The Effect of Having More Children on Women's Labour Force Participation in Korea: An Analysis Using Instrument Variables

The objective of this study was to examine the causal relations between having more children and women's labour force participation using Korean data. Given the strong preference for sons in Korea, variables regarding the number of daughters were used as instrument variables for having more children. The results using 1980s data showed that having a third child had a significantly positive impact on women's labour force participation in the ordinary least squares analysis, whereas the coefficient value was significantly negative in the two-stage least squares analysis. Such results imply that, unlike in the western societies such as the USA and the UK, the ordinary least squares analysis results might underestimate the negative correlations between having more children and women's labour force participation in a developing country such as Korea. Copyright 2010 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.