• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.223-249
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to classify OECD countries in regard to levels of supporting fathers' care work. Several meaningful conclusions were reached. First, examining the level of supporting fathers' care work and the strength of the traditional bread-winner model, OECD countries can be classified into 5 different clusters. The result is different from the mainstream typology of welfare states and suggests the new typology of welfare states. Second, the level of supporting fathers' care work and the strength of the traditional bread-winner model were found to be related to total fertility rates and women's labor market participation rates. Third, in regard to the level of supporting fathers' care work, Korea was the lowest among OECD countries. This result points to one of the important reasons to the low level of total fertility rat, and low rate of women's labor market participation in Korea.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.41-52
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to examine how female labor force participation, family policies, and gender equality are related to fertility rate across countries. Multiple measures has been collected from various data sources(such as OECD, UNDP, and WVS) and the panel data set which includes (mostly) OECD countries range from 1990 to 2019 are analyzed. The major findings are as follows. First, based on OECD countries samples, female labor force participation is positively associated with the fertility rate, which implies that women's labor force participation does not lead to a reduction in fertility rate. Second, the length of paternity leave is positively associated with fertility rate whereas the direction is the opposite for the relationship between the length of maternity leave and fertility rate. This is attributed to the possibility that a longer period of maternity leave incurs the a higher opportunity cost of earning income, which leads to a reduced fertility rate. Third, countries with higher gender inequality index tend to have a higher fertility rate. Similarly, countries with higher gender equality value have a lower fertility rate. When the gender equality value is devideed into three sub-categories, education, politics, and employment, the gender equality value in education is the only sub-category which is negatively associated with the fertility rate. This study confirms that female labor force participation may not be a contributing factor in the lowering of fertility rate but instead can be positively associated with the fertility rate. Also, the results show that family policies or gender equality values can be significantly affect fertility rate.