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Free Falling Fertility in South Korea

Tristanw
WRIT340EconSpring2023
Published in
13 min readMay 2, 2023

Culture ( cul·ture ) — Noun
The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that dependsupon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations
(Merriam Webster, Culture definition & meaning)

Culture. What is it? Does the definition above satisfy you? Does it speak to the ways that culture has been used to oppress entire groups of people? How about the ways it is used as a justification for genocide or colonization? However, culture isn’t always a justification for heinous crimes. Culture and shared culture between generations and people bind them together. But if we take a look at the definition again it says “That depends on the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.” I want to explore what can happen when the capacity for transmission of knowledge to succeeding generations cannot compete with new widespread beliefs.

Status Quo

South Korea is having a cultural battle. On one hand, politicians who espouse traditional beliefs hold all the power to shape culture as they please. On the other, younger generations have found leverage as well. They have unintentionally leveraged their own bodies.

In 1961, the total fertility rate (TFR) in South Korea was 5.99. That means that the average number of children a female Korean citizen would bear during their most biologically fertile years of 15 and 49 was 5.99. People were having so many children in post-war Korea that people began to starve and the economy couldn’t keep up. If we fast forward to today, we are met with headline after headline:

“South Korea records world’s lowest fertility rate again”
BBC — (Mao, 2022)

“South Korea Breaks Record for World’s Lowest Fertility Rate, Again”
New York Times — (Yoon, 2022)

So what happened? South Korea holds the world’s lowest fertility rate of 0.79 in 2022. I argue that the drop in fertility rate has given power to people groups who hold non-traditional cultural values. South Korean policymakers must recognize the state of modern society and continually create and maintain policies that encourage understanding between groups who hold different values, promote gender equality, and recognize that the act of childbirth belongs to the mother. The changes that have been implemented are being completely undermined by centuries of cultural norms and must see further support for the country to see any kind of boost in fertility rate.

Is a fertility rate of less than two sustainable?

Before we can dive into the specifics of the laws and way they are failing, we must understand what South Korea’s TFR of 0.79 actually means and whether or not the country can still maintain stability with it.

The short answer is No. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that assuming a net-zero migration, a country needs to retain roughly a 2.1 fertility rate per woman to “ensure a broadly stable population” (OECD (2023), Fertility rates (indicator). doi: 10.1787/8272fb01-en (Accessed on 28 April 2023)). However, the real sustainability issue isn’t due to a low fertility rate alone. Rather, it comes from the consequential population shrink. South Korea’s population growth rate is on a steady decline with an expected rate of 0.04% in 2023 (South Korea Population 2023 (Live) (worldpopulationreview.com)). We might think that things are okay as long as the rate isn’t negative. However, the South Korean Census projects the population to drop ~26.93%, from 52 million to 38 million, between 2022 and 2070 as its growth rate dips further and further into the negative.

It does not stop here since a low fertility rate doesn’t shrink the population equally. We must consider which portions of the population are shrinking most. Unlike a population decline caused by something like the COVID-19 pandemic which was far more fatal to older individuals, a population decline from low fertility results in a lack of young people which leads to even fewer newborns, compounding in successive generations. The devastating impacts of this range from a drop in economic growth to the elimination of essential social services. If we look just at the change in the working population (ages 15–64) between 2011–2022, the average change is about -0.164% a year which may not seem concerning. However, this is projected to become increasingly exaggerated due to the low fertility. The South Korean Census projects a drop in the working population from 71.0% in 2022 to 56.8% in 2040 (nearly a -0.79% change each year seen in the chart below)(O’Neill, South Korea — age distribution 2011–2021, 2023).

(Kostat, Population Prospects of the World and South Korea 2022)

At the current rate of decline of the working population, the South Korean pension fund, similar to America’s Social Security fund, is expected to begin running on a deficit in 2040 and run out by the year 2055 (South Korea’s National Pension Fund Committee, Davies & Jung-a, 2023). The drop in the working population and a drying up pension fund are significant concerns for the future of Korea, impacting the age of retirement and overall quality of life of South Koreans.

