Direction and Support Level of the Fertility Welfare Policy in South Korea

This study examines how the future fertility policy should establish its direction and support level in South Korea, a country confronted with severe low fertility and aging. Three systems and seven detailed policies, drawn from leading studies and the OECD family database have been analyzed. We hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of population ageing Vol. 7; no. 2; pp. 115 - 141
Main Authors Lim, Jonghyun, Lee, Joo Hyung
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2014
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Aging
Analysis
Children & youth
Demography
Economic development
Economic growth
Expenditures
Families & family life
Family leave
Fertility
Gender
Geriatrics/Gerontology
Labor market
Maternity & paternity leaves
Medicine/Public Health
Population
Public policy
Social change
Social Sciences
Society
Sociology
Studies
Welfare
South Korea
Fertility welfare policy
Coexistence of work and family
Labor and nursery-oriented
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Summary:This study examines how the future fertility policy should establish its direction and support level in South Korea, a country confronted with severe low fertility and aging. Three systems and seven detailed policies, drawn from leading studies and the OECD family database have been analyzed. We have examined the level of fertility welfare, the fraction of policies that are labor-oriented and nursery-oriented, and the fertility rate using multidimensional scaling. We have found that the fertility rates of countries with assertive fertility welfare policy are higher than the rates of countries with passive fertility welfare policy. Out of the countries with assertive fertility welfare policy, the countries with labor-oriented policy has higher fertility rate. On the contrary, for the countries with passive fertility welfare policy, those with nursery-oriented policy have higher fertility rates. Korea has a labor-oriented and passive fertility welfare policy and a relatively low fertility rate. In order to attain a stable fertility rate in Korea, it is important to increase the nursery system to support the coexistence of work and family. Furthermore, it is crucial that systematic flexibility be granted for the establishment of support in each phase of the transition.
ISSN:1874-7884
1874-7876
DOI:10.1007/s12062-014-9098-3