February 27, 2025
SEOUL – In South Korea, women spend nearly three more hours per day on household chores than men. That deep imbalance at home, according to new research by Nobel-winning economist Claudia Goldin, is one of the key reasons why the country’s birth rate has plunged to the lowest in the world.
Goldin, who was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on women’s labor market outcomes, has spent decades studying how women’s earnings, workforce participation and family roles have evolved over time.
In her latest paper published last December, “Babies and the Macroeconomy,” she explores why some countries have seen fertility rates stabilize at around 1.6 births per woman, while others — including South Korea, Japan and Italy — have fallen to “lowest of the low” levels, below 1.3. While economic development has reshaped the workforce across the globe, she finds that in some countries, traditional gender roles at home have changed far too slowly.
South Korea is the most striking example highlighted in the paper. Its fertility rate was just 0.72 in 2023, far below the replacement level of 2.1. Government efforts to reverse the decline — such as financial incentives, expanded parental leave and subsidized child care — have had little effect. Goldin’s research suggests that policies alone cannot fix the problem when the core issue lies within the structure of everyday life: In South Korea, women still carry a disproportionate burden of housework and child care, even when they work full-time.
Gender roles stuck in the past
Based on 2019 OECD data, the professor analyzed that South Korean women perform 2.8 more hours of unpaid housework daily than their male peers. In Sweden, where the gap is just 0.8 hour, the fertility rate is 1.7 births per woman. France, with a 1.5-hour gap, has a birth rate of 1.87— more than double South Korea’s.
Goldin attributes this divide to South Korea’s rapid economic growth since the 1960s. As the country modernized, women gained access to higher education and careers, but domestic expectations remained unchanged.
Despite the South Korean government’s efforts to increase births, financial incentives have done little to change household dynamics, Goldin says in the paper. While paternity leave exists, few men take it due to workplace and cultural pressures, leaving women to handle most child care. Long work hours and rigid corporate structures further discourage working mothers from expanding their families.
Goldin argues South Korea’s fertility crisis stems from the clash between modernization and unchanged gender roles.
“When a country experiences such fast economic growth, it doesn’t give generations enough time to adapt to modern realities,” Goldin said in a recent call interview about the research with Washington Post columnist Heather Long.
“You end up thrusting people into modernity without changing the structures around them. In South Korea, gender roles within households remain stuck in the past.”