

4

|Young Eun Chang

5

1

Department of Child Development and

Family Studies and the Research Institute of

Human Ecology, Seoul National University,

Seoul, Republic of Korea

2

Department of Social Welfare, Gachon

University, Seongnam, Republic of Korea

3

Department of Family & Resource

Management, Sookmyung Women’s

University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

4

Division of Human Ecology, Korea National

Open University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

5

School of Social Welfare, Chung-Ang

University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Correspondence

Jaeeon Yoo, Department of Social Welfare,

Gachon University, 1342 Seongnamdaero

Sujeong-gu, Seongnam-si Gyeonggi-do 13120,

Republic of Korea.

Email: jejowa0205@gachon.ac.kr

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the

direct and indirect relationships among economic hardship,

economic strain, emotional stress, and couple conflict for

married Koreans during the COVID-19 pandemic. In partic-

ular, we investigated whether these pathways were different

between lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES) groups.

Background: Due to the global economic downturn

brought on by COVID-19, many couples experienced eco-

nomic hardship including increased household debt, job

loss, and reduced work hours. This context provides a

valuable opportunity to test the family stress model (FSM)

of romantic relationships, which explains the indirect path-

ways from economic hardship to couple-level outcomes.

Method: We collected the data using an online survey in

May 2020, when the Seoul metropolitan area experienced

the first surge of COVID-19 cases. The sample came from

605 married Korean adults (282 women, 323 men) and

was analyzed using multigroup path analysis.

Results: Among the three markers of economic hardship,

increased household debt had a stronger association with cou-

ple conflict for lower SES respondents directly and indirectly

through elevated economic strain and emotional distress. The

total effects of job loss and reduced work hours on more fre-

quent couple conflict were stronger for the higher SES group.

Conclusion: The process from the three markers of eco-

nomic hardship to couple conflict was different depending

on socioeconomic resources.

[Correction added on September 22, 2022, after first online publication: Copyright has been updated.]

Received: 19 August 2021Revised: 28 February 2022Accepted: 26 June 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12771

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

60 Family Relations. 2023;72:60–76.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

Implications: Family practitioners need to consider SES vari-

ations and to work with financial counselors to better sup-

port couples with both economic and relationship difficulties.

KEYWORDS

COVID-19 pandemic, economic stress, Korean families, marital

relationship

The disrupted global economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic hardshipfor

many families. This economic downturn serves as a unique backdrop for family researchers

because COVID-19 brought both economic hardship and noneconomic changes in family life

such as forced family time at home due to social distancing (Brock & Laifer, 2020). The COVID-

led economic crisis in South Korea is an interesting context to examine the impact of economic

hardship on family relationships. Korea has a work-oriented culture with one of the longest

working hours in the world (OECD, 2021), and gatherings with coworkers are common after

work. This culture had to change during the pandemic as more peopleworked remotely and ret-

urned home early to prevent COVID-19 infections (J. Lee et al., 2020). This study extends the lit-

erature on the impact of economic hardship on couple relationships, which has often been drawn

from the family stressmodel (FSM; Conger et al., 1994;Congeretal.,2010). We investigate the

pathways from economic hardship to couple conflict during COVID-19 and examine whether

these pathways differ between Koreans with lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES).

The FSM of couple relationships during COVID-19

FSM (Conger et al., 1990; Conger et al., 1994) has been one of the leading conceptual models

over the past 30 years in explaining the pathways from economic hardship to couple relation-

ships. It theorizes on the indirect impact of economic hardship on couple dynamics through eco-

nomic pressure and emotional distress. The couple-level FSM (Conger et al., 1994; Conger

et al., 2010) posits that economic hardship increases economic pressure, which, in turn, leads to

emotional distress and eventually to greater challenges in couple functioning and relationships.

The couple-level FSM has been extended to child-level outcomes through parental distress,

interparental conflict, and negative parenting practices (Conger et al., 1992; Conger

et al., 2010). Conger et al. (2010) named the couple-level model “the FSM of romantic relation-

ships”(p. 689) and the extended model the “extension of the FSM to lives of children”(p. 692).

In this study, we focus on the couple-level FSM.

The COVID-related economic crisis provides a unique opportunity to study couple dynam-

ics based on the FSM because economic hardship occurred along with forced couple proximity

at home due to social distancing restrictions. In the nonempirical literature that emerged during

COVID-19, the FSM has often been mentioned while discussing how economic adversity

because of the pandemic has led to difficulties and problems in intimate partnerships (Prime

et al., 2020). However, to the best of our knowledge, empirical research drawn from the FSM

has not been published in the context of COVID-19 except for Low and Mounts’s(

2022) study.

It is essential to accumulate empirical evidence examining the underlying processes from eco-

nomic hardship to couple relationships during the economic downturn due to COVID-19.

Since its development during the U.S. Midwest farm economic crisis in the 1980s, the FSM

has been widely applied to empirical research in several countries, particularly during national

and local economic downturns. The global applications of the FSM include, but are not limited

to Korea (Kwon et al., 2003), China (Zhang et al., 2020), Argentina (Falconier, 2010), Belgium

(Ponnet et al., 2016), Finland (Kinnunen & Feldt, 2004), Portugal (Fonseca et al., 2021), and

ECONOMIC HARDSHIP AND COUPLE CONFLICT DURING COVID-1961