Socioeconomic Differences in Young Adults’ Future Outlook and Associations with Perceived Fairness and Social Capital in South Korea

1. Introduction

What factors shape young adults’ outlook on the future? In particular, among those who do not come from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, what makes some of them to maintain an optimistic view of their future? Understanding these dynamics is essential for identifying the conditions that foster hope among youth in uncertain times. Particularly, the context of South Korea is valuable, as Korea’s fertility rate, lowest in the world, reflects prevalence of the bleak outlook on future among South Korean young adults. How individuals perceive their future prospects plays a crucial role in shaping key life decisions, including those about family formation (Vignoli, Bazzani, Guetto, Minello, & Pirani, 2020; Kwan & Choi, 2023). While early studieshavelargely focused on economic instability and structural barrierssuch as unstable employment, housing insecurity, and educational costs, aburgeoningliterature has turned attention to the importance of subjective perceptions (An, Lee, & Woo, 2022; Kwag, Baek, & Kang, 2024).

Besides decisions on family formation, much more decisionsin life planning are not only shaped by immediate material circumstances, but also by long-term subjective expectations about the future. These expectations reflect deeper social sentiments, such as hope or despair. In South Korea, where social discourse is increasingly dominated by concerns over inequality and perceived immobility, it becomes even more critical to understand how young people interpret their chances for a better life.

Public discourse in South Korea has frequently featured terms such as the “gold spoon vs. dirt spoon” or the “N-Po generation (a younger generation—mostly people in their 20s and 30s—who feel forced to give up (Po)multiple (N) important life goals),” reflecting a perceived erosion of fairness in socioeconomic mobility. These discourses are not merely rhetorical; they are rooted in lived experiences of intense competition, job market precarity, and unaffordable housing (Lee, Shin, & Yoon, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these pressures, disproportionately impacting younger generations and deepening feelings of frustration and social disconnection. As previous studies have noted, perceived fairness is a strong predictor of life satisfaction (Lee & Park, 2021), yet few studies have examined how it intersects with young adults’ future expectations.

Future life expectations also tend to vary according to the strength of social networks, trust, and engagement in donation and volunteer activities. Furthermore, it is notable that the level of social bonding, trust among young adults is not uniform across the socioeconomic status, suggesting the intertwined dynamics between socio-economic status and future prospect.

Recognizing these dynamics, the present study aims to examine how perceived fairness and the strength of social capital relates to young adults’ future prospect, and how this relationship differs by one’s status. Based on prior literature on social capital (Hwang, 2021), we selected three representative variables: social networks, trust, and reciprocity. This perspective allows us to move beyond material conditions and examine how social attitudes and behaviors shape the ways in which young people envision their futures. In order to provide empirical evidence, this study employs the Korean’s happiness survey. Two waves from the datasets are combined, and 6,286 South Korean young adults, aged between 19 and 34 years old are analyzed.

This study contributes to the existing literature in at least three significant ways.

First, this study contributes to the literature by identifying the determinants of young adults’ future prospects. While prior research has primarily focused on current levels of life satisfaction or subjective well-being, this study shifts the analytical focus to how youth perceive their future, a dimension that is increasingly recognized as central to understanding long-term life outcomes. Perceptions of the future play a significant role in shaping not only life-course decisions such as family formation and career planning, but also political orientations and social behaviors.

In particular, this study builds on and extends the findings of Kwan and Choi (2023), who provided that future prospects are associated with fertility intentions. This study draws attention to an earlier part of correlation chain: examining what shapes future prospects. Although there is growing consensus on the importance of future prospect, empirical research remains limited. This study addresses the gap by offering a systematic analysis of both attitudinal (e.g., fairness, trust) and behavioral (e.g., social networks, donation/volunteer activities) factors on young adults’ expectations for their future.

Second, this study examines a range of social attitudes and behaviors which are relevant to young adults’ future, including perceived fairness, social networks, trust, and donation/volunteering. Among these, social networks, trust, and donation/volunteering have been reviewed in prior research on social capital (Hwang, 2021; Hwang, 2024). Building on this foundation, the present study introduces fairness as an additional dimension and categorizes these elements into attitudinal and behavioral components. We then analyze them collectively to explore their implications for individuals’ future outlooks. In particular, donation and volunteer activities are considered as meaningful factors in this study.

While some scholars have attempted to conceptualize such behaviors in terms of altruistic capitalor reciprocal norms (Ashraf & Bandiera, 2017; Hwang, 2021), few studies have examined how donation and volunteer activities are linked to future prospect. By drawing attention to previously overlooked behavioral dimensions, this study expands existing perspectives and offers a more nuanced understanding of how social embeddedness may shape youth perceptions of the future.

