Photo: Baby Dior apparel at Hyundai Department Store. Credit: Baby Dior.
A new study by Professor Jeong Jae-hun 정재훈 of Seoul Women’s University 서울여자대학교 showed what has been increasingly clear: as the birth rate falls, only rich people are having children. In his study, Jeong took a sample of 100 households with a newborn, and categorized those households into three income groups: “low-income,” defined as earning 75% or less than the median income (i.e. an annual income of KRW 24m (USD 18k) or less), “middle-income,” and “high-income,” defined as earning 200% or more than the median (i.e. an annual income of KRW 63.5m (USD 47.5k) or more.)
The results are stark: as of 2019, 54.5% of the households with a newborn belonged to the high-income group, while only 8.5% of the households with a newborn belonged to the low-income group. In other words, more than half of all Korean children were born into high-income families, and fewer than one in ten children were born into low-income families. Moreover, this trend is accelerating: from 2010 to 2019, the proportion of low-income families having children fell from 11.2% to 8.5%, and the proportion of middle-income families having children fell from 42.5% to 37.0%.