Considering the abundance of evidence foreshadowing a potential collapse of the current South Korean economy, how can the TFR still be dropping year over year? We must ask what is being done and why isn’t it working?

Policies to Encourage Fertility

If we dig a little deeper, we can find that the fertility rate has been a big issue in Korea for a while. Established in 2006, the Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aging Society was meant to provide foundational support for parents. Since then, an almost absurd number of related policies have been enacted to try to boost the country’s fertility rate, reaching 1747 individual policies in 2018. Likewise, since 2006, the national yearly budget to counter the low birth rate has gone from 1 trillion KRW to 42.9 trillion KRW in 2021. Most notably, the support for parents to come in a few forms.

First is through South Korea’s universal health care plan which covers most, if not all, of the medical bills associated with childbirth.

Second, is a policy commonly called “parent pay” which is meant to support newborns financially for the first two years after birth.

Families/households with newborns receive ₩700,000 per month (~$568.57) until they reach one year old and half that until they reach two. To put that into context, the average annual salary in South Korea is $42,747 before tax, meaning that this amount for newborns would account for roughly 16% of the average person’s wage (OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2022 Issue 1).

Third, is extensive parental leave. Each parent gets a guaranteed 18 months of paid leave, the most out of any country.

Even with these benefits, why is the fertility rate still dropping? Despite the seemingly vast financial support being given out and the desire to encourage reproduction, these policies have failed because of a deeply engrained traditional culture in both law and daily life. Look at the state of the parental leave policy.

Parental Leave

The thing is, parental leave is not a new thing in South Korea, it just hasn’t been working. So, South Korean lawmakers and the Ministry of Employment as of 2023 have increased the policy from 12 months for each parent to 18 months. This of course made headlines globally, making Korea look extremely progressive. However, it did not address any of the actual problems.

The first is regarding people’s, especially fathers’, ability to actually take time off, assuming that they even receive it. Even back in 2015, the South Korean public opinion survey reported that “more than 80% of respondents in their 20s and 40s responded that their supervisors and colleagues notice when they take maternity leave or parental leave” and that husbands in particular took 1/2 to 1/4th the amount of parental leave as their wives. (The 3rd Plan for Low Fertility and Aging Population) At this point the allotted parental leave was already 12 months, leading all other OECD countries (OECD, Parental leave: Where are the fathers? 2016).

In 2022, “although 193,000 men were eligible… only 4.1% used the opportunity. In contrast 65.2 percent of women eligible for maternity leave chose to take this option.” (육아휴직 쓰면 쫓겨난다더라…직장인 아빠들의 한숨 오세성의 아빠놀자 | 한경닷컴. (n.d.). Retrieved March 6, 2023). Thus, even though the time off was increased, without mandatory time off it is unlikely that people will be able to use it. However, making parental leave mandatory poses its own set of challenges. In particular, there would almost definitely going to be significant pushback from corporations and the implementation would likely take many years. We can expect this if we look at similar changes that have affected the working hours and time off of employees. In 2016, the Moon Jae-In administration proposed an amendment to reduce the maximum number of working hours from 68 to 52. This not only generated backlash from large corporations but also needed to be adapted to allow the change to be slowly rolled out. The maximum hours were not reduced right away to 52 but were interpolated over the following four years and rolled out slowly across different sectors and company sizes, achieving widespread deployment in 2021. This, however, has not been the end. President Yoon Seok-yeol, elected in 2022, is currently trying to gain favor from corporations by essentially allowing companies to let workers work up to 69 hours a week without penalty. Thus, it is not a simple change to just increase parental leave up to 18 months. There would need to be additional changes made to ensure that parental leave could be taken without any repercussions, but these are unlikely to be swift and cannot be guaranteed to last.