Third, this study underscores the heterogeneity in how social attitudes and behaviors relate to future prospect across different income groups. The findings reveal that the factors shaping young adults’ future expectations vary significantly depending on household income level. For instance, trust and social networks appears particularly pronounced among those in lower-income groups, while donation and volunteer activities are beneficial among those in higher-income groups. This suggests that the role of social attitudes and behaviors in shaping future prospect is not uniform, but context-dependent, reflecting the differing resources and constraints faced by youth from varying economic backgrounds.

This study is constructed as follows: existing literature is reviewed in the following section. Data, analytical samples and measurements are introduced, followed by main findings. Interpretation and implications will be discussed in the final section.

2. Theoretical framework

3. Measurement

2) Measurement

(1) Dependent variable

Main outcome variable is future prospect for the life satisfaction: “How do you predict that you will be satisfied with your life 5 years later?”. Respondents are asked to answer by 11 scales from 0, very unsatisfied through 5 more or less to 10 very satisfied. The mean of future prospect for the life satisfaction is 7 (Table 1). Compared to the level of life satisfaction in present (mean=6.5), overall future prospect is reported to be more positive on average. The skewness of the future prospect, -0.61 also supports this.

<Table 1>

Sample characteristics(n=6,286)

(2) Independent variable

The independent variables of major interest are perception of fairness, social network, trust, and donation/volunteering. The perceived social fairness, is measured by an indexed variable combining questions regarding several realms. Respondents are asked to answer to a question “What is your evaluation on equality of each realm in our society: education opportunity, employment opportunity, enactment of law, income and asset, power, and gender” by five scales from 0 very unfair to 5 very fair. The perceived social fairness is constructed using the mean of these six answers. Table 1 reports that the perceived fairness among the respondents are 3.04, with a normal distribution.

Social network is measured by an indexed variable constructed using three questions: if there’s someone who can lend money when you suddenly need a large amount; if there’s someone who can help when you are in pain and difficult to move; if there’s someone you can talk when you’re feeling depressed or stressed. Answers from each question is recoded as 0 if a respondent has no one to ask help, 1 if a respondent has family or kinship to ask help, and 2 if a respondent has social bond besides family or kinship to ask help including friends, acquittances, social institutions or even paid service. The mean of the answers from three occasions are used to proxy social network. The social network is reported to be 1.15 in Table 1.

General trust is measured with five scales from 1, cannot trust at all to 5, can trust. The mean of trust level is 3.47 among the analysis sample as in Table 1.

Lastly, engagement in donation or volunteering is measured by an experience of either regular or irregular donation and volunteer community service during the last one year. It is recoded to be 1 if a respondent has never participated in donation or community service during last one year, 2 if the one has ever participated on an irregular basis, and 3 if the one participates on a regular basis. The means of engagement indonation and community service is 1.19 asin Table 1.

(3) Model specification

To examine how the perception of fairness, social network, trust and engagement in donation/volunteering relates to the future prospects among the young adults, this study implements hierarchical multiple regression. The predictor variables are added to a regression model in steps. Sociodemographic controls include sex, age, marital status, household income, education level and wave fixed effect.

4. Findings

How are social attitudes and behaviors related to the future prospect? To examine how different levels of fairness, social network, trust, and donation/volunteer are associated with future prospect, hierarchical multiple regression is implemented and its results are presented in Table 2. The dependent variable is the reported level of respondent’s future optimism. Key predictors are perceived fairness, social networks, donation/volunteering behavior, and trust, along with sociodemographic controls.

<Table 2>

Regression result

Model 1 includes only perceived fairness as the main predictor and shows a strong positive association (β = 0.16, p < .001). This suggests that individuals who perceive society as more fair are more likely to hold positive expectations about their future. The effect of perceived fairness remains robustand significant across all four models,albeit slight decrease with the additional variables.

Model 2 adds social networkvariable, which are also significantly associated with future prospects (β = 0.24, p < .01). This association remains significant even after controlling for other variables in Models 3 and 4, confirming the existing literature (Putnam, 2000; Boat et al., 2022; Wittner & Kauffeld, 2023). The result suggests the importance of social connectedness for fostering a positive prospect among young adults.

Model 3 introduces participation in donation and volunteer activities. The results show a positive relationship (β = 0.14, p < .001),supporting the prior study which suggested that altruistic behavior improves individual and collective outcomes (Ashraf & Bandiera, 2017). In the final model (Model 4), trust is added and shows a strong and statistically significant relationship (β = 0.19, p < .001), confirming the positive role of trust.

Among control variables, higher education level, higher household income, and being married are all positively associated with future prospects. Conversely, being male and older age are associated with lower levels of future optimism.

Then, how these relationships differ by different income groups? We first examined whether young adults’ future outlook varies by household income. As shown in Figure 1, the mean future outlook increases steadily across income groups: 6.81 among the low-income group, 7.04 among the middle-income group, and 7.14 among the high-income group. Although the differences are modest, the upward gradient is clear, indicating that young adults from higher-income households tend to hold a more optimistic view of their near future.

