The long shadow of missing women on marriage and fertility

This paper examines the long-run consequences of sex-ratio imbalance at birth in South Korea, where sex-selective abortion during the 1980s and early 1990s created a persistent shortage of women. Using an economic model of the marriage market together with census and marriage data, I quantify how restoring these missing women would reshape Korea’s marriage and fertility. Under the counterfactual, the female population in the 2021 marriage market rises by 5.5%, yielding approximately 5000 additional marriages, a 3.2% increase in Korea’s 2021 marriages. They translate into 8500 additional lifetime births from the 2021 marriage cohort, an amount equivalent in magnitude to 3.3% of Korea’s 2021 national births. The effects are concentrated among young, college-educated individuals. Past sex-selective abortion imposes a structural fertility floor that no pro-natalist policy can offset—a constraint that China, India, and Vietnam also face. Closing today’s sex-ratio imbalance would promote marriage and fertility in the next generation.