College Students' Recognition and Attitudes toward Marriage and Childbearing in South Korea

The main purposes of this study are to describe college students' recognition and attitudes toward marriage and childbearing and to explore the factors impacting on their recognition and attitudes toward marriage and childbearing in South Korea.. 440 questionnaires were collected from college students in five colleges and universities in South Korea. The survey was carried out from October 12 to October 22, 2011. Findings of this study are as follows: First, it turns out that rearing place, marital values, and values for children increase odds ratio of the pro-marital values in the logistic regression analysis. Second, sex, age, and values for marriage have statistically significant relationships with the prospective age at first marriage among college students. Third, rearing place, values for marriage, and values for children, increase odds ratio of the willingness of childbearing in the future. Fourth, sex, religion, attitudes against divorce, and values for children have statistically significant impacts on the number of the wanted children in the future. Finally, we argue that population education program need to be launched in the colleges in order to increase marital willingness and childbearing willingness of the college students which, in turn, will help to alleviate the lowest low fertility in the South Korea.