Determinants on the Number of Children among Married Women in Korea

This study aims to examine what factors affect married women’s childbirth behavior and what causes the gap between their planned and actual number of children by adopting the ‘extended theory of planned behavior’ model. To this end, the main factors used in the model were attitude to childbirth, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceptions on fairness in housework, and sociodemographic characteristics of the subjects. A secondary data analysis was conducted using data extracted from the ‘2015 National Survey on Fertility and Family Health and Welfare’, which was limited to 8,535 married Korean women who responded to items related to their planned number of children. SPSS 24.0 was used to process the data for a multivariate logistic regression analysis as well as a descriptive analysis. Findings showed that married women are likely to give birth to less than their planned number of children when they are young, lack home ownership, have a low monthly average household income, have a progressive attitude to childbirth during cohabitation, and intend to use the work-family reconciliation policy as it applies to them and their spouse. Results also show that married women are likely to give birth to more than their planned number of children when they have a low education level, a low traditional sense of obligation for children, perceive workplace support for childbirth and child care as unnecessary, perceive tax-funded state support for families with multiple children as necessary, and don’t intend to use the work-family reconciliation policy as it applies to their spouse.