Robots, Labor Market Outcomes and Life Satisfaction : Evidence from South Korea

In this paper, we study the impact of South Korea’s rapid robotization from 2005 onwards on life satisfaction using a rich individual and household panel dataset on labor market outcomes and their subjective well being. The effects of individual and household level robot exposure on workers' life satisfaction are explored through the labor market outcomes. Our results show that workers in occupations highly vulnerable to being replaced by robots experience a negative impact on their life satisfaction. Furthermore, based on the household-level panel, we find out that between 2005 and 2009 spouses' life satisfaction is negatively related to husbands' robot exposure mainly due to the decline in households' aggregated income