• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.24 no.6 s.84
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• pp.177-193
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• 2006

This study analyzes marriage and fertility rates in Korea and makes recommendations for family policy. Based on the 'The Report of Marriage & Divorce Statistics in 2005' and data from the Korea Statistical Information System (KOSIS) of the National Statistics Organization, the trends, reasons for marriage rates changes, and future expectations were critically reviewed. In addition, the relationship between marriage and fertility rates was analyzed. The principle characteristics of marriage rates are as follows: 1) the M-shape of the longitudinal crude marriage rates; 2) the increased age of individuals entering their the first marriage; 3) the increase in remarriage rates; 4) the changes in the patterns of remarriage; 5) the increased in the age at which individuals remarry and; 6) the increase in marriage to non-Koreans. The marriage and fertility rates changes are a permanent normative shift because of 1) later marriage because of women's increased education and labor force participation 2) rational choices about birth control 3) reduced population because of the aging of baby boomers 4) structural changes in the marriage market and 5) egalitarian changes in women's attitudes toward marriage and family. The recommendations for future family policy were as follows: 1) the need for a realistic, long-term family policy because the current marriage patterns will continue; 2) the need to develop new statistics such as fertility rates that are based on marriage cohort or birth cohort because family behavior is a mixture of personal, social and political responses; 3) the need for impact analysis of current family policy about increasing fertility rates; 4) the need for a new family perspective that encompasses diverse marriage and family patterns; 5) the need to focus on men's role in families because of women's changing roles and family interaction patterns and; 6) the need for preventive family policies such as family life education.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.131-146
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• 2011

The purposes of this study were to identify and compared the selection conditions of spouses and the perceptions of marriage and childbirth by sex. Moreover, this study tried to find the number of child the study subjects want to have in their marriage and what factors were important for whether they have no or one child or more than two children. The study subjects were college students who were belong to 6 health care related departments selected randomly from all health care related departments in one metropolitan area. In the selection conditions as their spouses, they ranked 'love', 'personality' and 'wealthiness' as important factors in order. Male ranked females' employment as 10th but female ranked it 5th. In conclusion, there were concordances and dis-concordances on the perceptions of marriage and child birth by sex. Understanding these factors caused by gender roles in our society could contribute to making new policies for promoting marriage rate in younger age and overcoming the problems of low birth rates by giving more specific data to policy makers for increasing child birth rate.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.135-145
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• 1998

The purpose of this study was to examine how much the cost of marriage ceremony has increased according to the economic growth. The relationship between marriage expenditures and other comparison variables such as per capital GNP, monthly income, consumer price index was particularly examined. All the money values were adjusted by consumer price index. Data from the Central Committee for Promotion of Saving were used in this study. The results of this study follow. First, nominal and actual total outlay of marriage ceremony has continuously increased. Total marriage ceremony cost was positively correlated with the housing price so that bridegroom’s outlay were greater than that of bride’s one since bridegroom was more likely to have the responsibility for the price of new couple’s house. Second, it was found that increased percentage rate of marriage ceremony cost was greater than that of national economic growth. The total marriage expenditure was about 10 times as much per capital income in 1990. Third, it was revealed that housing cost increased three times from 1990 to 1995, and marriage ceremony expense was accordingly increased twice during the same periods. Such trends tend to increase continuously. Last, the marriage cost percentage to monthly income called marriage expenditure share increased by 1990 and then decreased. Such a decreasing trend can be explained by the increased amount of income partly due to the higher wage rate compared to other conditions since 1990.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.232-240
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the predictors of marriage outlook for university students in Korea. Method: A convenience sampling method was used and 438 university students were studied for final analysis. Data collection was conducted through the use of questionnaires which were constructed to include Marriage outlook scale, Family-of-origin Scale-55 and Sexual Knowledge & Attitude Test. Results: Marriage outlook for university students didn't demonstrate a positive point of view. There were positive correlations between marriage outlook, health of the family of origin and sexual awareness. The significant factors influencing marriage outlook of university students were current dating, health of the family of origin, gender, and religion. These factors explained 10.6% of marriage outlook of university students. Conclusions: These results support that special programs are needed in inducing a change in marriage outlook to overcome the low birthrate of Korea. These programs need to consider personal factors including the health of the family of origin, gender and religion.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.631-643
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• 2015

