Title: The Necessary Paradigm Shift for South Korea’s Ultra-Low Fertility

While fertility tends to decline as socioeconomic development rises, South Korea has experienced one of the world’s fastest fertility transitions during the post-Korean War period. South Korea’s total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children a woman has during her reproductive years, was 6.0 in 1960. In 1983, South Korea’s TRF dropped to 2.06, below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Since then, the fertility decline has continued, and in 2002, the TFR fell to 1.17, below the 1.3 threshold for lowest-low fertility. Several developed countries have experienced lowest-low fertility, but the South Korean case shows a continuous downward trend: in 2018, the country’s fertility dropped to a new low of 0.98, making it the only country with a TFR below 1.0 among all OECD countries. In 2023, the TFR reached 0.72 and is projected to further decline below 0.7 in 2024. The magnitude and pace of the recent fertility decline to the world’s lowest level are unprecedented, creating a sense of national crisis in South Korea.

In an attempt to increase fertility rates, the South Korean government established the “Framework Act on Low Birth Rate in an Aging Society” in 2005 and launched the five-year “Plan for [an] Aging Society and Population” in 2006. The ongoing fourth iteration of the plan (2021–2025) has cost more than $270 billion since its enactment. However, South Korea’s fertility has continued to decline despite these policies.

Critics argue that these fertility policies have fallen short due to the lack of efficient leadership, a fragmented policy administration, and poor planning. A combination of institutional, structural, and cultural factors also contribute to South Korea’s ultra-low fertility, including labor market inequality and uncertainty, a family-unfriendly work culture, the high cost of raising children in a competitive educational system, and gender-essentialist family organization. Widespread pessimism and young people’s lack of confidence in the future, considered major drivers of falling marriage and fertility rates, make effective policy design even more challenging. Hence, the experiences of the past two decades indicate that the government must embrace a paradigm shift and take bold steps to make fertility policies work.

Time for a Paradigm Shift and Bold Policy Steps

The acceleration of fertility decline in recent years indicates that existing systems are unsustainable and that a paradigm shift is required in South Korea’s approach to the family. South Korea’s current fertility policies are still based on the traditional paradigm that unconditionally relies on parents and their families to rear children instead of fully recognizing parenting as a public service. South Korea’s public spending on family benefits, such as targeted financial support, is still lower than in most OECD countries.

With over two decades of extremely low fertility, childbearing and childrearing have become essential for the country’s economic and demographic future, and parenting should therefore be recognized as a “public service.” Furthermore, South Korea’s rapidly aging population, an inevitable consequence of persistently low fertility rates, requires a rethinking of the value and organization of care work. Therefore, the government must begin to formulate fertility policies around this new paradigm centered on supporting parents in their public service roles.

The government’s immediate policy goal must be to stop further fertility decline and instead achieve an upward trajectory. This would help dissipate widespread pessimism around the efficacy of state policies and boost confidence in the recuperation of fertility. Public trust in the government and, more generally, the future of the country is critical due to high levels of perceived inequality and negative sentiments surrounding family formation. The following sections outline policy recommendations for key areas in which the government should take immediate action.

Extension of Child Support for All Children

Currently, South Korean child support policies mainly target families with children under two years of age, consisting of subsidies and a child allowance totaling about $16,600 in the first two years after birth. For children up to age seven, parents receive a monthly child allowance of approximately $75. This approach, however, is limited by higher childrearing costs, including demanding familial investments in children’s education. According to 2022 data, about 80 percent of school-age children participated in private, supplementary education, and families of two high school children spent 28.3 percent of their median household income (about $3,817) on private academies and tutoring.

To achieve a visible impact, the government must extend child support for all children up to age 17. Simultaneously, child allowances for older children should be raised so that the level of support is realistic and continues throughout childhood. Expanding child support would impose a fiscal burden, but public spending on family benefits could be increased to the same level as the OECD average of 2.109 percent. As of 2019, public spending on South Korean family benefits was just 1.374 percent of GDP.

The government must also redistribute and concentrate resources that are currently spread across numerous programs loosely connected to fertility issues. In addition to immediately benefiting families with children, a redesigned child support program will signal a paradigm shift in fertility policies to citizens, thereby building public trust.

