South Korea's Low Fertility and the Need for Flexible Working Conditions
Institute for Future Strategy Issue Brief Vol. 58
South Korea's Low Fertility and the Need for Flexible Working Conditions
This issue brief examines South Korea's ultra-low fertility not simply as a decline in the fertility rate, but from the perspectives of the growing prevalence of childlessness and the impact of childbirth on women's economic activity. It also highlights the need for more flexible working conditions as a policy response to South Korea's low fertility challenge.
The brief shows that the recent decline in South Korea's fertility rate reflects a structural change driven not by delayed childbearing, but by an increase in the number of women who do not have children. It points out that, alongside declining marriage rates, the share of married couples who remain childless has also increased rapidly, indicating that South Korea is transitioning from a society in which fewer children are born because fewer people marry to one in which fewer children are born despite marriage.
Using nationwide administrative data from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS), the brief further shows that women's employment and earnings decline substantially after the birth of their first child, whereas men's employment and earnings remain largely unchanged before and after childbirth. These findings illustrate the rigidity of South Korea's labor market and the persistent imbalance in caregiving responsibilities between men and women.
The brief also finds that women in more recent birth cohorts experience larger declines in income after childbirth than those in earlier cohorts. It explains that this trend reflects not simply a worsening of gender inequality, but changes in the composition of women who choose to have children, together with the expansion of parental leave policies. Based on these findings, the brief argues that expanding cash benefits or parental leave alone is insufficient to address South Korea's low fertility problem. It therefore recommends promoting flexible working environments—including greater access to remote work and flexible working hours—while also expanding men's participation in caregiving and strengthening institutional and financial support for workers who remain outside the coverage of parental leave programs.
