Evaluation of East Asian countries’ policy response to low fertility: Lessons from China, South Korea, and Japan
Executive Summary
The global fertility rate has been decreasing over the past several decades, along with the aging of the population, which has created a population crisis in many countries. The problem is severe as it shrinks the labor force and hinders economic growth. Compared to other countries, East Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan have tended to have much lower fertility rates, so they have implemented different approaches to address the population crisis. China tried to loosen its strict birth policies, South Korea decided to strengthen Social Responsibility for Childbirth and Child Rearing, while Japan aimed to improve women’s work-life balance. And based on empirical evidence, for a country that suffers from low fertility issues, the best option would be to implement South Korea’s policy to boost its fertility rate in the short run and Japan’s policy to stabilize its fertility rate in the long run.
Introduction
Low fertility rates have plagued East Asia for the past several decades, and this problem has grown even more severe in recent years. In 2020, China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore had total fertility rates below the replacement-level fertility rate of 2.1: China’s was 1.3, Japan’s was 1.36, South Korea’s was 0.84, and Singapore’s was 1.2. The low fertility rates in these countries thus shrank the labor force and harmed their economies. Initially, declining employment only leads to a slight decrease in total output. However, as the trend continued, production decreased on a large scale which seriously affected the economy. The labor shortage was part of why Japan in the 1990s, South Korea in the 2000s, and China recently have all experienced some degree of the economic downturn.
On the other hand, prior to the 1990s, these countries have also seen a vast increase in life expectancy thanks to periods of robust economic growth in the past several decades. For instance, the life expectancy in China was only 66.84 years in 1980, and it has steadily increased to 77.4 years in 2021, approaching the life expectancy of the United States. South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have followed a similar trend. As lifespan has increased and the fertility rate has decreased at roughly the same time in these countries, a crisis has emerged because there is a shrinking labor force combined with an aging population.
The aging problem is not limited to East Asia, as Europe and America also have aging population problems. However, these countries tend to experience a smaller decline in the workforce, as they have more immigrants and a slightly higher fertility rate than East Asian countries. In 2020, America’s fertility rate was 1.64, which compensates for their loss of workforce to some degree. But as US’s fertility rate is still below the replacement-level fertility of 2.1, the low fertility issue still somehow persists. Though many other national economies, such as Spain and Italy, are more heavily affected by low fertility. It is essential to have effective policies that raise the fertility rate in these countries. By analyzing the effectiveness of these policies in East Asian countries, other countries can pick the most effective policies and use them to combat impending population crises.
Strategies for Increasing the Fertility Rate
China’s Strategy: Loosen or Eliminate Strict Birth Control Policies
China attempted to increase its fertility rate by replacing the one-child policy with a more lenient two-child policy. Since China experienced an enormous population increase of 260 million between 1950 and 1970, fear of overpopulation compelled the government to introduce the voluntary later-longer-fewer policy (a type of family planning policy) in 1970, which encouraged later marriage, longer intervals between children, and fewer children. Later, they implemented the strict one-child policy in 1979. With the implementation of the one-child policy, the total fertility rate of China decreased from 2.9 in 1979 to 1.66 in 2015, which was well below the replacement fertility level of 2.1 (Zeng & Hensketh, 2016). As a result, the fear of overpopulation transformed into the fear of depopulation, which motivated the government to boost the total fertility rate rather than restrict it. Thus, in January 2016, China replaced the one-child policy with a two-child policy, allowing each family to have a maximum of two children instead of one.
The two-child policy was thought to boost the total fertility rate in China, and it did see some success initially. Li et al. (2019) estimated that the policy led to an additional 5.40 million births to multiparous women within 18 months. Since multiparous women are women who had at least one previous birth, they are more likely to be over 35 years old than nulliparous women who had never given birth before. Some scholars suggest that the enhancing birth rate of multiparous women is primarily due to healthier financial status compared to nulliparous women that tend to be younger. As older women tended to respond to the policy relief more positively despite having a higher risk of giving birth, it signaled the two-child policy had boosted fertility by fulfilling the desire of some women to have more children.
While the policy led to an increase in birth populations in China, it also had some limitations that we could not ignore. First of all, only a few countries have ever enforced a two-child policy aside from China, including Vietnam, Singapore, and Iran. Nowadays, most countries do not have a birth control policy due to fertility declines worldwide. Hence it might be difficult for many countries to usefully deploy China’s policy. Moreover, the effect of the approach might be temporal, as studies of China’s two-child policy shows that the trend of rising fertility was nearly nonexistent after the policy had been in effect for 18 months (Li et al., 2019). As a result, long-term growth of the total fertility rate might not be attainable, so it is unlikely to be an effective policy option for countries with low total fertility rates.
South Korea’s Strategy: Strengthen Social Responsibility for Childbirth and Child Rearing
South Korea tried to increase its fertility rate by strengthening society’s responsibility for childbirth and child-rearing. Like China, South Korea experienced high population growth with a total fertility rate of 6.0 during the mid-twentieth century. As a result, Korean policymakers were also concerned that the problem of overpopulation might hinder the nation’s economic growth and the process of industrialization. Accordingly, the government implemented some family planning policies that aim to reduce women’s unwanted births through information, basic maternal and childcare services, as well as family planning services in 1962. The Korean government successfully decreased the total fertility rate to 1.5 in the late 1980s, but the family planning policies continued to be in place even though the fertility rate has already been low enough. (Chung, 2015). Some Korean policymakers began to realize the problem of low fertility in the 1990s, though there was still no governmental response to it until 2005. In 2002, the Korea National Pension Institute found that the pension fund will soon be exhausted due to a decline in the workforce and a rising number of retirees, which alerted the government and motivated it to implement some pro-natal policies instead. In 2005, the total fertility rate of South Korea had dropped to an all-time low of 1.08, which raised the alarm to the South Korean government and drove them to implement the “The First Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aged Society” in 2006 (Lee, 2009).
