The Association Between Socioeconomic Status and Lifetime Fertility for Men and Women in South Korea: Is There a Gender Difference?

This study seeks to examine the association between socioeconomic status of men and women and their lifetime fertility or childlessness. Declining fertility is a concern for many industrialized economies and childlessness is an important phenomenon that contributes to low fertility rates. This study used data from 4,705 of the over 10,000 people in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), Wave 1 collected in 2006, a nationally representative sample of people aged 45 and over in South Korea. This sample of middle-aged individuals provides information about lifetime fertility of men and women of South Korea, including those who have never been married. Results from logistic regression analyses showed that, for men, education, employment, and income were significantly positively associated having a child/children, whereas no significant association was found among women. The findings imply that in South Korea, men who have difficulty bearing the normative expectation of financial responsibility of fatherhood tend not to have children.

Population Review

Volume 62, Number 2, 2023

Type: Article, pp. 79-100

The Association Between Socioeconomic Status and Lifetime Fertility for Men and Women in South Korea: Is There a Gender Difference?

Authors: Jin Young Seo and Rebecca L. Stotzer

Authors affiliations: Jin Young Seo and Rebecca L. Stotzer are both with the Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA. Jin Young Seo is a PhD student specializing in research on fertility, childlessness, and family policy in South Korea and Rebecca Stotzer is Professor, Director of the Distance Education Program, and Department of Social Work Chair.

Corresponding author/address: Jin Young Seo jyseo@hawaii.edu

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the association between socioeconomic status of men and women and their lifetime fertility or childlessness. Declining fertility is a concern for many industrialized economies and childlessness is an important phenomenon that contributes to low fertility rates. This study used data from 4,705 of the over 10,000 people in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), Wave 1 collected in 2006, a nationally representative sample of people aged 45 and over in South Korea. This sample of middle-aged individuals provides information about lifetime fertility of men and women of South Korea, including those who have never been married. Results from logistic regression analyses showed that, for men, education, employment, and income were significantly positively associated having a child/children, whereas no significant association was found among women. The findings imply that in South Korea, men who have difficulty bearing the normative expectation of financial responsibility of fatherhood tend not to have children.

Keywords

childlessness, lifetime fertility, socioeconomic status, family roles, South Korea

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