Fertility intention and household consumption patterns among public rental housing residents: evidence from Seoul

Persistently low fertility across East Asia has heightened policy attention to the role of housing security and broader socioeconomic conditions in shaping family formation. Prior work has documented associations between housing conditions and fertility intentions and the burden of childrearing on household budgets, but the consumption patterns of households that express fertility intentions within publicly supported rental settings remain little examined. This study examines how fertility intentions relate to household consumption patterns among residents of public rental housing in Seoul, South Korea. Drawing on the 2016 Seoul Public Rental Housing Panel Survey, we estimate a generalized structural equation model that captures direct and mediated associations between demographic, housing, and income characteristics and household expenditure shares. Households whose anchoring woman expresses fertility intentions report a lower total expenditure on average but allocate a larger share of education spending to public education and a larger share of total spending to cultural and leisure activities. Fertility intention also is associated with mediated pathways linking age, education, and housing quality to expenditure allocation. Findings highlight the value of integrating housing, education, and childcare policy in Asia’s high-cost urban contexts.