Establishing Childbirth Database for Fertility Trends Analysis

Abstract

□ 1차적으로 한국보건사회연구원에서 지금까지 실시한 출산관련 각종 조사자료를 DB로 구축하고, 체계적 관리 □ 중장기적으로 다른 기관에서 실시한 출산관련 조사자료를 입수하거나 연계하여 출산관련 종합적인 DB 구축

The history of Korea's population policy began with the population control policy through family planning. At that time, the government pursed in the population policy in concurrence economic development plans. As a result, the government annually conducted the "National Family Planning Survey" 1964~1967 in order to collect the basic data for the policy. The "National Family Planning Survey" then evolved into the wider-scoped "National Fertility Survey", which was conducted every two or three years and the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) still continues to conduct the research. The results produced by the KIHASA can be regarded as the most important data in the history of Korean population policy development because the survey is the first and the only of its kind in the national sample survey repeated periodically throughout over the past 40 years. As the low-birth rate and the aging population in Korea emerge as one of serious social problems, the need for in-depth analysis on the change of woman's childbirth behavior also increases as well. However, a significant part of past surveys were poorly maintained because researcher failed to recognize their value as historical data. Moreover, it has become difficult for the researchers who are interested in using the historical data to obtain them as well. Realizing the problem, the KIHASA started restoration, collection, and searching process for childbirth related data. While conducting this research, we were able to confirm that the total number of the research projects and reports conducted nationally for family planning and fertility from the 1960's to present is 23. As a result, we acquired raw data of 14 individual years through final collection. The raw data accumulated , thus , will be used as a valuable base for future research efforts. This raw data can be used to observe temporal changes in childbirth behavior and to derive important implication for long-persisted low-fertility situation. The authors are in hopes that further research attempts would build on this database and successes wise solutions to the problem of low fertility.