Educational Disparities in Marital Fertility in South Korea, 2001~2020: a Duration-Based Approach

Bongoh Kye, Kookmin University
Sam Hyun Yoo, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea
Seulki Choi, KDI School of Public Policy and Management

Fertility decline is a long-standing phenomenon in South Korea, but the recent trend is remarkable. While TFRs in most low-fertility countries tend to decline, there are usually short-term ups and downs in fertility trend. Different from this trend, TFR in Korea dropped below 1.0 in 2018, continued declining monotonically, and reached 0.72 in 2023. In this study, we examined this phenomenon by focusing in educational disparities in marital fertility between 2001 and 2020. We estimated duration-based total marital fertility rate (TMFRd), which is appropriate to understand marital fertility, for different educational groups with census microdata from 2005 to 2020. The study finds the followings. Firstly, marital fertility rates were highest in the first two years of marriage, and then decreased. Secondly, TMFRd stayed around 1.5 per woman with fluctuations between 2000 and 2015, but dropped sharply afterwards. This suggests that declining marital fertility was responsible for the recent fertility decline. Thirdly, educational disparities in marital fertility persisted. TMFRd for high school graduates has been lower than that for college graduates since the early 2000s, and their difference remained stable. TMFRd for both groups declined rapidly after the mid-2010s, contributing to fertility decline to the extremely low level.

Keywords: Fertility, Families, Unions and Households, Data and Methods, Census data

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