Globalization, Economy, and Politics in Asia for MA program in Asian Studies, Political Science Department

Labour relations and employment policy in Asia for SOFI's Labor Market Studies with Management (AKPA) Course

Master thesis supervision at the political science department.

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

Delegations of policymakers and government officials from Malaysia (2023), Vietnam (2024, 2025), Uzbekistan (2023), Korea (2018, 2021, 2023), and Taiwan (2024), the Board Members of Samsung Electronics (2023), and students at Yonsei University, Korea (2022, 2024) and Soochow University, Taiwan (2022)

Young-hwan earned BA at Yonsei University, Korea, and MA and PhD in political science (with comparative politics major and public policy minor) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, U.S.A. in 2016. He came to SOFI as postdoc researcher in October, 2015 and since 2020 has been working as research fellow (assistant professor rank) at SOFI (social policy unit).

The overarching research theme is to study under what conditions social policies and labor market institutions can mediate inequality and poverty more effectively in response to structural changes, e.g., technological change, pandemic, immigration, and demographic ageing. His research mainly relies on statistical analysis but also utilizes qualitative methods. 

Under the supervision of Janet Gornick, Young-hwan’s doctoral thesis examined cross-national and longitudinal variation in the size of middle-income strata in 22 OECD countries from 1980 to 2010. Whereas globalization theory and technological change theory attribute the decline of middle-income strata to a common development in the industrial world, this study highlighted the role of  labor market institutions. In particular, it presented the positive effects of trade unions on the size of the middle-income strata. Trade unions not only directly influence income distribution through collective wage bargaining, but also indirectly through constraining right-wing governments' welfare retrenchment. 

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.

Young-hwan’s research at SOFI includes:

1) A comparative study among OECD countries that examines how tax and transfer policy jointly affect the government capacity to reduce income inequality and individual preferences over redistribution. This project has been funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE).

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

2) Comparative research on welfare development in East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia. For this project, Byun constructed the East Asian Social Policy Dataset (SPEAD), using the framework of Social Policy Indicator Database (SPIN). The new dataset enables a systematic analysis on the evolution of social citizenship in East Asia in comparison with those in Western Europe and North America. This project has been funded by the Korea Foundation and conducted in collaboration with Kenneth Nelson, Ola Sjöberg, and Sebastian Siren.

Byun, Y. (2025). “The Transformation of East Asian Welfare States since Democratization from a Social Citizenship Perspective.” The 2025 FISS Conference, Sigtuna, Sweden.

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

Byun, Y. (2024) Social Policy in East Asia Dataset (SPEAD). Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University. 

Byun, Y. (2017). “Old-Age Poverty in South Korea” in Inequality Matters-LIS newsletter, no.3. Luxembourg: LIS.

3) Comparative research on non-state social welfare. It examined the role of voluntary and community organizations (VCOs) during the COVID-19 pandemic in helping the most vulnerable individuals who have no or limites access to statutory welfare. It compares global cities in Sweden, UK, China, Singapore, and Australia. This project was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS) and conducted in collaboration with Johan Nordensvärd (KTH, Royal Institute of Technology), Catalina Turcu (University College of London), Bingqin Li (University of New South Wales), and Jiwei Qian (National University of Singapore). Project 'FULL' webpage

Nordensvärd, J., Li, B., Turcu, C., Qian, J., Byun, Y., Li, Y., ... & Rotolo, M. (2023). "State and communities in urban food governance: Lessons from COVID and insights for the future." Urban Governance, 3(2): 93-6.

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. 

4) Comparative research on trade unions and wage inequality in the knowledge economy. In collaboration with Tomas Korpi (SOFI), this on-going project examines how unions mediate wage inequality in knowledge economies marked by rising educational stratification, using original panel data for 33 OECD countries from 2002 to 2020. This project has been funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ).

Byun, Y. & Korpi. T. (forthcoming). “Trade Unions and Social Policy in Post-industrial Economies: Changing Union Membership Composition and Its Policy Implications.” In Irving et al. (eds.) The Handbook on Employment and Social Policy. UK: Edgar Elgar.     

