Towards an ethics of pronatalism in South Korea (and beyond)
Open accessAbstract
East Asian countries such as South Korea have recently made headlines for experimenting with different methods to incentivise people to have (more) children, in a bid to reverse declining birth rates. Many such incentives—child benefits, cash bonuses, dating events, and so on—appear morally innocuous at first glance. I will demonstrate in this analysis, however, that they amount to stopgap measures which reveal fundamental shortcomings with the way various nation states are approaching the so-called ‘problem’ of fertility decline.
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For the time being, these policies are not succeeding in shaping fertility outcomes as they hoped because they are 'stopgap measures which attempt to instrumentalize people's potential fertility, without showing people a sustainable way out of the various social injustices that they must continue to live with in their day-to-day lives'.
“However, for the time being, these policies are not succeeding in shaping fertility outcomes (as they hoped to do) because they are 'stopgap measures which attempt to instrumentalize people's potential fertility, without showing people a sustainable way out of the various social injustices that they must continue to live with in their day-to-day lives' (Lee 2024).”
From Family Policies in Low Fertility Countries: Evidence and Reflections (2025) · cites this paper as Lee 2024
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Cites
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Family Policies in Low Fertility Countries: Evidence and Reflections
Gauthier, A. H., & Gietel‐Basten, S. (2025) · Population and Development Review · doi:10.1111/padr.12691 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lee, J.
- ORCID
- Lee, JY
- Venue
- Journal of Medical Ethics
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2024-11-27
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 371-375
- ISSN
- 0306-6800 (ISSN-L)
- 1473-4257
- OpenAlex
- W4404790273
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 1
- FWCI
- 12.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Medical Ethics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Policies and Family
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics and bioethics in healthcare
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
- Keywords
- pronatalism, fertility decline, family allowances, population policy, South Korea, East Asia
- MeSH terms
- Birth Rate, Female, Humans, Motivation, Republic of Korea
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