[Square] Low Fertility Is Low Fertility, and Low Birthrate Is Low Birthrate

At the end of December 2016, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety made a 'misstep.' It released the so-called South Korea Birth Map, providing information on the 'status of pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare support' in 243 basic local governments. However, it also ranked local governments based on 10 years of statistics related to marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth. Immediate criticism arose that the state was objectifying women solely as childbearers. Furthermore, a movement emerged to use the term low birth rather than low fertility, which places the responsibility for childbirth solely on women.

Around Women's Week in July 2018, the Seoul Metropolitan Government published a booklet called the 'Gender-Equal Language Dictionary.' In the context of improving 'sexist language in daily life,' it proposed changing terms such as 'stroller' to 'child stroller' and 'female employee' to 'employee,' and similarly suggested replacing low fertility with low birth. The reason was that low fertility is a concept that could be misunderstood as placing the responsibility for not having children on women. Since then, most media outlets have started publishing articles with titles substituting low fertility with low birth. Local governments have also increasingly used low birth as a term in their projects instead of low fertility.

However, let me pose a question. Have the projects of local governments that replaced low fertility with low birth become more gender-equal than before? They have only changed the term from childbirth to birth, but there is no change in holding matchmaking (marriage support) events for young men and women to 'overcome low birth.' There is little sign of changing awareness regarding the issue that increasing tendencies toward remaining single due to gender discrimination caused by marriage as an institution?such as the mother-in-law world, sole childcare burden, career breaks, and gender wage gaps?lead to a decrease in the number of births.

As a result, local government research institutes produce documents stating that "the ultra-low birth phenomenon has not recovered to the standard of 1.3 or higher." The 1.3 refers to the total fertility rate, not the crude birth rate. There is a concept related to the crude birth rate. It is the number of births per 1,000 people. When the total fertility rate first showed an ultra-low fertility rate below 1.3 in 2001, the crude birth rate was 11.7. When the total fertility rate again recorded 1.3 in 2012, the crude birth rate was 9.6. Although the fertility rates in 2001 and 2012 were the same, the number of births per 1,000 people differed by more than two. The total fertility rate and crude birth rate are not necessarily the same concept. The total fertility rate is calculated based on the number of children a woman has in her lifetime, while the crude birth rate is expressed as the number of births per 1,000 people.

If the number of women of childbearing age is small, even if the number of births per woman is high (high fertility rate), the crude birth rate will not be high. This is an example of some regions currently having a high fertility rate but a continuously decreasing number of births. There are also cases where the fertility rate is low but the crude birth rate is high. In the 1990s, the total fertility rate dropped to about 1.4. However, the baby boom generation, which was nearly one million people born annually, was having children. Therefore, the number of births could be maintained at around 600,000 to 700,000. There were also times when both fertility and crude birth rates were high, such as in the 1960s to 1980s. Currently, both fertility and crude birth rates are low. However, when the 1990s generation, which is larger in number than the 1980s generation, begins to give birth, the fertility rate may be low, but the crude birth rate could rise again. Should we celebrate this as a success of the so-called low birth overcoming projects? We cannot. It is merely a result of changes in the size of the childbearing female population.

Policies based on the choice of one woman and policies based on the number of children born cannot be the same in nature. There was a past that instrumentalized and objectified motherhood. However, the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy acknowledged in the July 5, 2018, measures and the December 7 roadmap that only through gender equality can the low fertility phenomenon be reversed. It is a change in perception that improves social conditions so that women and families, as childbirth agents, can have and raise children, while accepting birth as a result of personal choice. At this time, the concept of low fertility is necessary to examine the reasons why individual women do not have children from a gender equality perspective. Not everyone should blindly change low fertility to low birth just because of gender equality.

Jaehoon Jeong, Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Seoul Women's University