Factors Influencing Fertility Intentions of Newlyweds in South Korea: Focus on Demographics, Socioeconomics, Housing Situation, Residential Satisfaction, and Housing Expectation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the revised version of the manuscript, the authors took into account all my comments.
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 1’s comments
Reviewer’s comment. In the revised version of the manuscript, the authors took into account all my comments.
Authors’ reply: We sincerely appreciate all valuable comments and suggestions once again, which helped us to improve the quality of the article.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is suitable for publication in present form.
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 2’s comments
Reviewer’s comment. The article is suitable for publication in present form.
Authors’ reply: We sincerely appreciate all valuable comments and suggestions once again, which helped us to improve the quality of the article.
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion, the authors documented their research work fairly well. However, I am making a few notes for consideration:
- The referred sources of literature are not in proper order (neither in alphabetical order, nor in the order of occurence in the text).
- In lines 190-191 for example, the figures are given in Korean Won. The readers can be better informed by indicating the EUR or USD equivalents of them.
- Considering lines 266-272, the arguments seem to be biased, in case you do not mention contra-opinions. I mean, you wrote "Newlywed households planning to start a family should be targeted by a housing policy that provides economic stability for their initial settlement"; but what if these housing policies are not substantially enough to increase the willingness for childbearing?
- The arguments between the lines 289-296 are a bit confusing, please revise them.
- The literature review is mainly about the recent trends of fertility, willingness of childbearing, and pro-birth policies, which is reasonable. However, I would recommend to place these issues into a bit broader context about how these literatures have evolved. With an example to this, see https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3976. (Please know that I am kindly making a suggestion to read this paper, instead of pushing you to cite this one.)
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 3’s comments
In my opinion, the authors documented their research work fairly well. However, I am making a few notes for consideration.
Reviewer’s comment 1. The referred sources of literature are not in proper order (neither in alphabetical order, nor in the order of occurrence in the text).
Authors’ reply: We thank the reviewer for this comment. Initially we prepared Table 1 in the order of occurrence in the text. In the revised manuscript, we categorized the referred sources of literature to demographics, socioeconomics, and housing for better visualization (page 3 line 100-110). Also, we summarized the influences that described in the prior studies as you can see in Table 1.
Reviewer’s comment 2. In lines 190-191 for example, the figures are given in Korean Won. The readers can be better informed by indicating the EUR or USD equivalents of them.
Authors’ reply: Thank you for the Reviewer’s suggestion. We indicated approximated EUR in our manuscript based on the average basic rate of exchange provided by Korean Statistical Information Service (page 5 line 192, page 9 line 316, line 321).
Reviewer’s comment 3. Considering lines 266-272, the arguments seem to be biased, in case you do not mention contra-opinions. I mean, you wrote "Newlywed households planning to start a family should be targeted by a housing policy that provides economic stability for their initial settlement"; but what if these housing policies are not substantially enough to increase the willingness for childbearing?
Authors’ reply: We thank the reviewer for this comment. We agree that financial support alone cannot solve the low birth rate issue, and we discussed the additional measures that should be considered. In our Discussions and Conclusion section, we explained the needs of policy in various aspects as follows: (1) problems and potential solutions for the existing financial support (page 9 line 275-285), (2) housing and economic policies depending on the income status; customized support policies for low-income and high-income families (page 9 line 286-298), (3) importance of creating a childbirth-friendly urban residential environment (page 9 line 299-304), and (4) problems of the recent Korean policy of ‘4th Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aged Society’ by comparing it to the Japanese policy (page 9 line 305-329).
Reviewer’s comment 4. The arguments between the lines 289-296 are a bit confusing, please revise them.
Authors’ reply: We would like to apologize that we had a mistake in the text. We corrected our manuscript as follows: “The higher the income, the higher the women’s educational level and the willingness to engage in social activities, resulting in a ‘lower’ fertility intention of newlyweds who own their households” (page 9 line 291-293).
Reviewer’s comment 5. The literature review is mainly about the recent trends of fertility, willingness of childbearing, and pro-birth policies, which is reasonable. However, I would recommend to place these issues into a bit broader context about how these literatures have evolved. With an example to this, see https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3976. (Please know that I am kindly making a suggestion to read this paper, instead of pushing you to cite this one.)
Authors’ reply: Thank you for introducing the paper. We added an overview of the paper in the Introduction section (page 3 lines 96-99). We also included the recent socioeconomic changes such as gender roles in society and home, work-life balance, labor market rebalancing, and childcare environment described in the literature (page 3 lines 103-108).
We would like to thank Reviewer 3 for taking the time and effort to review the manuscript. We sincerely appreciate all your valuable comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript.
