I recently gave an invited address on fertility in the country with the lowest birth rate among advanced nations—South Korea. Koreans have grown increasingly pessimistic that anything can work to turn around the decline in births. I framed my talk using an approach familiar to members of NCFR, but perceived as a fresh perspective in South Korea—looking at fertility through the lens of family. The Forum was a joint event hosted by two academic associations and sponsored by the government Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) and CBS. Several high-level policymakers attended and were introduced during the event. The press release on the Forum can be viewed here. The response I received was appreciation for a positive message from an international speaker.

I was also involved in an hour-long TV interview while in South Korea, and in a later radio interview on the leading English-speaking station in South Korea. Additionally, I was invited to produce a brief on fertility policy for South Korean policymakers that will be released later this year.

Subsequently, Professor Woon Kyung Lee and I were invited to write a paper that views declining fertility through a family and three policy lenses (see article). First, we viewed fertility through a holistic lens by challenging the myth of the “family bubble”. We cautioned against focusing fertility policies primarily on factors inside the bubble of the family without focusing on factors outside the family bubble. A family’s decision about having babies is shaped by barriers that extend outside family boundaries, such as youth unemployment, low earnings, job insecurity, housing prices, long work hours, education expenses, and career costs.

Second, we viewed fertility through a wide-angle lens that avoids the error of fixating on one segment of the population and falsely assuming it represents everyone. For example, some have blamed fewer births on the self-serving decisions of young people, particularly women. Granted, some Koreans prefer to remain childless for a variety of reasons but 90% of Koreans, aged 15 to 44, still prefer to have a child. Third, we viewed fertility through a microscopic lens that tailors policies to the needs of specific populations. For example, four of 10 Korean youth, aged 15 to 29, are unemployed and need training for steady jobs that pay a family-supporting wage. For other Korean youth, the most important barrier to babies is rising housing costs.

Finally, we viewed fertility through the family impact lens to shift thinking away from the impacts of policies on individuals and toward the contributions families make to the economic and social well-being of society. For example, if policies ease a parent’s transition back to work after a family break, this career opportunity is sometimes perceived as a perk for an individual worker. Instead, it could be viewed as a benefit to a family in a society that desperately needs more parents bearing children.

We conclude that it is possible for South Korea to build the public policy and popular will to increase its birth rate. We believe that past performance is the best predictor of future performance. South Korea has a history of defying the odds in building one of the world’s most productive economies, in achieving the world’s highest rates of post-secondary education among its young men and women, in establishing remarkable systems of early childhood education and after-school care, and in being a world leader in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The references and paper, “Deconstructing the Fertility Decline in South Korea: A Fresh View Through Family and Policy Lens”, are available in South Korea’s Journal of Family Policy.

Author Information

Karen Bogenschneider, Rothermel-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, [email protected]