Paper Example on Fertility and Labor Force Participation Of Women in Korea

Introduction

The industrial growth of Korea began way back in the early 1960s, this was the time that the government instituted economic reforms and introduced a flexible economic planning. The rapid development and sustained development can be attributed to a combination of several economic factors and economic factors. The economy of Korea has been transforming from that of the manufacturing industry to that of knowledge-based by the use of information technology. Most countries that are dominated by the manufacturing sector have low female labor force participation in comparison to that of males. There is high female labor force participation in developed countries. According to Paxson and Mammen (2000), the existing relationship between the relationship between the female labor participation rates and the income per capita income is U-shaped. The labor force of females depends on the fertility rate of females. The key development strategy that is aimed at increasing the female labor force is fertility. There has been a decrease in fertility rate in Korea from 5.6 in the year 1962 to 1.08 in the year 2005 (Ahn et al., 2012). There has been a considerable increase in female participation and a considerable rate in the fertility rate in Korea. The aim of this paper is to show how labor force participation of women in Korea reduced child birth or fertility.

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Increased female labor supply helps in raising the economic returns the from women and also provides positive incentives for females that they use in investing in their education. Low fertility is a difficult area for the women to increase labor force. In as much as Korea has achieved remarkable economic growth in the last three decades. Their progress towards the increasing the women's status has not been impressive because of the discrimination against women (Ahn et al., 2012).

Fertility and Female Labor Force Relationship

The economists have always tried to investigate the relationship between the decline in the fertility rates and countries sustained development. A conceptual framework provided by the traditional allocation of time gives a suggestion that in industrialized countries the female labor force and fertility are inversely related (Chang et al., 2017).

In the period of 1961 to 1995, there was a big change in the fertility rate in Korea. In as much as there is a decline in fertility in the less developed countries (Chang et al., 2017). There has been a decrease in the rates of fertility. There are several factors that can be attributed to the decline in the rates of fertility. The main reason is the improvement in health conditions that have happened in the third world countries. The second factor can be attributed to the over the reliability of the devices for contraceptive and the social acceptance of family planning. There are also costs that come with having children in a family set up, the costs come with elements like education, clothing, food and the opportunity cost of the wife in a case that she is not working. There is also a relative increase in the price of the time-consuming activities like raising of children that have caused families to cut down on the number of children that they desire (Chang et al., 2017).

Participation of Married Women in the Work Force

In the last few decades, the birth rate in Korea has been on the decline up to the level similar to one of the developed countries from a level of 6.o per fertile in the year 1960 to a level of 1.13 per fertile woman in the year 2006 (Cho, 2006). The low birth rate has implications for the women spending less time caring for their children, hence increasing their likelihood to participate in the labor force. This has facilitated the participation of the married women in the labor force by the provision of substitutes for the wife`s time at home. This has also lowered the cost of fertility control. It is in this context that the decline in fertility leads to an increase in the labor force attachment of the women married in Korea. This is also seen to be as a consequence of increased real wages and the market work opportunities that women have.

The low fertility rates have brought about a lot of problems like the aging population, a shortage in the labor force and an imbalance in the ratio of sex. To confront the new population problems the government of Korea changed the policy of Family planning project for the quantitative control of the population to the one of qualitative population considerations. The decline in the birth rate has, on the other hand, changed the composition of the population. This has specifically affected the population proportion of people who are younger than 15 years that has faced a dramatic decrease (Cho, 2006). The population of the females younger than 15 years changed from a high percentage of 24.8 percent in the year 1990 to a low of 18.1 percent in the year 2006. This alone stresses the females in these countries given that they are faced with the competing demands of workforce roles and reproductive roles (Cho, 2006).

There is a complex relationship between work fertility and work. The females in the workforce are forced to limit childbearing so that they can work to earn income, given that having a child affects the type of work that they do, the place where they work and also limits the hours they work. Lower fertility rates are associated with higher wages. The highly educated women who command relatively high wage rates in the labor market have fewer children than the less educated women who have low wages. Child rearing is considered to be an intense activity making the opportunity cost of children, this makes the opportunity cost of children that is sacrificed by not being in the labor market to be higher for the women who are more educated than the women who are less educated (Gonzales et al., 2015).

