Delay in First Marriage and First Childbearing in Korea - Trend in Educational Differentials

Bongoh Kye, University of California, Los Angeles

Korea has experienced rapid fertility decline since the 1960s, which was stimulated by socioeconomic development. Using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) and estimating Cox proportional hazard models, I examine educational differentials in the timing of first marriage and first childbearing to study this rapid social-demographic transformation. Using the parameter estimates and observed distribution, I decompose the cohort difference in the timing of first marriage and first childbearing into distributional change in women’s education and change in association between education and the timing of marriage and childbearing to understand the importance of changing educational differentials for fertility decline. Both educational expansion and growing educational differentials are expected to be observed and to contribute to fertility decline. Growing educational differentials, however, are expected to be more important than educational expansion for fertility decline because of change in opportunity cost of marriage and childbearing that socioeconomic development brought about.