Women’s Wages and Fertility Hazards in South Korea

Abstract

In an attempt to understand lowest-low fertilities in South Korea, this paper assesses the relationship between women’s wages and fertility hazards. Both women’s wage levels and the percentages of women’s wages in household income have been considered to evaluate gender equity theory. Drawing data from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study 1998-2008, we fit the data into the Cox proportional hazards model. We find that women whose monthly wages were more than 2 million KRW were more likely to give birth to a first child than those earning up to 1 million KRW. Women out of the labor force were more willing to bear a second child than any other women. Women whose wages were between 30% and 70% of household income were least likely to deliver a second child. These results suggest that policy formulation should focus on promoting gender equity in work and family to boost lowest-low fertility rates.