Byun, Y. & Korpi, T. (2024). “From Compression to Dispersion: How Union Transformation Reconfigures Wage Inequality in the Knowledge Economy.” The 2024 ESPAnet Conference, Tampere, Finland.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Government Redistribution and Public Opinion

  2019. Young-hwan Byun. International Journal of Sociology 49 (3), 204-221

  Article

  Previous comparative research has been guided by the idea that the level of government redistribution accords with the degree of consensus on redistribution among citizens. By extending the scope of analysis to non-Western rich democracies, I offer an alternative account that associates public opinion with actual redistribution. I argue that it is not a broad consensus but a clearly formed contention among citizens that concurs with more redistributive governments. Using the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2016 data, this study compares social cleavages in redistributive preferences in 23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Countries with the least egalitarian governments, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, and Israel, have broadly consented high-levels of support for redistribution. What distinguishes them from more redistributive countries is that those common redistributive cleavages such as income, education, and gender are either nonexistent or weak, indicating that the economically disadvantaged do not prefer redistribution significantly more than the advantaged. The statistical results support an explanation of the association between redistributive preferences and the size of redistribution based on “cleavage” rather than “consensus.”

  Read more about Government Redistribution and Public Opinion

• Urban food security during COVID-19: The limits of statutory welfare and the role of community action in Sweden and Korea

  2022. Johan Nordensvärd, Young-hwan Byun, Carl-Johan Sommar. Urban Governance

  Article

  During COVID-19, the demand for food relief exploded as vulnerable people were suddenly more numerous and visible than ever, for which statutory welfare was not ready to cope with. We examine the role of voluntary and community organizations (VCOs) in food relief in Stockholm, Sweden and Seoul, Korea. Interpretive analysis of interview materials reveals how VCOs perceive their role vis-à-vis the state and take actions against urban food insecurity during the pandemic. The limits of statutory welfare in reaching out to vulnerable individuals reserve an indispensable role for community action in food relief even with the well-developed welfare state. Despite starkly different welfare state contexts, VCOs in both cases complement statutory welfare by swiftly identifying the risk of hunger and organizing community actions to meet the emergent needs. Given that Sweden and Korea represent the least likely cases to observe welfare provision by VCOs, the findings may have implications to general understanding of VCOs as indispensable welfare provider.

  Read more about Urban food security during COVID-19

• Middle-class single parents

  2022. Young-hwan Byun. The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families, 223-238

  Chapter

  Read more about Middle-class single parents

• State and communities in urban food governance: Lessons from COVID and insights for the future

  2023. Johan Nordensvärd (et al.). Urban Governance 3 (2), 93-96

  Article

  Read more about State and communities in urban food governance

• Welfare Expansion without Inequality Reduction: Institutional Explanation of Old-Age Poverty in Korea

  2022. Young-hwan Byun. Journal of Social Policy

  Article

  Old-age poverty in Korea remains exceptionally high among OECD countries despite a significant expansion in pension expenditure. This article presents an institutional explanation for such a puzzle. Using ‘targeting within universalism’ as the analytic framework, this study examines the institutional effects of pension models on old-age poverty in Korea. Firstly, comparative analysis finds that universal provision of pensions negatively affects old-age poverty independent of the expenditure size, identifying Korean pensions as the least universal among OECD countries. Secondly, institutional analysis of the Korean pension system explains why the expenditure growth left a large share of the elderly with no or a partial pension. Finally, microsimulation analysis examines alternative assistance pension models for their potential to alter poverty outcomes. Strikingly, universal models alleviate old-age poverty more cost-effectively than the extant targeting model, questioning the efficiency-based justification for low-income targeting. In particular, the universal floor model appears to be the most effective, allowing greater benefits to the poorer without a means test. Even for assistance benefits, universal models may better remedy poverty under such conditions as low take-up among the needy, prevalence of low-income incidence, and pro-rich distribution of extant social transfers.

  Read more about Welfare Expansion without Inequality Reduction

Show all publications by Younghwan Byun at Stockholm University