The Socioeconomic Characteristics of Men and Women Who Have Never Been Married or Have No Children in South Korea: A Picture of Gendered Expectations?

Background & Purpose: Low fertility is a concern for countries like South Korea due to the inevitable impacts on economic and military power that population decline entails, as well as an ensuing imbalance between the number of workers and those needing care. Childlessness is an important phenomenon that contributes to low fertility rates and marriage is a common pathway to procreation in South Korea. Existing studies have demonstrated that how socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with childlessness is different by gender in developed countries. For men, the impact of SES on childlessness appears consistently unidirectional; those with high SES were more likely to be parents or intend to become parents. For women, however, studies show mixed results. The results may be due to the normative expectation of financial responsibility of fatherhood. The association between SES on childlessness has not been examined in South Korea, where the fertility rate is lowest in the world. This study seeks to examine the socioeconomic characteristics of men and women who have never been married or have no children in South Korea.

Methods: This study used data from 4,705 of the over 10,000 people in the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), Wave 1 collected in 2006. This is a nationally representative sample of people aged 45 and over living in households in South Korea. Logistic regression was used. The dependent variables were marriage and childlessness, and the independent variables were education, employment, income, and gender. Control variables were age, disability, region, and religion. To test the moderation effect of gender on socioeconomic variables, interaction terms between education, employment, or income and gender were used.

Results: The results showed that, for men, education and employment were significantly positively associated with having ever been married (p<0.01 for both education and employment), whereas for women, education had a significant association in a negative direction (p<0.01). Gender had a significant moderation effect on the impact of education on having ever been married (p<0.01). For men, education, employment, and income were significantly positively associated having a child/children (p<0.01 for education, employment and income), whereas no significant association was found among women.

Implications: Similar to other developed countries, how SES is associated with childlessness is different by gender in South Korea. Also, there are clear gender differences in how SES variables are associated with marriage. Men who have difficulty bearing the normative expectation of financial responsibility of fatherhood tend not to have children in South Korea. Alleviating the financial burden of fatherhood could be beneficial for promoting fertility. One way to reduce men’s financial burden is to share the responsibility with women, which would require making female labor force participation more manageable.