North Korea's Declining Fertility Rate Seen through a Survey of North Korean Refugees

Jooyung LEE, Bank Of Korea
Sunjoong KIM, Bank of Korea

To calculate the total fertility rate in North Korea, this paper surveyed 95 North Korean refugees to investigate their 1,137 relatives’ and friends’ marriage and fertility experiences. The results show that North Korea's total fertility rate was 1.91 in the 1990s, then dropped to 1.59 in the 2000s, and was at 1.38 in the 2010s. The 1.38 fertility rate in the 2010s is consistent with North Korean refugees' testimonies that most women born in the 1980s have only been giving birth to one child. When calculating the contribution of each factor to the change in the total fertility rate, the significant decline in the total fertility rate in the 1990s and 2000s was mainly due to changes in the marital fertility rate but in the 2010s the contribution of nuptiality exceeded that of the marital fertility rate. This study has some limitations in terms of methodology, and it is necessary to expand our sample to include residents from other parts of North Korea rather than just from the North Korea-China border region so that in future studies the sample can better reflect the entire population.

Keywords: Fertility, Census data, Data and Methods, Decomposition analysis

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