California Center for Population Research

Stimulated by socioeconomic development, Korea has experienced rapid fertility decline since the 1960s. I study this social and demographic transformation by examining educational differentials in the timing of first marriage and first childbearing. To do this, I estimate multistate life tables and Cox proportional hazard models using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). The analyses show that both educational expansion and growing educational differentials contribute to the delay of first marriage and first birth. Simulation and decomposition analysis shows that growing educational differentials are more important than compositional change in explaining delays in first marriage and childbearing. This implies that growing opportunity costs of marriage and childbearing, as well as lack of institutional adjustments to women’s labor market participation are responsible for the delay in marriage and childbearing in Korea.