Impact of social trust on young adults’ childbearing intention: why does South Korea show ultra-low fertility?

Existing literature pointed that the economic opportunity cost of having children and gender inequality are the key factors of low fertility. Given the findings, South Korea spent more than 200 billion dollars for the last 17 years and improved gender equality significantly. However, Korea shows the lowest fertility rate in the world. To overcome the limitation of existing literature, this study reinvestigates the factors influencing the intention to have children among young individuals and hypothesizes that young people's childbearing intention is related to how much they trust other people and society, beyond economic factors. This study utilizes the ‘Young Adults Survey’ conducted by the Korean government in 2022, comprising a sample of 14,966 individuals aged from 19 to 34. Employing logit regression analysis and finds that young adults’ perception on social trust and self-actualization possibility have significant impact on their fertility intention. In addition, all the economic factors are not significant for the intention to have two or more children. In contrast to previous studies, income, women’s labour force participation, home ownership, and population density are not significant. It implies that the current economic approaches for the fertility promotion policies would not work as expected. Social approaches should be considered to overcome the ultra-low fertility problem.