Younghwan Byun Research fellow

"Globalization, Economy, and Politics in Asia", Political Science Department, Stockholm Univeristy

"Labour relations and employment policy in comparative perpspective", Labour Relations and Human Resource Management (AKPA) Program, Stockholm University

Invited lectures on the Swedish welfare state and labor relations from a comparative perspective:

Delegations (of government officials and policymakers) from Malaysia (2023), Vietnam (2024, 2025), Uzbekistan (2023), Korea (2018, 2021, 2023), and Taiwan (2024), Board Members of Samsung Electronics (2023)

My research focuses on how labor market institutions and social policy shape economic inequality and insecurity, as well as political dynamics underlying (non) changes in these two institutional domains.

Under the supervision of Janet Gornick, my doctoral thesis (2016, City University of New York) investigates middle-class decline—conceptualized as income polarization—in 17 industrialized democracies from 1980 to 2010. While income inequality has received substantial scholarly attention, polarization of the income distribution has remained comparatively understudied. I focus on explaining why the size of the middle class has declined sharply in some countries but only slightly, or not at all, in others.

Using cross-national time-series data, I argue that this variation cannot be adequately explained by globalization or technological change, which have affected all advanced economies. Instead, I propose and test an institutional and political account: countries diverged because their wage-bargaining systems and social insurance institutions evolved differently, and these institutional trajectories were shaped by which type of right-wing party—Christian democratic or secular right—controlled government.

Byun, Y. (2016). The Politics of Middle Class Decline and Growth in Industrialized Democracies, 1980 to 2010. Doctoral Dissertation, City University of New York, U.S.A.

At SOFI, my research has focused on three research projects:

1. Trade Unions, Collective Bargaining Systems, and Socio-Economic Inequality

In collaboration with Tomas Korpi, I have conducted a three-year project (2023-2025) funded by the Swedish Central Bank’s Tercentenary Foundation (RJ). We examined how unions’ membership evolution—toward more highly educated, and more female, white-collar, and older workers—influences unions’ bargaining priorities on wages and social policy. This project produced:

Byun, Y. and Korpi, T. (2025) “From Compression to Dispersion: How Union Transformation Reconfigures Wage Inequality in the Knowledge Economy”, Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf086

Byun, Y. and Korpi, T. (2025) “Trade Unions and Social Policy in Post-industrial Economies: Changing Union Membership Composition and Its Policy Implications.” In G. Ramia. et al. (eds.), Research Handbook on Social Policy and Employment, Cheltenham: Edgar Elgar.

Byun, Y. and Korpi, T. (2025) The Evolving Membership of Trade Unions in Advanced Democracies. Dataset, Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research.

Byun, Y. and Korpi, T. “When Centralized Bargaining Ceases to Equalize Wages: Institutions and Bargaining Agents in the Knowledge Economy”, presented at the 2024 European Network for Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet) Conference.

Byun, Y. and Korpi, T. “Union Representation of Women and the Gender Pay Gap,” presented at the 2025 Uppsala Center for Labor Studies’ Inequalities in Working Life Workshop.

These studies highlight how internal union democracy and inclusive membership shape broader equality outcomes.

2. Social Insurance Systems and Economic Insecurity, with a focus on East Asia

With Kenneth Nelson (University of Oxford), I led a three-year project (2020-2023) on social policy expansion in East Asia. I developed the Social Policy in East Asia Dataset (SPEAD) and integrated it into the global SPIN database, enabling systematic cross-country comparisons of eligibility rules, coverage, benefit generosity and stratification in public pensions, unemployment insurance, work accident insurance, and parental leave programs.

Byun, Y. (2024). Social Policy in East Asia Dataset (SPEAD). Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research, accessible at https://www.su.se/social-policy-indicators-database/data

Using SPEAD, I published

Byun, Y. (2024). “Welfare Expansion without Inequality Reduction: Institutional Explanation of Old-Age Poverty in Korea”, Journal of Social Policy, 53(2): 491-511. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000460

This study explains why Korea’s substantial rise in pension expenditure has not translated into lower old-age poverty. Drawing on the ‘targeting within universalism’ approach and microsimulation evidence, I show that universal pension designs reduce poverty more effectively without requiring larger budgets.

Byun, Y. “From Productivism to Universalism: Welfare Transformation in East Asia Through a Social Citizenship Lens”, presented at the 2025 Foundation for International Studies of Social Security (FISS) Conference and currently under review.

It compares historical pension reforms in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan with European reference cases (Sweden, Germany, and the UK). It shows that while democratization pushed East Asian systems toward universalism, countries diverged in benefit distribution depending on party competition and union strength in the post-authoritarian period.

Nordensvärd, J., Byun, Y., Sommar, C-J. (2022). "Urban Food Security during COVID-19: The Limits of Statutory Welfare and the Role of Community Action in Sweden and Korea." Urban Governance, 2(2):328-335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ugj.2022.06.001

Byun, Y. (2019). “Government Redistribution and Public Opinion: A Matter of Contention or Consensus?” International Journal of Sociology, 49(3): 204-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2019.1605029

Byun, Y. (2017). "Old-Age Poverty in South Korea” in Inequality Matters, no.3. Luxembourg: LIS. https://www.lisdatacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/nl-2017-3.pdf

3. Labor Market Institutions and Social Policy Outcomes

This project examines the role of labor market institutions in shaping social policy outcomes.

Byun, Y. (2018) “Middle‑class Single Parents.” In Nieuwenhuis, R., Maldonado, L. (eds.), The Triple Bind of Single Parent Families. Resources, Employment and Policies to Improve Well-Being, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 223-238.

This book chapter articel shows that work-family policies improve single parents’ economic security more effectively when collective bargaining coverage is broad.

Kang, J and Byun, Y (forthcoming) “Beyond De-familialization: Work-Family Policy for Gender Egalitarian Societies”, Social Policy & Administration SI 2027.

This study examines how "long work hours (and days)" mediate work-family policy outcomes across advanced democracies, including Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.