Implementing Universal and Mandatory Parental Leave

In acknowledging parenting as a public service, the government must ensure that childbirth and childcare responsibilities do not interrupt the employment and career advancement of parents, especially mothers. The opportunity costs of labor force dropout are irrevocable in a rigidly segmented labor market, and childbirth negatively impacts women’s careers. South Korea is the only OECD country in which women’s labor force participation still exhibits an M-shaped pattern with age, with a significant dip in participation during the prime ages of childbearing and childrearing.

To begin with, South Korea’s rigid workplace culture makes it difficult for women to utilize parental leave. However, even after using parental leave, the cultural emphasis on mothers’ role in childcare and the gendered division of household labor hinders women’s ability to return to the labor market. Evidence currently shows that more than one out of five mothers quits working within a year of returning from parental leave. The government must consequently implement measures to remove workplace barriers that prevent parental leave by subsidizing employers’ costs for replacing workers on leave, monitoring leave-takers’ post-leave promotion process, and providing educational programs to increase management and employee support for the leave policy.

Another problem is that parental leave is currently entitled only to workers covered by employment insurance, which excludes nonstandard workers and self-employees. The government should instead offer universal and mandatory parental leave to all new parents, including fathers. Mandatory parental leave for fathers reduces the childcare burden on women, promulgates gender-egalitarian attitudes towards childcare responsibilities in the longer term, and could reduce the stigmatization of women’s leave-taking. Given the segmentation of South Korea’s labor market between standard and nonstandard employment and the prevalence of self-employment, the government may also need to consider an alternative program, such as parental insurance, that is not tied to employment status.

Additionally, the coverage of parental leave should be raised to a level that preserves pre-leave income. The current maximum coverage is about $1,100 per month, which cannot cover the loss of household income that occurs when both parents take leave. As of December 2022, the average monthly income was approximately $3,100 for male wage workers and $2,000 for female wage workers. The South Korean government plans to increase the coverage in 2025 up to about $1,900 for the first three months after childbirth, $1,500 for four to six months, and $1,200 between seven and twelve months. Although the proposed change is an improvement, the coverage is still far below the average income of males and excludes those not covered by employment insurance.

Making Family-Friendly Policies Work for Parents   

Extensive parental leave should be accompanied by policies that help balance work and family. South Korea’s culture of overwork, characterized by long work hours and a rigid work culture, is a major barrier to mothers’ continuous labor force participation and fathers’ involvement in childcare. While decreasing, the average annual working hours of South Korean workers ranked fifth among OECD countries. In this context, it is unsurprising that policies designed to relieve the burden of childcare (e.g. reduced working hours) are underutilized.

Changing workplace norms can also be slow due to cultural and institutional resistance. Therefore, the government should take the lead in instituting behavioral changes to shift peoples’ norms and attitudes. The ultimate goal should be to promote a healthy work-life balance for all workers and create a social environment where work and family are not mutually exclusive. As an important step toward this goal, parents should be able to freely choose amongst various options such as reduced work hours, flexible hybrid or work-from-home schedules, and family medical leave to reconcile workplace and parenting responsibilities. For parents to use these policies without fear of penalty or discrimination, the government must redesign them to provide clearer guidelines for implementation and evaluation.

Moving Forward

The policy changes suggested in this article are only the beginning. Building upon changes in these key programs, the government should implement long-term policies that address broader socioeconomic and cultural issues. The current fertility crisis may present an opportunity for the government to reevaluate its current systems and discuss the future of its population and social policies. On June 19, 2024, the South Korean government declared a “Population National Crisis” and unveiled a plan to implement a nationwide response system, including the establishment of the Ministry for Population Strategy and Planning. The Ministry’s future policies must be guided by a new paradigm that fully supports parents in their public service role of caring for children. Based on this paradigm, the government should take immediate steps in areas such as child support and parental leave to rebuild a social environment that is conducive to family formation.

Lastly, it is important to note that the problem of low fertility is not unique to South Korea. South Korea’s unprecedented fertility decline is an extreme manifestation of social problems that many societies share, including employment insecurity and deteriorating economic conditions for younger generations. Therefore, South Korea provides a useful test of whether current socioeconomic and cultural forces are inevitably anti-natalist, and if not, how effective policies based on social agreement can reshape them.

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Sojung Lim is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Yun Kim Population Research Laboratory at Utah State University, where she teaches courses related to demography, family, social inequality, and research methods. Her current research interests include family demography in East Asia, work and family changes and health inequality in the U.S., and Asian American studies.