Analysis on South Korean low fertility rates

 

Why is South Korean fertility so low?

Every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them. The rest of the world can learn from Korea’s catastrophe to avoid the same fate. South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Its population is (optimistically) projected to shrink by over two thirds over the next 100 years. If current fertility rates persist, every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them.

This disaster has sources that will sound eerily familiar to Western readers, including harsh tradeoffs between careers and motherhood, an arms race of intensive parenting, a breakdown in the relations between men and women, and falling marriage rates. In all these cases, what distinguishes South Korea is that these factors occur in a particularly extreme form. The only factor that has little parallel in Western societies is the legacy of highly successful antinatalist campaigns by the South Korean government in previous decades.

South Korea is often held up as an example of the failure of public policy to reverse high fertility rates. This is seriously misleading. Contrary to popular myth, South Korean pro-parent subsidies have not been very large, and relative to their modest size, they have been fairly successful. The story of South Korean fertility rates is thus doubly significant. On the one hand, it illustrates just how potent anti-parenting factors can become, creating a profoundly hostile environment in which to raise children and discouraging a whole society from doing so. On the other, it may offer a scintilla of hope that focused and generous policy can address these problems, shaping a way back from the brink of catastrophe.

Career-motherhood conflict

In every developed country, women struggle to reconcile their careers with a satisfying family life and their preferred number of children. This tradeoff is exceptionally severe in South Korea. Despite its very high level of female education, South Korea has the largest gender employment gap in the OECD. There is almost no employment gap between men (73.3 percent) and unmarried women without children (72.8 percent). The gap is driven by the fact that large numbers of women stop working when they have kids: only 56.2 percent of mothers work, the fourth lowest in the OECD.

In South Korea, mothers’ employment falls by 49 percent relative to fathers, over ten years – 62 percent initially, then rising as their child ages. In the US it falls by a quarter and in Sweden by only 9 percent. South Koreans work more hours – 1,865 hours a year – in comparison with 1,736 hours in the US and 1,431 in Sweden. This makes it hard to balance work and motherhood, or work and anything else. There is intense pressure from employers for women not to have children: in surveys, 27 percent of female office workers report being coerced into signing illegal contracts promising to resign if they fall pregnant or marry.

South Korean work culture is notoriously sexist. After their long work days, colleagues are expected to go out drinking together. Social scientist Alice Evans noted instances where work outings involved environments uncomfortable for women, and bosses dismissed these concerns as normal. In response to these taxing hours, and with bosses unwilling to make accommodations to mothers, over 62 percent of women quit their jobs around the birth of their first child. By the time a child turns ten, their mother will have seen her earnings fall by an average of 66 percent, considerably higher than the earnings penalty in the US (31 percent), UK (44 percent), and Sweden (32 percent). Put together, all this means that having children is extremely expensive for South Korean women in terms of their careers and earnings.

Resource-intensive parenting

Koreans treat a child’s first birthday, the Doljanchi, as a very significant milestone. Traditionally done at home, these parties have become lavish ceremonies hosted in hotel ballrooms with long guest lists and multicourse meals. A typical Korean family can expect to spend a month’s wages on the Doljanchi.

Today, South Korea is the world’s most expensive place to raise a child, costing an average of $275,000 from birth to age 18, which is 7.8 times the country’s GDP per capita compared to the US’s 4.1. This does not even account for the mother’s forgone income. Fueled by intense competition for university places, cram schools (hagwons) and private tuition are dominant. Almost 80 percent of children attend a hagwon. In 2023, South Koreans poured a total of $19 billion into the shadow education system. Families with teenagers in the top fifth of the income distribution spend 18 percent ($869) of their monthly income on tutoring, while those in the bottom fifth spend an average of $350 a month, as much as they spend on food.

Nearly half of children under six receive private tuition. Students often have days running from 7am to 2am, including school and late-night library study. During holidays, some attend boarding hagwons with schedules from 6am to midnight. This intense pressure exists because teachers expect students to have already learned the curriculum through private study; those who fall behind are pejoratively called supoja (someone who has given up on mathematics). The neighborhood of Daechi even features "screaming pods" for frustrated teenagers to let off steam.

The government has historically viewed shadow education as a "social evil" and once even attempted to ban it, but tutors went underground. Curfews now require hagwons to close by 10pm, though some operators continue lessons in the dark or on buses to bypass regulations. Because degrees from the top three "SKY colleges" (with an acceptance rate of only one percent) are so valuable, parents feel they cannot have a second child without damaging their ability to pay for the first child's education. High performance in entrance exams has become an arms race where parents are individually incentivized to force participation at great cost to the family.

The decline of marriage

Gender is becoming a salient political division in South Korea. Only about 43 percent of South Korean women aged 15–49 are married, compared to 52 percent in the US. A chasm has opened between genders, exacerbated by the MeToo movement which began in 2018. While initially supported by 77 percent of men under 30, support plummeted to 29 percent by 2021 after several high-profile incidents and a media-driven backlash.

Due to decades of sex-selective abortion, there are 115 men for every 100 women among 30-year-olds. This skewed ratio, coupled with a competitive labor market and two years of male-only conscription, has led some men to blame women for their problems. Resentment is mutual; feminist groups and male "anti-feminist" protesters have clashed over cultural symbols and accusations of misandry or supremacy. President Yoon Suk Yeol was elected in 2022 on a tide of male support, having attributed low fertility to feminism and arguing structural discrimination does not exist. In the 2025 election, conservative candidates won 74 percent of the vote from men in their twenties, while women skewed significantly less conservative.

