Abstract
South Korea’s birth rate has been hitting an all time low for several years – in 2022 the birth rate was 0.78 (Kim, 2023), which further dropped to 0.72 in 2023. In this brief I outline what policies have been attempted, why they are failing, and what can be done to immediately help parents and relieve the burden of raising a child. This is a salient topic for many countries that are experiencing an ageing population in Asia and Europe, especially in East Asia, where other countries’ birth rates face a similar situation to South Korea’s.
Introduction
Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate, despite the 2005 legislation of the Framework Act on Low Birthrate in an Aging Society, and the investment of 280 trillion won (around 214.4 billion USD) spent between 2006 to 2021 on policies including supporting maternity/paternity leave, IVF support, direct monetary child support, and various child care institutions and policies (Cheon 2023). There need to be immediate measures to alleviate the factors that deter people from having children. Moreover, as the changes in demographic structure will be felt for several generations, long term measures must be planned and executed along with short term policies.
Policy Recommendations
1. Improving work-life balance: stronger and more enforceable measures
a. Stronger support for parental leave and enforced paternity leave
The government needs to support businesses, so that hiring women or allowing maternal and paternal leave is not perceived as a potential loss to their workforce and revenue. Since 2023, there have been stronger measures in place in Korea such as paying parents up to 100% of their usual wages if both parents use parental leave, instead of the current coverage of 80%, and extending the time frame for receiving the benefit from 12 months after childbirth to 18 months.
Despite the legislation in place, many parents are still unable to take parental leave. South Korea’s income replacement rate during paternity leave is 44.6%, which ranks 17th out of the 27 OECD countries that have a parental leave system comparable to Korea’s. Employees are still left unsure whether their job security and career prospects will be affected after returning to work. For employers as well, parental leave is an unwelcome prospect as it forces them to find replacements and it increases the burden on other workers.
To bridge this gap between policy and implementation, enforced paternity leave should be strongly considered. For instance, paternity leave that is not interchangeable with other benefits and with a high income replacement rate is what spurred Norway’s paternity leave rate to increase from 3-4% in the early 1990s to 97% in 2017 (Lee, 2019). A similar measure should be a priority in Korea. It is notable that Sweden’s adoption of enforced paternity leave has also been met with sizable success (Kwon, 2023). Strengthened paternity leave will encourage equal participation in childcare, and can also improve employers’ avoidance of hiring women.
b. Sick Leave
When children are sick, parents have to use up their annual leave to take care of them. Korea should introduce policies that allow parents to use paid leave when the child is sick or needs care, while the wages are covered by government so that paid leave is not seen as a loss for employers (Kwon, 2023). In Sweden, thanks to this policy called Vård av Barn, parents can stay at home to care for their children up to 120 days a year per child (under 12 or in some cases 16). Parents receive a little under 80% of their salary as temporary parental benefits (Oresunddirekt, 2023).
c. Salary support to employees of small and medium-sized enterprises
Policies supporting parents should be readily applied to small and medium-sized enterprises. In a survey of 1,000 people, 45.2% replied that they had difficulties using parental leave freely; contract workers, employees of businesses with less than 5 employees, and employees with a monthly salary inferior to 1.5million KRW, responded at a higher rate (58.5%, 67.1%, and 57.8% respectively) (Maeil Business Newspaper, 2023). Because of the lack of support for smaller enterprises and other factors such as the high price of real estate, marriage and child-rearing are increasingly seen as a privilege of the economically well-off. To reduce the socio-economic gap in marriage and child-rearing, the government must step in and systematically support smaller businesses with policies such as covering the salary of employees on leave and increasing economic benefits to businesses so that they can hire replacements more easily.
2. Adapting to an ageing society
As South Korea has already had a birth rate below the replacement level for several decades, the country should prepare for an increasingly ageing society.
a. Enhance elderly welfare and caretaking
Currently, South Korea’s elderly population is marginalised– Korea’s old-age poverty and suicide rate is the highest in the OECD (Lee, 2021). The elderly often find it difficult to adjust to the pace of change and development in Korean society, and this strengthens prejudices that elderly people are unproductive and unable to adapt. Therefore, investment in R&D for technologies that help the elderly and will enable senior citizens to stay in the workforce longer should be encouraged. This will alleviate the problems that come with the working younger generation supporting a much larger retired older generation. It will also allow the elderly to be seen as active members in society and not passive recipients of assistance.
Considering the high poverty rate and suicide rate of the elderly in Korea, welfare programs for the elderly should be expanded, so that care of the sick will not fall solely upon family members or spouses. Social connection and community should be taken into account when devising welfare policies, as lonely deaths and suicide can be countered with social connection.
b. Pension system reform
The biggest policy challenge is restructuring the National Pension Service, which will be lacking in funds as the elderly outnumbers the working population. This reform requires a social consensus that may be hard to reach, and it will be the role of future administrations to prepare the pension and welfare system for a drastically different population structure from the past decades.
Conclusion
South Korea’s case demonstrates what factors lead to an extremely low birth rate and points to what should be done to counter it. Although each society has its own culture and social consensus surrounding work, family, procreation, and welfare, Korea's situation should act as a reference for a large part of the world that shares some of Korea’s predicaments. Policies supporting gender equality, paid paternity leave, and marginalised employees and businesses are measures that are worth considering for all societies that wish, and need, to make themselves more welcoming to all kinds of families.
References
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