Fertility decline in South Korea: forty years of policy-behaviour dialogue

Minja K. Choe, East West Center
Kyung-Ae Park, East West Center

This paper examines the fertility transition in South Korea during 1960-2000, and the policy-behaviour dialogue in the context of changes in economic and social conditions in South Korea. In 1961, when population was growing at the rate of 2.9 percent annually, the Korean government adopted the National Family Planning program as a part of the Five-Year Economic Development Plan. Since then population policy continued to be an integral part of the national economic development plans. The fertility behaviour seems to have responded to population policies and programs and the level of fertility declined rapidly. At the same time, changing fertility behaviour continues to raise new challenges for population policies and programs. Some examples are high sex ratio at birth, rapid population aging, marriage squeeze, and prospect of population decline. Current population policy and programs are formulated in response to these issues.