The Interactive Effects of Socioeconomic Status and Discrimination Experience on Marriage Migrant Wives' Life Satisfaction

Abstract

This study investigated the interactive effects of socioeconomic status and discrimination experience on life satisfaction among marriage migrant wives in South Korea. Instead of using a single variable or a single composite index as a measurement of socioeconomic status, both educational attainment and monthly household income level were used to measure marriage migrant wives socioeconomic status in the present study. Followings were the research questions for this study.

1. Do marriage migrant wives perceived discrimination experiences predict their life satisfaction? 2. Do marriage migrant wives education and income levels each moderate the impact of perceived discrimination experiences on their life satisfaction? 3. Do marriage migrant wives education and income levels have combined moderating effect on the association between perceived discrimination experiences and life satisfaction?

Data from the 2012 National Survey on Multicultural Families was used and 12,531 marriage migrant wives participated in this survey. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS for descriptive statistics and hierarchical multiple analysis. The main results for the present study were as follows:

1. Discrimination experience significantly and negatively affect marriage migrant wives life satisfaction.

2. Education and household income level each significantly moderated the association between discrimination experience and life satisfaction. However, the moderating effects were different. While marriage migrant wives with higher level of household income were shown to be less impacted by discrimination experience, marriage migrant wives with higher educational attainment were indicated to be more vulnerable to discrimination, reporting significantly lower level of life satisfaction.

3. Education and household income interactively moderated the relationship between discrimination and life satisfaction. That is, different combinations of socioeconomic status are affected by discrimination differently. Among the four combinations of marriage migrant wives (low education/low income, low education/high income, high education/low income, high education/high income), low-education/high-income marriage migrant wives were least impacted by discrimination. On the other hand, high-education/low-income marriage migrant wives showed the greatest vulnerability to discrimination.

In summary, marriage migrant wives education level and household income were found to moderate the association between discrimination experience and life satisfaction independently and interactively. Findings of the present study suggested that socioeconomic status should be taken into consideration in future studies that aim to look at the effects of discrimination, or research that examines coping strategies to help the marriage migrant wives to deal with discrimination.