The Lost Generation: A Cohort Comparison of Fertility Transition in Taiwan and Korea

Abstract

Taiwan and Korea share many similarities, not only in the demographic transition process but also in socioeconomic development. In the past three decades, both countries’ Total Fertility Rate(TFR) fell below the replacement level of 2.1 in 1983 (Korea) and 1984 (Taiwan), followed by a further decline to 1.8-1.4 during the 1990s. Then a ‘hard-landing’ of TFR struck both Taiwan and Korea after the year 2000. Lowest-low fertility since then has become a hot issue in both policy making and social science fields.

First, this paper argues that the TFR is not a valid indicator, which is the most widely used indicator of fertility level among demographers and government authorities in the world. Nevertheless Bongaarts and Feeney (1998) have addressed that the ‘tempo effect’ has distorted the observed TFR indicator. However this research applied Taiwanese and Korean data to the B-F tempo adjusted method, the gap between the tempo adjusted TFR and CFR is still a puzzle and mystery, which needs to be explained by more theories or researches in the future.

Therefore, this research turns the focus on the cohort approach, trying to construct a cohort theoretical framework to explain the differences among cohorts in both countries. According to this research’s finding, although Taiwan and Korea are very similar in the trend of TFR, the ‘cohort deviance’ in both countries needs to be explained and gain more attention in the future by sociologists and demographers.