Robots, labor market outcomes and life satisfaction : evidence from South Korea

This paper investigates the impact of South Korea's rapid robotization, driven by the country's proactive robotization policies, on subjective well-being using individual and householdlevel panel data. We measure individual exposure to robotization by estimating the probability that individuals work in occupations susceptible to robotization. This approach allows us to study the effect of robotization at the individual level, including the unemployed and indirectly affected workers. Our findings indicate that the initial phase of automation adversely affected workers. However, this negative impact diminished during the subsequent phase of automation. This suggests that once workers adapt to an environment integrated with robots, they begin to experience the benefits of automation.