This is the issue. It is not just that lawmakers are out of touch and are not addressing the root of the problems, there are also so many factors in daily life that fight tooth and nail against changes to the status quo. Despite so much money being thrown at the problem, progress is hindered by the iron grip of traditional cultural values.

Why can’t people trust the government?

The thing is, this problem is so vast and it would be impossible for me to detail the countless ways that a huge portion of the South Korean population would rather see the collapse of their country than change their minds. Consider that South Korea’s legal definition of family is those relations that are by blood, marriage, and adoption. These, in traditional fashion, are only heterosexual marriages. They also refuse to recognize “unions that emotionally and financially support each other without official marriage.” (Cho K. A. 2021) This was proposed to be changed, but in 2022, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family withdrew their support (Korean Herald, meaning of family) This change is despite a record-high share of children born out of wedlock (2.5% in 2020, increasing to 2.95% in 2021). (OECD — Parental leave: Where are the fathers? — oecd.org. (n.d.). Retrieved March 6, 2023) and an ever-increasing age of marriage. From 2005 to 2021, the median marrying age for men and women rose by 2.7 and 3.06 years respectively. (Men: 27.79 in 1990 to 33.23 in 2021 — Women: 24.78 in 1990 to 30.78 in 2021) (Yoon, South Korea: Median age at first marriage by gender 2022,2023).

This share of births out of wedlock may seem low when compared with all the rest of the OECD countries, but it shows the change in climate in South Korea. Despite strong traditional cultural norms, this figure continues to grow. Times are changing in Korea but the policies aren’t. As this share of children born out of wedlock increases so does the share of children and families that are outside of legal protection and governmental child support.

The problem is that this has been a theme since the beginning of the Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aging Society. One specific implementation of a policy exemplified the issue and showed that South Korean lawmakers did not regard the act of childbirth as the right of a woman.

On December 29th, 2016, the The Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS, 행정안전부) in South Korea, released this site:

Guardian News and Media. (2016, December 31). South Korea pulls website mapping women of prime age to have children

This is commonly known as the Birth Map. It was a pink color-coded map that showed the number of women of childbearing age (Ages 15–49) by region, district, and city for the last 10 years. In short, it was a complete insult to Korean women and was indicative of the strongly patriarchal government. People found it to essentially shame women saying “Hey look how many people could be having babies here.” In the same way that the plan treated fertility as a tool, women were also a tool for economic problems. The basic fertility plan drew a hard line between women’s right to childbirth and general rights. This was one of the final straws and generated extreme distrust in the government among the female population. This rightful distrust further increased worries relating to marital roles, equal pay, and governmental support for childcare and healthcare and equated the plan’s motives with traditional cultural norms.

Under these traditional norms, for women, not having children is often seen as “neglecting one’s duties for society only for the sake of their happiness” (Lee Jin-song, The Right Not To Date). This is why things are so bad right now. Every policy that is “meant to support and encourage parents” is riddled with undertones of traditional values. The government says that fathers can take plenty of time off to be with their children, but pretends to not see that no one can take that time. A plan is made to boost fertility and give parents money and pay for healthcare, but it’s just a numbers game. Fertility is a tool to prop up the current governmental structure. If the TFR were to stabilize, opposition to the patriarchal and conservative parties would disappear.

This is where the complexity of the issue is. To partake in these childcare benefits is to give up your beliefs.

South Korean policymakers on the surface incentivize childbirth and the formation of families. But they refuse to actually give parents time to care for their children. They refuse to accept families besides heterosexual couples bound by marriage. They refuse to dive in and give up traditional norms to support their own people. The population will continue to drop until the people can trust their own government and see a future for their families in an equal and supportive Korea.

References:

Wp1s2023econ
Fertility
South Korea
Culture
Fertility Policy

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Tristanw
WRIT340EconSpring2023

Written by Tristanw

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