One cause of Korea’s low total fertility rate, which is expected to drop to around 0.7 this year, is the unique preference for boys in East Asian cultures. Analysis that the collapse of the gender ratio has led to ultra-low fertility rates as the number of people who have stopped giving birth after having only one child even while mobilizing expedient methods in the process of implementing a birth control policy in the 70s and 80s with the aim of ‘letting there be only one child’.
25-34 years, 430,000 more men
According to Statistics Korea, only 1.7 million women out of 3.66 million people aged 25-29 in the past year. That’s 250,000 fewer than 1.95 million men. The sex ratio was 114.4, which was the highest among all age groups by age group. Of the 3.33 million people between the ages of 30 and 34, 1.57 million were women. The sex ratio was 111.9.
The sex ratio of the 25-34-year-old population reached 113.2. This means that there are 113.2 males for every 100 females in this age group. Considering that the total population is 6.99 million, the male population is 430,000 more.
The 25-34 year old population last year was born between 1987 and 1996. This is a time when the fertility rate fell below the population maintenance level of 2.1 due to strong policy. government birth control.
In the 1980s, the government implemented a “we have one child” policy without distinguishing between men and women. This policy was actually an attempt to alleviate the ideology of male preference. To prevent the phenomenon of families giving birth to daughters from continuing to give birth until a child is born, slogans such as ‘I’m sorry for a well-bred daughter and ten children’ have been spread and contraception and family planning have been encouraged.
Excessive birth control, called ultra low fertility
However, this policy has only increased the side effects without dispelling the deeply ingrained ideology of preference for boys. The parents wanted to have a child even if they had only one child. Various tricks have been used. There have been cases of renunciation of childbirth if it is not a child through a fetal sex test. The fact that notification of the sex of the fetus was prohibited by the amendment of the Medical Act in 1987 is the effect of many of these incidents.
Ultimately, the birth control policy at this time resulted in “only one child, only one child”. The government’s excessive birth control policy has increased the gender imbalance.
A bigger problem is that the government continued this trend after the late 1980s when the fertility rate dropped below 2.1. In the mid-1980s, the fertility rate dropped below two. However, it was in 1996 that the government withdrew the birth control measures.
As a result, the sex ratio of children born in the early 1990s was at an all-time low. Those born in 1990 had the worst sex ratio of 116.5. Those born in 1993 (115.3) and 1994 (115.2) also had a serious gender imbalance. People born during this period are now the appropriate age for marriage and childbirth. It is understood that the fertility rate has declined at an unprecedented rate as the population is shrinking and the sex ratio has plummeted. In other words, the wrong policies of the 1980s and 1990s led to extremely low fertility.
By Kang Jin-gyu, staff reporter [email protected]
