The higher their earnings, the more reluctant women are to have a second child. The Korea Development Institute on Monday released a report on the correlation between women's earnings and the number of children from 1980 to 2005. It says when women's earnings increased by 10 percent, the likelihood that they had a second child declined 0.56-0.92 percentage points. As more women earn more money, they are inclined to take good care of one child while working rather than having more children and shouldering the burden of raising them, the KDI said. The birthrate stood at 1.19 in 2008, far less than the OECD average of 1.65. Dr. Park Soo-mi of the Korean Women's Development Institute said, "Now that women are more socially active, many who earn high incomes especially will be more inclined to forego having children and try to survive in the workplace." Not all countries where women work have low birthrates. For example, economic activity among women in the U.S. was 66.1 percent, and the birthrate stood at 2.1 in 2006. In Sweden the rates were 72.1 percent and 1.85 the same year. The proportion of economically active women in Korea has risen to 50 percent since 2005. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/07/28/2009072800275.html