The policy saw some success in increasing fertility by providing societal support for child-birth and child-rearing for low-income families, as the total fertility rate of South Korea increased dramatically from 1.08 in 2005 to 1.26 in 2007 (Lee, 2009). Professor Lee (2009) also found out that two policies tend to be statistically significant in facilitating this positive change, which are “establishing a health and nutrition system for maternity and childhood” and “support for childcare and pre-school costs”. Establishing a health and nutrition system for maternity and childhood affects women’s decision to have children as they can pay less for raising the children, and covering childcare as well as pre-school costs has similar effects. As the above two policies reduced the burden on low-income families to nurture their children, it was inevitable that they would succeed to some degree.
However, some other factors contributed to the rising fertility rates during this time. One major factor was economic growth. As the success of such policies in raising fertility was accompanied by economic recovery in Korea, the effect of such policies alone might be questionable in the long run. Stagnation or recession could have slowed or reversed the increase in fertility (Lee, 2009). For instance, the rise of the total fertility rate in South Korea ended and even began to decline in 2008 due to the Great Recession. Even the total fertility rate managed to increase to the pre-recession level again in 2012 with the post-recession recovery, it stagnated again and began to decrease even further after several years. The policy might be unable to deliver long-term fertility growth in South Korea as it may only work well during the economic boom, which is something other countries must consider when picking this policy.
Japan’s Strategy: Improve Women’s Work-life Balance
Japan aimed to increase its fertility rate by improving women’s work-life balance. Contrary to China and Korea, Japan quickly transitioned from a high fertility rate to a low fertility rate country by the late 1950s (Park, 2020). Thus, Japan did not have any birth control policies, but its total fertility rate steadily dropped from 2.16 in 1971 to 1.42 in 1995. The Japanese government became concerned about the problem of low fertility and aimed to raise the fertility rate with several subsequent initiatives (Angel Plan in 1995, New Angel Plan in 2000, New New Angel Plan in 2005, and Vision for Children and Child-Rearing in 2010). The most important of the four initiatives was the New Angel Plan since it was the first legislation that emphasized the importance of improving work-life balance for women to raise the fertility rate. Subsequent policies pursued this perspective.
The New Angel Plan improved women’s work-life balance, as it reduced the economic opportunity cost of women to have more children. The legislation was primarily about increasing paid parental leave and improving the corporate culture to be friendlier towards women. With such policies in place, Japan successfully helped a larger proportion of new mothers to maintain their positions, rising from 27.5% in 2004–2010 to 38.3% in 2010–2015. The labor force participation rate of women between the ages of 25 and 54 also increased from 63.7% in 2000 to 77% in 2018 (Schoppa, 2020). The increasing number of women in the workforce allowed women to earn more wages, which means women had more money to spend on their children. Hence, Japanese women might have more children due to the increase in their financial support for their children.
These policies seemed more likely to stabilize rather than boost the fertility rate, thus, they might be insufficient to increase fertility. First, the total fertility rate dropped to a new low of 1.26 in 2005 rather than increasing after the New Angel Plan was released (Schoppa, 2020). Even if we consider improving the corporate culture as a long-term goal, which subsequent legislation also addressed, the total fertility rate only bounced back to the 1995 level of 1.45 in 2015. Moreover, as the slightly bounced fertility rate between 2005 and 2015 was partially due to the delayed fertility by the cohorts born during the 1980s, the sole effects of increasing the term of parental leave and improving the corporate culture on fertility rate became even more obscure (Schoppa, 2020). The inadequacies of such policies might make some countries with low fertility issues unsatisfied, especially those that are urgent to increase their fertility rather than prevent further reduction of birth population.
Policy Recommendations
Based on the data compared above, we found that China and South Korea’s policies tended to increase the fertility rate in the short run, while Japan’s policies stabilized its fertility in the longer term. And since most countries in the world do not have strict birth control policies in place, South Korea’s policy of strengthening society’s responsibility for childbirth and child-rearing is more applicable than China’s two-child policy. Moreover, South Korea has seen a significant increase in its total fertility rate from 2005 (1.08) to 2007(1.26), while China only had a relatively small increase in its total fertility rate from 2015(1.66) to 2017(1.68). All these data suggest South Korea’s policies tend to produce more benefits in boosting the fertility rate than China’s policies in the short term. To sum up, for a country that suffers from low fertility issues, the best option would be to implement South Korea’s policy of strengthening society’s responsibility for child-birth and child-rearing and Japan’s policy of improving the work-life balance of women at the same time. Hence, the country might see an increase in fertility rate in the short run and stabilization of its fertility rate in the long run, which gives its policymakers more room to find more suitable options for their own country’s crisis.
References
Chung. (2015). Policy responses to low fertility and its problems. Korean Journal of Population Studies, 38(2), 113–134.
Lee. (2009). Low fertility and policy responses in Korea. The Japanese Journal of Population, 7(1)
Li, H. T., Xue, M., Hellerstein, S., Cai, Y., Gao, Y., Zhang, Y., … & Liu, J. M. (2019). Association of China’s universal two child policy with changes in births and birth related health factors: national, descriptive comparative study. bmj, 366.
Park, E. H. (2020). Ultra-low fertility and policy response in South Korea: lessons from the case of Japan. Ageing International, 45(2), 191–205.
Schoppa, L. J. (2020). The policy response to declining fertility rates in Japan: relying on logic and hope over evidence. Social Science Japan Journal, 23(1), 3–21.
Zeng, Y., & Hesketh, T. (2016). The effects of China’s universal two-child policy. The Lancet, 388(10054), 1930–1938.
