Tag: birthrate

None of these ideas being proposed will do anything significant to raise the birthrate because they all simply involve throwing money at the problem:

Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung pose for a photograph with children during his campaign in South Gyeongsang on May 14. [KIM SEONG-RYONG]

The rival candidates, Kim and Lee, are seemingly on different paths regarding how to help couples conceive babies, strengthen child care and housing support and provide tax benefits for families with children. 
  
While Lee only stated his promise to strengthen medical services for couples struggling with infertility, Kim suggested more detailed plans: the state health insurance covering costs of freezing sperm and ova and state funding for fertility testing. 
  
Lee stressed “public” support in parenting services to establish a “society where everyone partakes in child care.” 
  
Instead of the current scheme where elementary schools autonomously decide the service period and curriculum, Lee plans to reinforce the central and local governments’ direct responsibility for after-school child care services. 
  
Kim kept his child care-related pledges brief. He promised to expand 24-hour and emergency care facilities and provide one-on-one care for babies and infants. When it comes to housing, Lee presented “public housing for newlyweds” as his key initiative. 
  
Public housing, provided by state authorities, offers leases for 30 to 50 years for low-income families. Currently, a two-person household can apply for public housing if their combined monthly earnings are 5.89 million won or below. 
  
However, as of Tuesday, Lee has not specified how many units will be supplied, nor potential locations. 
  
Kim also promised to supply 100,000 housing units annually, which makes the residents receive state subsidies for their housing expenses. Newlyweds would qualify for three years of support. An addition of a single child will extend the benefit for three more years.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

To raise the birthrate Korea needs couples to marry earlier. Right now Korean women on average get married at 31.6 years of age. By the time women reach 40 they probably do not want to have children so this leaves effectively about 8 years to have kids. Then you throw in that many women now work and manage careers plus the high costs of raising kids that is why there is a low birthrate.

Besides reducing costs there needs to be a cultural change in South Korea for couples to marry earlier which would conflict with women pursuing careers early in life before marriage and having kids. As long as this remains the cultural norm Korea will continue to have a low birthrate.

This is not good news for the historically low Korean birthrate:

Just four percent of unmarried Korean women in their 20s and 30s see marriage and childbearing as essential in their lives, according to a recent survey that paints an even gloomier picture of the country’s continuously falling fertility rate. 

The survey was conducted by Park Jeong-min, a professor of social welfare at Seoul National University and published in the Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies, Sunday. Park surveyed 281 unmarried men and women aged between 20 and 40 on their thoughts about marriage and childbirth.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

South Korea is really going to have to rely on automation in the future as the birthrate continues to decline:

 The number of babies born in South Korea reached yet another fresh low in 2022, data showed Wednesday, with deaths outpacing births for the third consecutive year.

A total of 249,000 babies were born last year, falling 4.4 percent from the previous record low in 2021, according to the data from Statistics Korea.

The country’s total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, came to 0.78 in 2022. It also marked the lowest since 1970, when the statistics agency began compiling related data.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The birthrate continues to decline significantly in South Korea:

A total of 18,982 babies were born in November, plunging 4.3 percent from the previous year, according to the data from Statistics Korea. It marked the lowest number for any November since the statistics agency started compiling related data in 1981.

South Korea remains dogged by a chronic decline in childbirths as many young people delay or give up on having babies in the face of an economic slowdown and high home prices.

Over the January-November period, a total number of 231,863 babies were born, down 4.7 percent from a year earlier.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Yonhap has an interesting article published about the different incentives being offered in South Korea for families to have 3 or more children in order to improve the nation’s birthrate:

The government spent more than 101.6 trillion won from 2006 to 2016 to encourage people to have more babies, though it was not enough to boost the low birthrate. The government said it has set aside more than 22.4 trillion won this year to help raise the country’s birthrate.

“It’s fair to say financial incentives are part of South Korea’s efforts to raise the low birthrate,” said Kye Bong-oh, professor of sociology at Kookmin University and a member of the Population Association of Korea.

Still, he said it remains to be seen how effective South Korea’s birth promotion policy will be.

Kang said she feels relieved that her county offers 10 million won in incentives to promote birth.

Kang’s view was echoed by Lee Su-min who is entitled to receive 47 million won from the southeastern county of Changnyeong and the central government over the next five years for her fourth baby.

“Financial incentives are of help to my family, as my husband is the sole breadwinner,” Lee said by phone from Changnyeong.

The southern South Korean island of Wando also offers 5 million won as a lump sum and another 15 million won in installments over three years for those who have a fifth baby. So far, there is only one recipient, but he declined to give an interview, citing privacy.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Everyone has to make their own personal decision about whether or not to have kids and the man featured in this article decided raising kids with limited financial resources was not for him:

Shin Ji-hoon, 33, went to the hospital for a vasectomy in February. An office worker, he is in his fourth year of marriage. Shin and his wife had given up on the idea of children for financial reasons, and he thought he needed a more reliable form of birth control. “I’m not very well off myself, and I figured that I would end up leaving my kids in an even worse position. After deciding not to have a child, I settled on a surefire way of eliminating the possibility of pregnancy,” he said.Shin felt sorry about having had his wife get prescriptions for “morning after” pills. These days, he says, vasectomy often comes up in conversation with people he knows. “When I hang out with friends my age, we often have debates about whether it’s even possible to raise kids,” he said.

Vasectomies once symbolized the South Korean government’s policy of decreasing the birthrate. During the 1960s, the government covered the cost of vasectomies as part of its family planning program; in the 1970s, it gave men who had vasectomies an advantage in bidding for apartments.But the government did an about-face when South Korea’s birthrate tanked. At the end of 2004, the government even eliminated coverage for vasectomies under national health insurance. But despite government policy, the story of this man in his 30s who rejected the idea of having children and decided to have a vasectomy reflects the harsh truth of South Korean society, in which people can’t have children even when they want to.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but falling birthrates are sign of a modernizing country.  So unless South Korea wants to import a huge amount of immigrants that could lead to social problems down the road they are going to have to look for ways to reduce the costs of raising kids to really improve the birthrate.