Low Fertility in Korea: Situation Analysis and Policy Implications
Though still one of the youngest countries in OECD, Korea has experienced a rapid demographic transition to a ‘hyper-ageing society’. One of the drivers of this transition is a continuous fertility decline which brings the country to the ‘lowest-low’ level of fertility for the last 15 years. South Korea’s total fertility rate (TFR) last year plummeted to 1.05, marking the lowest among all the OECD countries. TFR in Korea is predicted to fall further to be less than 1.0 this year.
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1. Falling Fertility in South Korea
Korea’s extremely low fertility has not been a new phenomenon as it has long been lower than most of other developed countries; after 2002, it has become even lower than that of Japan, Korea’s neighboring country, whose fertility has been exhibiting the lowest level in the world in the past.
Figure 1. Changes in the Total Fertility Rate in Korea and Other Major OECD Countries, during 1990-2017
Source: Databank World Development Indicators, The World Bank
The rapidly decreasing birth rate in Korea is in line with falling marriage rates; the marriage rate has been steadily declining for the last 20 years, and this caused a remarkable decrease in the proportion of premenopausal women who are married, from 71% to 52%. This would have made a huge impact on fertility rate, as childbirth outside marriage is not accepted in Korean society due to the influence of strict Confucianism. The proportion of non-marital births is only about 1.5% in Korea and Japan, which is exceptionally low in OECD countries. Therefore, one of the crucial factors in the steep plunge in the birth rate is a delay in marriage.
Figure 2. Plunging Married Population among Women of Premenopausal Age
Source: Figure taken from Chul-hee Lee’s work (2012)
2. What Is Causing Korea’s Low Fertility?
“We do not want our careers to be interrupted by our marriage and childbirth”, says Eunji, a 37-year-old Korean woman, “that is why women give up or postpone their marriage”. As Eunji claims, young women in Korea these days think differently in many ways compared to their counterparts in upper generations. In the last few decades, Korean women’s educational attainment has dramatically improved, and they now want to achieve the same labor market success as men.
However, Korea’s labor market institution seems to not be embracing the desires of Korean women. Korea’s female employment rate belongs to the lowest group in OECD, which is in contrast to Sweden or the Netherlands whose fertility presented a rebound after securing women’s equal status in the labor market. Korea also shows the highest gender-wage gap among the OECD countries, with women earning only 64% relative to men. The results from the two indicators – female employment and gender-wage gap – originate from a common phenomenon: the interruption of careers after childbirth accounts for permanent cessation of employment or decrease in wage relative to men after reentry.
Figure 3. Female Employment Rate in Korea and Other Major OECD Countries
Source: Female Employment Rate, OECD Database
Some other aspects of the labor market are also not family-friendly and make child rearing even harder. Alicia Adsera (2011), Professor at Princeton University, asserted that “wide access to part-time and public sector employment are significantly associated with high fertility.” However, public sector employment with part-time jobs, essential for flexibly moderating working hours in the early period of childbearing, are not common in Korea. On top of that, Korean workers work the longest hours in OECD, which is 1.5 times longer than that of Germans. These labor market conditions make it difficult for Koreans to achieve a good balance between work and family.
Figure 4. Korea’s long working hours, in Comparison to other major OECD Countries
Source: Hours Worked, OECD Database
Gender inequality within family is another major factor that drives low marriage and fertility. Still, most of the Korean males work much less in their home – only one fifth of Korean females do. Moreover, public childcare services available for mothers, though increasing, are short in supply. Dual burdens from work and care makes it hard for Korean women to persist in their own career after childbirth. That is why the situations in both family and labor market brought about a popular slogan, ‘no marriage, no childbirth’ among young Korean feminists.
3. Policy Implications
Last month, a popular Korean politician claimed the government should provide substantial financial compensation for women who have childbirths. However, Korea should now try to adopt new strategies of emancipation for women rather than simply conferring cash benefits. Korea can extract some implications from Swedish social policy, despite different institutional backgrounds. Swedish policy researcher Gunnar Anderssen (2007) asserted in one of his papers, “Swedish family policy never has been directed specifically at encouraging childbearing but instead have been aimed to strengthen women’s attachment to the labor market and promote gender equality”.
Firstly, parental leave which can be equally used by both mothers and fathers is essential for securing women’s labor market status and promoting gender equality. With a relatively equal use of leave by fathers, mothers can take a shorter leave and thereby return to their jobs earlier. Fathers can also take responsibility of childcare and share a larger amount of household work.
The choice to work flexibly during the early period of childrearing is also necessary for mothers not to lose their career. In the Netherlands, employers positively offer part-time jobs for mothers, so they can balance work and care. In this regard, expanding flexible-time work without sacrificing mothers’ status at the workplace will be needed in Korea. Increasing the availability of part-time jobs would also contribute to shortening Koreans’ preposterously long hours of work.
Finally, family policy to supply public childcare services should be augmented. Andersson (2007) goes on to suggest that public childcare is a core component of Swedish family policy, as it assists parents in becoming dual-breadwinners, promotes gender equality within family, and provides fair opportunities for children from diverse backgrounds. Thus, the government should amplify decent public daycare services to meet social demands.
A number of researchers suggest that fertility is not just about individual decisions, but the matter of an encouragement from diverse economic and welfare institutions. Many women are giving up births not because they dislike having children, but because having children in Korea is too costly compared to the long-term rewards of building families with children. In order to reverse the long-time downward trend of fertility, individuals, employers, and government policies should all fundamentally change to make the overall milieu of Korea and its social and economic institutions more family-friendly.
*This article was extracted from an original piece co-worked by Asghar Zaidi, Professor of Gerontology at Seoul National University.
References
Adsera, A. (2011), Where Are the Babies? Labor Market Conditions and Fertility in Europe, European Journal of Population, Vol. 27, pp. 1-32.
Andersson, G. (2007), Family Policies and Fertility in Sweden, Stockholm Research Reports in Demography.
Lee, C. (2012), A Decomposition of Decline in Total Fertility Rate in Korea : Effects of Changes in Marriage and Marital Fertility, Korea Journal of Population Studies, Vol. 35(3), pp. 117-144.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.
Kun Lee is from Seoul, South Korea, and he previously studied at Seoul National University where he acquired B.A. in Social Welfare and B.A. in Economics. He is currently interested in broad topics covering population ageing and social policy, which involves fertility, health, old-age labour, pension, and social care. He is also looking at comparative labour market institutions and inequality which he could relate to the trends of fertility and marriage.