In that marriage immigrant women' birth rate are higher than those of Korea women, they were selected to suggest pronatalism in Korea. The purpose of this study is to explore the child birth intention of marriage immigrant women. One of qualitative study, case study was used in methodology. Participants were 10 marriage immigrant women, depth interview were conducted. The major results were categorized facilitators and inhibitors. Facilitators were 'number of origin family members', 'absence or weakness of family planning', 'successful experience of the first child birth', 'no difficulty in childbearing', 'recommendation of mother-in-law', 'child' positive effect in Korea life adjustment'. Inhibitors were 'insufficient economic condition', 'husband' old age and the opposite of mother-in-law', 'dissatisfaction with marriage life', 'lack of government' support'. Based on this results, practical implications and interventions were suggested.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.583-591
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• 2018

Increasing rate of late or deferred marriage in our society may have been inferred from alleged contribution of media use on people's idealistic expectations about marriage. This study examined the relationship between Korean-Chinese romance drama viewing and various sub-concepts of idealistic fantasy about marriage. Results from survey analysis indicate that although romance drama viewing has a positive association with life satisfaction, it was positively associated with various aspects of idealistic marriage fantasy (i.e., less materialism in marriage, more belief in love at first sight, and more unrealistic expectations on marriage). Further, differential cultivation effects of Korea and Chinese romance dramas were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.1-14
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• 1973

This study is designed to meet the following objectives: (1) To study attitude and behavior regarding marriage and age at marriage, (2) To learn correlates of age at marriage and to examine their relations, (3) To measure relative importance of the correlates of age at marriage, and (4) To study relations of age at marriage and family planning practice to fertility and their relative importance as correlates of fertility. The data are obtained by an independent cross-sectional survey in three study areas purposively selected to represent metropolitan. semihuman. rural population. The study population is confined to women age 17-50 as of survey. The overall response rate is 90%. Reliability of data is measured by . individual and aggregate inconsistency based upon a 15% subsample of the original interviews. The individual inconsistency (31%) is found to be high compared to the aggregate inconsistency (6%) for all 85 variables. However, the magnitude of differences between means is small, and the mean absolute shifts and proportional shifts are also small on the whole. In a word respondents did not change their answers too extremely or radically. The study populations of each study area are compared on some basic characteristics. It is found that the three study populations have more dissimilarities than similarities. The findings on seven different attitudinal positions of women toward marriage indicate that there have been tremendous changes in all study areas Iron "traditional" attitudes which have been prevalent for a long time in Korean society to "liberalized" or "modernized" attitudes. An apparent tendency is that women generally take a position of a "golden mean" attitude by not preferring either extreme of marriage attitudes. Nevertheless, the young, single, educated, and urbanite appears more "liberalized. " There has been some increase in ideal age at marriage from 1958 to 1970 for both sexes. No age group, marital status, or study area differentials in ideal age at marriage are found, the average ideal age at marriage in every sub-group being 24-25. Awareness of existing legal marriageable ages is low; only 4.4% are aware that "with parental permission: minimum age for males is 18 years and for females 16 years,"and only 3.7% are aware that "without parental permission: 27 years for males and 23 years for females." People in Korra tend to marry spouses who are in various social ways like themselves: the similarities include (a) education, occupational status of father, (c) economic status, (d) usual residence before marriage, and (e) religion. Both singulars and actual mean ages at marriage in this study confirm the trend of rising age at marriage previously established by other independent studies. The urban-rural differential in age at marriage is observed, but the differential narrows down gradually from 1935 to 1970. All socio-economic, demographic, and other variables pertaining to wife before and at first marriage, excluding (a) religion, (b) father′s of occupation, and (c) as: of menarche, are correlated with respondent's age at first marriage, whereas only three variables out of all socio-economic variables relating to husband before and at wife′s first marriage, viz., (a) education, (b) usual residence, and (c) economic level of his old home, are correlated with respondent′s age at marriage. Among socio-economic and modernity variables related to either husband or wife at the time of survey, only education and duration of residence are correlated with wife′s age at first marriage. Among the correlates of respondent′age at first marriage, education is in general the most important variable. However, it is found that wife′s education is more important than husband′s. The combined effects or the correlates studied explain no more than about 40% of variance for any of the selected groups of variables. Points which might counteract the effects of late marriage on fertility are not serious in Korea. For each of the correlates of the three fertility indices chosen for this study. namely, (a) number of living children, (b) number of live births, and (c) number of pregnancies, age at marriage is the major contributor to the variance in all age groups except the age group of 20-29 in which the index of family planning practice is the major contributor. The proportion of variability in fertility indices accounted for by the correlates is never more than 40% of the total variance in any age group. Based upon the findings from this study, it could be concluded that in the foreseeable future (a) celibate group will no! be increased to a point that would slow down population growth rate in Korea, (b) age at marriage will not increase continually, (c) although education stands out as the major contributing variable which independently explains the variation in age at marriage, it seems probable that education may not be the major variable in the near future, and (d) despite the fact found by this study that age at marriages has been the major contributor to the variance of each of the fertility indices used, family planning practice will play a more important role in the reduction of fertility in the Korean society. Therefore, factors interrupting practice of family planning must be eliminated and family planning program should be strengthened if further fertility reduction is needed.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.200-229
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of youth job policy measures, set forth in Korea's 2016-2020 Third Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aging Society (December 2015), on marriage and fertility among young people. Based on the results, we provide theoretical explanations for the findings and suggest policy alternatives to overcome the low fertility phenomenon in Korea. Previous studies have shown that employment is an important factor for marriage among youth, and a job policy could increase marriage and fertility rates. To test this assumption, we performed an exact matching between Statistics Korea's Employee-Enterprise Linkage DB and the Newlyweds DB from 2011 to 2019, in order to identify all young people aged 15-34. Then, linear spline regression analysis was used to examine the impact of the youth job policy on marriage and fertility. Comparing the period before the implementation of the employment policy (2011-2015) and after (2016-2019), the fertility rate increased as the number of young people looking for work increased. In addition, it was found that these impacts were greater after the implementation of the measures (2016-2019) than before (2011-2015). It is interesting to note that job growth among young people did not lead to an increase in marriage. However, the number of births significantly increased when young people who occupy jobs got married, which seems to be related to the delay in marriage among young people who are employed. Survey results about the intentions to marry and views on fertility are utilized for the explanation of the study results.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.22-32
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• 1988

