Why South Korea’s fertility rate dropped below Japan’s?
Organizer
Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University
Event Title
Sociology Seminar Series 2024-2025
Document Type
Public Seminar
Date
2-18-2025
Time
11:00 a.m. -- 12:30 p.m.
Venue
LYH310, 3/F, Lau Lee Yuen Haan Building, Lingnan University
Description
In 2000, South Korea's period total fertility rate (TFR) was 1.42, and this was higher than Japan's 1.36. However, this fertility advantage over Japan has been lost by 2022, with South Korea's TFR plunging to 0.87 (40% decrease), while Japan's TFR being 1.3 (only 5% decrease). The goal of this article is to proffer a descriptive explanation for this divergence in fertility between these two East Asian countries. Building upon the existing theoretical framework on economic uncertainty and fertility, we argue that changing labor market conditions is an important factor in understanding the nature of South Korea's extraordinary fertility decline. However, unlike previous research that focuses largely on employment precarity and/or stagnant real wages, I call for greater attention to economic inactivity. Using administrative records (e.g., birth and marriage registers from the Korean Vital Statistics) and nationally representative survey data, I show how the rise in economic inactivity rate among young Korean males is associated with the ongoing fertility decline.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Han, S. W. (2025, Feb 18). Why South Korea’s fertility rate dropped below Japan’s? [Video podcast]. Retrieved from https://commons.ln.edu.hk/videos/979/
Additional Information
Speaker
Sinn Won Han is a social demographer studying low fertility challenges in the postindustrial world. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow at the Research Hub of Population Studies at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Before joining HKU, he was postdoctoral associate in Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University. Sinn Won received his doctoral degree in sociology at Harvard University.