e of children relative to goods, and subjective preferences for children compared with goods. The role of these various factors in determining actual fertility differs depending on the comparative state of the potential output of and the demand for children.
A considerable amount of data is available for Korean fertility patterns because Korea was one of the first group of countries which conducted surveys of the issue as part of the World Fertility Survey. This resulted in the 1974 Korean National Fertility Survey (KNFS). The World Fertility Survey is a project of the International Statistical Institute undertaken with the collaboration of the United Nations and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. The Korean survey was undertaken by the Bureau of Statistics of the Economic Planning Board and the Korean Institute for Family Planning with the support of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The sampling design for the KNFS was a self-weighting probability sample with a two-stage design for the household survey and with a further sampling for the individual survey.
The KNFS revealed a high level of fertility in the sampling of 1,174 women. It was found that 84.8 percent of the women aged 40-44 had four or more children. Differences were noted in terms of age of wife, residence, and religion. Religion is not considered an important factor differentiating value orientations and behavior in Korea. Many Koreans choose their own religion no matter what their parents' religion may be, and they also tend to change religion without restraint. Buddhism is one of the major religions and does not have special teachings either on contraception or on the number of children a couple should have. The teachings of the church in Korea have in any case not been very influential on individual reproductive behavior. The study also showed that Catholic women are not substantially different from non-Catholic w...