<Figure 1>

Future outlook by income group

Then, how do perceived fairness, social network, trust, and donation/volunteer are associated with future prospect across different income groups?

Table 3 presents regression results by household income subgroups, revealing distinct patterns in how social attitudes and behaviors relate to young adults’ future prospects.

<Table 3>

Subgroup analysis by household income

In Lower-income Group, perceived fairness, trust, and education are positively associated with future outlook. Notably, social network size shows a marginally significant effect, suggesting that interpersonal connections may play a relatively greater role for youth with fewer economic resources.

In contrast, in Higher-income Group, participation in donation and volunteer activities stands out as a strong and significant predictor. This suggests that for more affluent youth, altruistic engagement may be more associated with their sense of future positiveness, potentially reflecting internalized values or civic-minded orientations. Perceived fairness and trust also remain significant in this group.

In Middle-income Group, perceived fairness and trust retain positive associations with future outlook, but neither network nor donation/volunteer shows a significant effect, implying a weaker role of social behavioral factors for this group.

Taken together, these results underscore the different effects of social behaviors across income groups: network-based social embeddedness appears more critical for lower-income youth, while altruistic behavior such as donation and volunteer is more closely tied to future outlooks among higher-income youth. This suggests that while relational and attitudinal factors matter across youth with different backgrounds, the mechanisms through which social context influences future perception may vary.

5. Discussions

As South Korea continues to experience historically low fertility rates, the need to understand the perceptions, experiences, and aspirations of young adults has become more urgent than ever. In this context, the concept of future prospects—how young people view their future life—offers valuable insight into how individuals engage with broader social and economic structures. This study provides empirical evidence on how the perception of fairness, trust, social bonding, and reciprocal norms shape the future outlook. More importantly, one of the key findings is that this effect varies depending on one’s status.

The findings confirm that future prospectsare influenced by the perception of fairness. generalized trust, social bonding, and donation/volunteering. The more fairly an individual perceives their society to be, the more positively they tend to view their future. Also, the individuals with higher level of trust, networks and reciprocal norms are more likely to maintain a positive outlook on their future.

More notably, these effects differ across the household income level. Specifically, Young adults from lower-income families are more likely to envision a positive future when they have strong social networks and a high level of trust. In contrast, higher-income youth are more influenced by engagement in donating and volunteering, along with trust. These results suggest that for economically disadvantaged youth, social bonding and trust are key to shaping their future outlook, whereas for their more advantaged peers, fostering norms of reciprocity and trust appears to be more influential.

Why might network ties and trust be especially influential for low-income group? One possible explanation lies in the limited availability of formal institutional support. For economically disadvantaged individuals, informal networks often become vital substitutes. A young adult from a low-income household who is part of a church group, student organization, or neighborhood community may gain not only emotional support but also access to essential resources—such as information on scholarships, job opportunities, or housing. These experiences can gradually foster a sense of societal trust and belonging, shaping a more positive outlook on the future.

In contrast, higher-income youth tend to rely more on engagement in donation and voluntary community service. These activities not only reflect a sense of altruism, pro-sociality, reciprocity and values, thereby enriching private utility (Ashraf & Bandiera, 2017), but also reinforce perceptions of shared purpose. For economically advantaged individuals, participating in giving and volunteering may affirm their belief that they are part of a cooperative and just society, thereby enhancing their future expectations.

As a follow-up study, it would be valuable to examine gender differences in determinants of future outlooks. Following the reboot of feminism, many young women have become more active in university communities—such as courses, clubs, and peer groups—to build networks and engage with feminist ideas (Jung, 2025). These experiences reflect their growing awareness of gender inequality and interest in fairness issues in daily life (Jung, 2024). In this context, gender may shape how young people form social ties and perceive their future, suggesting the need for gender-sensitive research on future expectations.

This study sheds light on the distinct ways in which perceived fairness, social network, trust and donation/volunteer activities shape youth’s future prospect, depending on their socioeconomic background. For young adults from the lower-income group, close social bonds, trust and perceived fairness play a critical role in fostering hope and possibility. In contrast, for those from the higher-income group, engagement in donation and volunteer activities, alongside trust and perception of fairness is more strongly linked to positive future expectations. These findings suggest that building inclusive pathways to trust, connection, and civic participation can help ensure that all young people have the social foundation to envision meaningful futures. Although this study focuses on young adults in South Korea, the findings may have broader relevance to other contexts experiencing youth precarity and rising inequality.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2023S1A5B5A17087630).

This work is developed from a manuscript awarded at the 1st Happiness Research Paper Contest by the National Assembly Futures Institute.

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