BACKGROUND
It has been postulated that the COVID-19 pandemic will contribute to fertility decline, especially in low-fertility contexts. Little is known how the consequences of the pandemic differed at the subnational level.

OBJECTIVE
We investigated whether fertility declined beyond the first wave in early 2020 at both the national and the subnational levels in South Korea. We also examined marital rates, given that delayed marriage is a strong driver of low fertility in many East Asian countries.

METHODS
Based on monthly birth and marriage registration data for the period from January 2016 to December 2021, we quantified monthly general fertility and marital rates before and after the pandemic across the 17 regions in Korea. We used paired t-tests and interrupted time-series analysis to compare before and after fertility or marital rates.

RESULTS
Our analysis suggests that, at least until 2021, fertility rates did not decline beyond the pattern explained by the already declining fertility in Korea. For marriages, we observed a clear post-pandemic decline across regions. Subnational variations in the impact of the pandemic were larger for fertility than for marriage.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite the little evidence that the pandemic directly affected the number of births, the reduction in marriages is likely to have a significant impact on fertility in the coming years.



中文翻译：

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韩国 COVID-19 大流行期间出生和婚姻的地方差异（作者：Myunggu Jung、D. Susie Lee）

背景 据
推测，COVID-19 大流行将导致生育率下降，尤其是在低生育率的情况下。鲜为人知的是，大流行病的后果在国家以下一级有何不同。

目标
我们调查了韩国国家和地方各级的生育率下降是否超过了 2020 年初的第一波。我们还研究了结婚率，因为晚婚是许多东亚国家低生育率的重要驱动因素。

方法
根据 2016 年 1 月至 2021 年 12 月期间的每月出生和结婚登记数据，我们量化了韩国 17 个地区在大流行前后的月度一般生育率和结婚率。我们使用配对 t 检验和间断时间序列分析来比较生育率或婚姻率前后。

结果
我们的分析表明，至少在 2021 年之前，生育率的下降幅度并未超出韩国已经下降的生育率所解释的模式。对于婚姻，我们观察到各地区在大流行后明显下降。流行病对生育的影响比对婚姻的影响更大。

结论
尽管几乎没有证据表明这一流行病直接影响了出生人数，但婚姻数量的减少可能会对未来几年的生育率产生重大影响。