Conservative attitudes persist: 53 percent of South Koreans agree that men should have priority for jobs when they are scarce. This gap in values contributes to lower marriage rates. Furthermore, childbirth out of marriage is extremely rare in South Korea, accounting for only 3 percent of births, compared to 40 percent in the US and 55 percent in Sweden. Consequently, the collapse of marriage directly dictates the collapse of the birth rate.

Where South Korea is unique: antinatalist campaigns and negative population momentum

A major factor in South Korea's crisis is the legacy of decades of government action to reduce fertility. Starting in 1961, General Park Chung-Hee’s government promoted vasectomies, IUDs, and tax breaks for small families to fuel economic development. Parents with fewer than three children who chose sterilization received priority access to public housing. Official slogans evolved from "Have few children and bring them up well" to the more desperate "Two children is already too many!" Propaganda also tried to counter the preference for sons with slogans like "A well bred girl surpasses ten boys."

By 1978, the fertility rate had dropped from six to three children per woman—a transition that took nearly a century in the UK. These policies continued until the rate fell below the replacement level of 2.1 in 1984. The government only officially abandoned population suppression in 1994 and began pro-natalist policies 11 years later.

This has created negative population momentum. Between 1990 and 2023, the number of South Korean children declined by 50 percent, while the number of over-65s increased by 340 percent. To maintain its current old-age dependency ratio, the fertility rate would need to skyrocket to over 10 babies per woman; even to match Japan’s ratio, it would need to hit 4.2. Unlike the US, UK, or Sweden, South Korea has low levels of immigration, with foreign nationals representing only 5.1 percent of the population. Furthermore, 30 years of antinatalism have normalized childlessness; only 28 percent of unmarried South Koreans say they want children, compared to 51 percent of childless Americans.

South Korea’s recent pro-child policies have still probably helped

Since 2022, the government has provided grants including $1,500 at birth and monthly payments until elementary school, totaling roughly $22,000 in support. However, this falls far short of the estimated $15,000 annual cost per child and does not address the "child penalty" for mothers' careers. Evidence suggests these bonuses are increasing births slightly—by 0.34 percent to 0.58 percent for every 10 percent increase in the bonus—preventing an even faster decline.

Global examples show that pro-child policies can work. France reversed its low-fertility trend to become Europe's highest-fertility nation through tax breaks and maternity protections. Similar successes were seen in South Tyrol (Italy), Nagi (Japan), and Germany.

It may be too late for South Korea. With an aging population and a shrinking pool of military conscripts, more resources must be spent on the elderly, potentially leading to higher taxes and a further burden on the remaining youth. This is a future to avoid, as South Korea is a hub of innovation—filing the most patents in the world in absolute terms—and a major cultural exporter. South Korea serves as a warning for the developed world, where families are becoming poorer by choosing to have children and genders are drifting apart. While South Korea's pro-child policies have been criticized, they were fairly effective given their modest funding; they simply fall far short of what is necessary to counteract decades of contrary pressures.

---

Summary of Comparative Data and Visual Elements

The following table summarizes the key metrics and visual propaganda descriptions mentioned in the sources to provide a comparison between South Korea and other nations.

Metric / Category	South Korea Data	Comparative Data (US/Sweden/UK/OECD)	Source
Fertility Rate Trend	6 children (1960) to 3 (1978). Currently lowest in world.	Transition from 6 to 3 children took 96 years (UK) and 82 years (US).
Mothers' Employment Gap	56.2% of mothers work (4th lowest in OECD).	OECD largest gender employment gap.
Employment Fall (Mothers)	49% fall relative to fathers over 10 years.	US: 25% fall; Sweden: 9% fall.
Annual Working Hours	1,865 hours.	US: 1,736 hours; Sweden: 1,431 hours.
Maternal Earnings Penalty	66% fall in earnings by child's 10th birthday.	US: 31%; UK: 44%; Sweden: 32%.
Cost of Raising a Child	$275,000 to age 18 (7.8x GDP per capita).	US: 4.1x GDP per capita.
Shadow Education (Hagwons)	80% of children attend; $19 billion total spent.	Teenagers in top 20% income spend 18% of monthly income.
Marriage Prevalence	43% of women (15–49) are married. 77% of women (30–34) are unmarried.	US: 52% of women (15–49) are married.
Births Outside Marriage	3% of all babies.	US: 40%; Sweden: 55%.
Population Shift (1990–2023)	Children: -50%; Over-65s: +340%.	Children: US (+11%), UK (+9%), Sweden (+19%).
Desire for Children	28% of unmarried South Koreans.	51% of childless Americans.
Antinatalist Visuals	"The whole country is overcrowded!"; "Two children is already too many!"; "A well bred girl surpasses ten boys."	N/A (South Korea specific campaigns).

---

Analogy for Understanding: The situation in South Korea is like a high-stakes musical chairs game where the music is playing faster and chairs are being removed every round. While parents are spending all their resources to make sure their one child gets a seat (the best education and career), the government spent decades convincing everyone they didn't need many chairs to begin with. Now, there aren't enough new players joining the game to keep it going for the next generation.