Exploring Key Trends of Lower Fertility Rates Among Women in England, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan

With the tertiarization of the labour market, and women have moved into the paid workforce, fertility rates have rapidly declined. Yet, according to social policy and political economy research, the relationship between female labor market participation and fertility might have reversed from a negative to a positive association. Does it mean that low fertility is an inevitable choice only when pregnancy and childcare are incompatible to work? And, how do national governments address these inadequacies through family policies?

The current study aims to compare the experience of England, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan, as they are currently grappling with falling fertility rates, to different degrees and under different labour market conditions. I will engage into a comparative case analysis of these four cases using official statistics, policy documents, and interviews, to make sense of the fertility crisis and how different governments are responding to this emergency. Using the policy discourse frame, governments exhibit a different degree of reliance on the neoclassic economic assumption, typical of the social investment approach, that the decision to have a child is subject to an economically rational decision (a utility maximization process). The degree to which governments are sensitive to women and family’s considerations in their reproductive decisions, and their gender equality considerations, might make a difference in this comparative analysis.