Who needs babies? In South Korea, no one…apparently

To the extent that birth postponement is a key feature of the second demographic transition, South Korea is a poster child for the phenomenon. Recently, we learned that South Korea's total fertility rate fell to an astonishing 0.78 in 2022, from 0.81 in 2021, the lowest period fertility rate on the planet. The first two charts paint a clear picture. The first shows the sustained decline in fertility rates, which began in the 1960s. In 1960, South Korean women were having about six children per women, a number which had declined to just over four by 1970 and just over two by 1980. By the middle of the 1980s, fertility fell below the replacement level, and the decline has continued since, despite temporary rebounds at the start of the 1990s and again at the beginning of the 2000s. Period fertility resumed its decline around 2015, and the result to date is that South Korea has the lowest recorded total fertility rate on earth. The second chart plots crude birth rate across age and 20-year time periods, which is a good way to distinguish between quantum and tempo effects. In the case of South Korea, this chart paints a clear picture. The fall in birth rates from 1950 to 1990 was driven exclusively by quantum effects. Specifically, women’s age at their peak fecundity was little changed in that period, around 26-to-27, but number of births to women in that age group almost halved over that period, from some 330 per 1000 women in 1950 to just under 200 in 1990. From 1990 onwards, the tempo effect accelerates. In the twenty years ending 2010, the peak age of the crude birth rate rose to 30, and further to around 32 in 2020. This shift coincided with an accelerating quantum effect, to just under 100 births per 1000 women.

The key message from these charts is that today’s extremely low fertility rate in South Korea almost surely overstates the trend in cohort fertility, which captures the birth rate for women who have completed their fertility rate. Demographers have differing views on how to correct period fertility measures for tempo effects, but Yoo and Sobotka 2018 is a state-of-the art treatise in the case of South Korea. The paper estimates a tempo-adjusted fertility rate at 1.5 in 2014, compared to a recorded TFR of 1.2 in that year. This is a significant difference, but not one that changes the picture of a sustained and significant fall in birth rates over time. Based on evidence from the UN data that tempo effects have accelerated further beyond the sample in Yoo and Sobotka, we can use ratio between tempo-adjusted fertility and TFR in 2014, at 1.25, to approximate the current tempo-adjusted fertility rate at around 1.0; that’s still very low. Crucially, Yoo and Sobotka also present evidence to suggest that the most recent decline in fertility to so-called “ultra-low” levels has been driven mainly by quantum effects, or more specifically by a fall in first and second births.

The fall in South Korean fertility is astonishing because it means that an increasing share of women in the country aren't having any babies at all, by choice, never mind only one. A quick internet search for news articles looking into the case of plunging birth rates in South Korea will quickly reveal echoes of many of the generic drivers of the SDT described above. The marriage rate has plunged in South Korea; it stood at 3.7 in 2022, about half the rate in 2010, and down from 10 at the beginning of the 1990s. And because of relative conservative values precluding out-of-wedlock births—somewhat at odds with the general tenets of the SDT—the decline in marriages has contributed to the crash in birth rates.

Then there are gender roles, themselves a function of South Korea's relatively conservative culture. Many women in South Korea are consciously choosing not to have children, or to postpone having their first child for a very long time, to object to what they perceive as a culturally-driven expectation that they sacrifice their ability to earn labour income to carry and take care of children. In a fine piece for the Atlantic, Anna Louie Sussman investigates the case of plunging fertility rates in South Korea, tracing it to fundamental distrust between men and young women. For the latter, the decision not to have children seem in some cases to be the ultimate action through which to exercise a rejection of South Korean culture itself, and more specifically, is conservative male-dominated aspects. As one of the female protagonists in Sussman’s story says; “I try to have faith in guys and not to be like, ‘Kill all men,’” she says. “But I’m sorry, I am a little bit on that side—that is, on the extreme side.” Many South Korean men, for their part, harbour resentment for women, primarily for being too picky, and for not realising that the country’s conservative culture also comes with a price; the man, or the man’s family is overwhelmingly expected to shoulder the cost of starting a new family up-front, mainly via the purchase of a new home, which can be prohibitively expensive. Sussman’s article paints a picture of an extreme version of new feminism and an extreme counter-response by some men, which has completely upended the culture of family formation in South Korea that used to produce births in a ultra-conservative version of the general model where the man is the breadwinner and the women gives up most of her career to take care of the home and children.

The experience of South Korea invariably takes me back to the question I asked recently, when I predicted that global period fertility would fall below the replacement level in a few years time. Is low fertility a bad thing? For the government in South Korea, it presents a number of economic challenges in the context of the effects of population ageing on government finances and economic growth. According to some sources, the government has spent $200B in the past 16 years to combat falling birth rates in part via direct subsidies to parents. It has little to show for it. Low fertility is also, arguably, a problem if it arises due to financial and economic barriers to family formation. In short, low fertility is a problem if the young generations feel too financially precarious to start a family, and especially if they end up having to forego family formation altogether for economic reasons. If, however, low fertility is seen through a lens of a conscious choice by part of women, who refuse to conform to conservative values of child-rearing and stay-at-home roles, it suddenly becomes more difficult to articulate as a problem. This is to say, it is difficult to articulate this as a problem without running headfirst into the accusation of being a misogynist, or anti-feminist. This is because it is the argument that women in South Korea should take one for the proverbial team and allocate more resources to having babies, whatever the cost to their careers. Because the answer to low fertility invariably is that it is a combination of these general drivers of lower fertility—exogenous socioeconomic factors and endogenous cultural factors—it is difficult to offer an objective answer to the question of whether South Korea’s ultra-low fertility is a genuine problem, as oppose to a logic outcome of the confluence of trends mentioned above. What we can say, however, is that the case of South Korea is a fascinating example of how far the process of fertility decline can go, given a specific set of initial cultural and socioeconomic conditions. It will be fascinating to follow going forward.