Determinants of attitudes toward children in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan

Hiroshi Kojima, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan

This is a comparative analysis of the Japanese General Social Surveys 2000/2001/2002, the Korean National Fertility Survey 2000 and the Taiwan Social Change Survey 2001 on the determinants of attitudes toward children (felt non-necessity to have children after marriage, son preference, small ideal family size and felt unfavorable effects of mother’s work on preschool children). Similar logit models have been applied to the microdata for ever-married women aged 20-64 from the three or two societies. The results show similarities and differences among the three societies. Korea and Taiwan tend to exhibit larger differences between age groups, which suggests that the changes have been more rapid in Korea and Taiwan than in Japan having led to more rapid fertility decline in recent years. The analyses also reveal difficulties in comparing the results of surveys across societies as well as across years in the same society.