South Korean women with graduate degrees have much lower marriage prospects than those with undergraduate degrees only, according to a report by Korea University.

The study, involving 524 individuals from different social and economic backgrounds, began in 2000 and lasted for 10 years. All of the participants were single in 2000.

According to the study, women with either master’s or doctorate degrees were 58.3 percent less likely to marry than those who only had undergraduate degrees.

Also, women with undergraduate degrees were 7.8 percent less likely to tie the knot than those who never finished high school.

One of the reasons behind the statistics is that women with graduate school degrees find it more difficult to find a spouse with equal or higher education or income, according to the research.

While women’s marriage prospects were heavily affected by education, men’s were most affected by income level.

According to the research, Korean men who were employed were 1.65 times likelier to get married than those who were not working. Full-time male employees were 1.6 times likelier to tie the knot than male contract workers.

The South Korean government considers the nation’s increasing number of late marriages as a key reason behind the country’s critically low birthrate.

“On top of the increased number of people with higher education degrees, more people are deciding to get married late because it costs a lot of time and money to find the right spouse,” said researcher Kim Seong-jun.

“I also discovered that men tend to give up on or put off marriage indefinitely as it takes them a lot of time to find jobs they are satisfied with.”

A local think tank last year said it would take 29 years on average for a newly married, double-income couple to save enough to lease an apartment in Seoul ― costing about 280 million won ($256,000) as a lump-sum deposit under Korea’s “jeonse” real-estate system ― if they choose to avoid borrowing.

Overseas studies have shown that low marriage rates of educated women in the past also had to do with the cultural idea of hypergamy ― the notion that women should marry up and men should marry down educationally and economically ― as it helped to maintain the traditional gender roles.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)