A lot of results show a remarkable improvement in the level of education for women and a negative correlation between the education of women and fertility. There is a negative relationship between the labor force for women's participation and fertility in economic and social grounds. From the sociological perspective, the participation of the women in the labor market can be seen with the inconsistent traditional role of women as mothers and homemakers. The economic conceptualization that exists here is the employment of women and fertility emphasizes the opportunity cost of children. From this perspective, the opportunity cost of children goes up due to an increase in the employment opportunities for women's fertility will reduce (Lee, 2013).

Table 1: Total Fertility Rates and Female Labor Participation Rates in Korea, 1980-2006

The table 1 above indicates the relationship between the workforce and the fertility rates in Korea from 1980 to 2006. Over the last few decades, the birth rate has been falling in Korea to a level similar to that of the developing countries. The low birth rate means that the married women spend less of their time in child care and hence this increases their participation in the child labor force. This has facilitated growth in the labor growth of women and substitutes their time spending at home. This has also lowered the cost of fertility control (Kan et al., 2017).

The Cause of Korea`s Low Birth Rate

The decline of fertility greatly affects the economic factors for the participation of women in the labor market and household income. The low birth rate in Korea can be attributed to several factors that are affecting developed countries (Chang et al., 2017). The general trend in the developing countries is that women are now working more and marrying later. Though the comparison of Sweden and Korea, where more Swedish women are working and marrying later and the birth rate in the country are far much healthier. This means that the troubles in Korea can be attributed only to the two factors alone. There are three issues that have been flagged to be the cause of the obstacles in child rearing. The factors include the problem of working. Worries about money, having a family, and the lack of support for mothers. The pay is mostly linked to age. A number of young people are employed on poorly paid contracts. The allowances for children are low while housing and education costs are high. The young couples can have even harder situations given that several young women give up work when they are having children. There are workplaces that are not willing to keep mothers (Chang et al., 2017).

Several parents in Korea, struggle to find childcare facilities that can help them with keeping the infants for the whole day. There are those who discover that although they have job promotions is not a possibility. There are also several women who want to work and have children. The women are either obstructed with work or kids.

Table 2: Opinions toward obstruction of female employment

It is evident from Table 2 that the proportion of obstruction of female employment was at 47.0 percent of the raising children percentage. The social prejudices are at 17.6 percent and the working conditions are at 12.6 back in the year 2006. The tradition, attitudes make the Korean men not to cook and they only spend 30 minutes of the day with the children.

From the table 3 below it can be seen that the social and workplace factors (-0.181) have a strong effect on fertility, the child factor (-0.122), income factor (-0.113) all have effects on fertility.

Table 3: The regression results of low fertility

Trends in Labor Market Participation

The recent trend in the Korean labor market is the increase in the female labor force participation. There has been an increase in percentage for the participation of women who are 16 years and older. The percentage increased from 46 percent in the year 1970 to 50.1 percent in the year 2005. This labor force participation for women is not only higher than those for men at the aggregated level, but also higher at every job group. In general, the rates for women have been on the increase while that of men has been on the decrease from the year 2005. The proportion of participation of Korean women is the same as that of the women in several women in industrialized countries. As of the year 2005, about 62 percent of all women who were about 15 years and above were participating in the paid economy (Ma, 2016).

Conclusion

There has been a considerable economic growth and a rise in a knowledgeable society in Korea. There has been a considerable increase in female participation and a considerable rate in the fertility rate in Korea. The total fertility rate of Korea decreased from 2.83 per fertile women in the year 1980 to 1.13 per fertile in the year 2006. The female labor participation increased from 42.8 percent in the year 1980 to 50.3 percent in the year 2006. In the long run, the reduction of fertility would har...