ZEMCH 2019 International Conference Proceedings April.2020 | Page 88
1. Introduction
Since South Korea recorded the total fertility rate of 1.30 in 2001, the social phenomenon of lowest‐
low fertility rate has been prolonged (2018, the total fertility rate 0.98) [1]. As this phenomenon
continues, the government implemented the policies to address the low fertility issues such as the
ʹThird Master Plan of Low Fertility Aged Societyʹ and ʹHousing Special‐Provision Policyʹ. However,
most of these policies focused on multi‐child families with three or more children, and fertility supports
for additional children less than three have been excluded from the policy.
According to the 2015 Newlyweds Panel Analysis of Housing Conditions by the Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure and Transport, 16.2% of newlyweds currently do not have children. Besides, the average
number of children of newlyweds is 1.16, but more than 74.9% of households have no children or delay
their fertility plans due to difficulties in their career, the burden of parenting, and economic
circumstances [2]. Although the first childbirth after marriage seems to be common to newlyweds,
considering that newlyweds within five years of marriage are the main subjects of delivering a child, it
is necessary to seek residential environments and housing policies to increase the fertility rate of the
newlyweds [3].
Recently, the residential environment has been rapidly changed because of the alterations in the
social environment. The residential patterns of housing types, housing expenses, housing tenure types,
and residential period have had a significant influence on marriage and fertility [4]. Besides, socio‐
cultural problems such as insufficient childcare support, parenting expenses, and marriage delays are
suggested as the cause of the lowest‐low fertility rate. Among these causes, the housing issues are
recognized as a critical factor directly contributing to the low fertility problem in South Korea.
However, the research on the effect of residential patterns on fertility rate has not been actively
progressed. There is a lack of research into what residential environment affects the fertility intention
in newly married couples, who are the main subjects of delivering children [5‐13]. In this background,
we analyzed and identified the residential environment factors that affect the fertility intention of the
newlyweds. We aimed to quantitatively validate the residential environmental factors that have a
negative impact on the fertility rate and to derive implications for establishing better residential policies.
2. Materials and Methods
We utilized publicly available microdata of the 2015 Newlyweds Panel Analysis of Housing
Conditions released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (https://mdis.kostat.go.kr)
[2]. From the database, we selected 2,702 first‐married couples within 5 years of marriage for the
analysis. They reported their marriage from January 1st, 2010 to December 31st, 2014. We extracted the
residential environmental factors such as the characteristics of demography, economy, housing, and
residential satisfaction based on the influences revealed in the fertility theories and prior researches [3‐
6], [14]. We used binary logistic regression analysis to estimate the residential environmental factors
that affect the fertility intention of the newlyweds. We selected demographic characteristics, economic
characteristics, housing characteristics, housing satisfaction, and future housing conditions as variables
for the analyses.
The demographic characteristics were categorized by the age of wife, the duration of the marriage,
and the residential region (metropolitan/non‐metropolitan). The metropolitan region includes Seoul‐
city, Incheon‐city, and Gyeonggi‐province. The wife’s age value was generated by converting the date
of birth. Economic characteristics were defined as income, mortgage (monthly expenses), and dual‐
income status. Pre‐tax gross annual salary statements were used for the income, and mortgages were
applied to the analysis based on mortgage statement for the average monthly expense.
The residential attributes were defined as housing ownership, rental status, and apartments or
non‐apartment. The features of residential satisfaction were used in the analysis to extract the variables
of satisfaction with the basic environment of housing, the housing setting, and the environment of
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ZEMCH 2019 International Conference l Seoul, Korea