This study was conducted in order to compare the sequential changes of marital partnership and average marital life expectancy in Korea using Korean marriage life table for 1970, 1980, and 1985. The marriage life table was constructed by the Wolfbein-Wool method of constructing a working life table. Data used in this study was obtained from the Population Census Reports of Korea and the Korean Abridged life Tables. Some of the finding may be summarized as follows : 1. The marital partnership findings showed that males in the 40-44 age group in 1970 and in 1980 and those in the 45-49 bracket in 1985 have the highest rates of any other age interval, the percentages were 97.5% 97.3% and 96.9% respectively. The highest marital partnership rates for females were those aged 30-34 in 1970 and in 1980 and 35-39 in 1985:these were 94.6% 94.3% and 93.30% respectively. 2. The marital rate of the youngest age group has decreased due to the increasing amount of people marrying at older ages. On the other hand, the marital rates of the elderly has increased slightly due to the decreasing mortality rate. 3. The enterance rate of marriage at the 15-19 female age group ad the 20-24 male age group has decreased. 4. The secession rate of marriage has gradually decreased due to the decrease in the mortality rate. The main reason of secession for males is his own death. For females, the main reasons are divorce and the death of her spouse. 5. Korean average marital life expectancy has improved in general. In 1985 the average marital life expectancy for males was higher by 4-5 years than for females. The average difference of marital expectancy and life expectancy is about 1.4 - 1.5 years for males and about 11-14 years at the age groups below 60 years for females.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.233-239
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• 2018

A rapid decrease of total fertility rate to 1.08 in 2005 prompted the Korean government to plan and implement a '5-year plan for ageing society and population policy' starting from 2006. The 1st and 2nd 5-year plans had not shown any discernible impact on the fertility and the 3rd 5-year plan was launched in 2016. However, the fertility rate is going down further. The author reviewed the contents and assessment reports of the fertility promotion plan to suggest ideas for complementing the shortcomings of it. Author defined the major determinants of marriage and child birth as philosophy, politics, sense of value, social norm, culture, healthcare, and education. The plan was examined in view of these determinants. Transformation of Korea from an agricultural society to an industrialized society in a short period of time had brought about changes in most of the determinants of marriage and child birth; in particular philosophy and sense of value. These aspects were not put into consideration in the plan. Author suggested to launch a social education program for the general public to establish a sound philosophy of life, reform the sense of value on family, child birth and education, and cultivate the skill to draw a consensus through discussions on the social issues. A special program to promote marriage of women at the optimum age for child birth was proposed. The government should implement well balanced policy for economic development and labor. Multidisciplinary approach was recommended for these tasks.