1. Background and purpose
Low fertility is a consequence of various social, economic and cultural processes. This suggests that we need to understand the complex relationships among them to address the challenges from low fertility. In particular, we need consider both macro and micro mechanisms simultaneously. This study focuses on gender egalitarianism and women’s preference realization. Women’s preference realization is related with micro-level cultural dimension while evolution of gender egalitarianism is related with micro-level cultural dimension. We are examining how these two factors affect fertility, interacting with each other, from the perspective of gender egalitarianism.
2. Main findings
First, we apply mixed-effects linear regression model by using the 2012 ISSP data to compare how micro and macro level factors are associated with fertility in 21 countries. We find that relationship between fertility and micro-level variables such as employment status, education and gender attitude varies greatly by countries. Interestingly, the relationship is sensitive to macro-level gender equality. Employed, highly educated, and liberal women show high fertility when gender equity is well institutionalized in terms of labor market, family welfare, and cultural dimension.
Second, the results from the analysis of the “Korean Fertility Surveys(1991-2015)” show the following. The relationship between gender equality and fertility did not change substantially over time. This suggests that gender egalitarianism is not yet fully institutionalized in Korea and this is an important source of lowest-low fertility in Korea. This suggest that diffusion of gender egalitarian attitude is an important condition for fertility rebound in Korea.
3. Discussion
Myrsklya et al.(2009) showed that Korea and Japan are exceptional case in which fertility did not rebound recently. This was interpreted as a consequence that work-family balance and gender egalitarianism were not fully institutionalized. They argued that the affluent East Asian countries failed to institutionalize work-family balance and gender egalitarianism and was not able to effectively cope with the challenges from low fertility. We showed that highly educated, liberal and employed women are the group with low fertility in these countries. This group may not change their reproductive behaviors unless gender egalitarian environments are fully developed. This pose a great challenge for population policy in Korea