Parity Specific Approach to the Birth Plan of Foreign Wives in Korea: Focusing on the Effects of Status Mobility and Proportion of Foreign Population

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the birth plan of marriage immigrant women in Korea and to verify the deviation of the birth plan using the ‘direction of mobility’ and ‘location quotient of the proportion of foreigners’ among various factors affecting the birth plan. Utilizing micro-data from the 2009 National Multi-cultural Family Survey, marriage immigrant wives from China (Korean-Chinese, Han), Vietnam, Philippine, Cambodia were selected as study samples. Results show that the birth plan of women who recognized their status mobility as downward was lower than those who recognized it as horizontal or upward. Neighborhood effect exerts an independent effect on birth plan, apart from socioeconomic and demographic variables. However, neighborhood effect was found only in the areas where more than a certain number of marriage immigrant women or naturalized Korean women live. And the direction of status mobility has a more significant impact on the plan of second or third childbirth than the first childbirth. On the other hand, the location quotient of the proportion of foreigners has a more significant effect on the plans of first or second childbirth. These results include the possibility that foreign wives are easily affected by the characteristics and surrounding environment of their residence in the early stage of immigration and the influence decreases with the passage of time. Conversely, individual characteristics such as changes in the hierarchical position include the possibility of relatively affecting more continuously.