Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility in South Korea

Drawing data from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study that are fitted to Cox proportional hazard model, we attempt to uncover causal impacts of female labor force participation on childbirth decision in South Korea. To control for the dynamic processes in which soon-to-be mother choose to get out of labor force to give birth, we evaluate empirical datasets using three different birth-month lag scenarios: no lag, five and eight month lag. We evaluate parity-specific effects even though parities are limited to the first and second child due to small sample size in higher parities. Our preliminary results suggest that regarding the first childbirth decision, female labor force participation does not seem to make a chilling dent in fertility hazards. Female labor force participation, however, appears to affect the second childbirth decision in a negative direction though the impacts are not as great as widely publicized. Combining two parities, we find somewhat negative impacts of female labor force participation on fertility hazards. These results vary by different lag scenarios with biggest impacts detected in no lag scenario and lowest impacts observed in eight month lag scenario. Finally, these patterns do not change by different measures of female labor force participation.