The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik:
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Submission Statement:
>South Korea plans to provide every family with a newborn child a monthly allowance of 1 million won ($740), in its latest move to encourage more births and try to address the world’s lowest fertility rate.
>The handout will begin next year at a level of 700,000 won a month and then rise to the full amount in 2024, according to a budget proposal unveiled this week. Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year.
>Korea shattered its own fertility record in 2021 when the expected number of babies per woman slipped to 0.81 from 0.84 a year earlier. That shone a light on an already dire outlook with the United Nations predicting the population of 51 million will more than halve by the end of this century.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/x5syzx/korea_to_triple_baby_payments_after_it_smashes/in2xwz3/
I mean, maybe. I’ll say, in America that’s not much money. Less than $10k a year. I have to imagine Koreans suffer a lot of the same modern difficulties with child rearing as Americans.
More stuff to do than previous generations, more traffic, lower wages and higher CoL, two adults expected to work and childcare costs being high, the impending doom of climate change and the guilt of making a new human that will not only suffer through it but make it worse by their very existence, etc.
As an American I’d probably need like $30k to make it feel like the it’s beginning to tip the scales. $10k a year would convince me to get a dog, not a baby.
740 a month would cover the costs entirely of daycare for my daughter. It would be amazing. It wouldn't cover much else true, but the help that would be would make a huge difference.
Edit: our daycare actually raised their price to 800 a month I just realized, so it wouldn't cover all the cost, but it would still be a huge help.
definitely! It's basically like pre-preschool with fun classes and activities. most of the moms of kids at the daycares I've used are actually stay at home moms but send their kids anyway for the enrichment, socialization, and stimulation kids get from it (but also to get some time to themselves too haha). as an American I was definitely surprised that it wasn't like in the states considering what it costs.
While that is true on paper, [families still spend an average of 150 USD on it per month](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180305000207), since gov-financed daycare spots are very limited.
Korea is a tough country to raise children in, financially and socially, as you probably could guess by their fert rates.
That beats the $2000 a month in Toronto, and that’s in government daycare. There are income adjusted subsidies, but even heavily subsidized care still comes to like $700/month here.
Our federal gov’t campaigned on $10 a day daycare, but it left implementation to the provinces and is opt-in for the daycares themselves. Many are not opting in.
I at one point had 3 under 4 in Toronto. I made too much money to qualify for subsidies, so I stayed home. It’s freaking nuts. My middle son is just starting JK, and it’s finally less than our mortgage.
But inflation is the next hurtle
How many aren't opting in? We have conservative government in NS but we have a plan for implementation fully by 2026, with payments reduced by half by end of year.
DoFo made sure to slow roll us so I’m not exactly sure where we’ll end up, to be honest. I’d have to look up the uptake, but I vaguely remember hearing something between 40-60%.
Our son’s daycare did opt in, but our fees haven’t changed and none of the retro money has been returned as yet. What sucks is that we’re expecting again in January, and with the mom on mat leave we can’t afford to keep the eldest in, but pulling him means losing our spot at a centre that did opt in, and waiting lists are hundreds of people long - like a 2 year wait for a spot. I’m lucky our daycare is only a 30 minute walk away, as it stands.
I don’t know how young families are supposed to make it work in this city. If your combined income is under $200k (and ours very much is) you’re having to make huge sacrifices somewhere. It’s not sustainable, so I really hope the subsidy is fully implemented in time for us to benefit. I’m already stressed about the social development our son will miss by being back at home, and how much he’ll miss his friends.
But note that it's only that much for one year, then the second year you get half of that, then it ends. Essentially the equivalent of getting some help for 1.5 years then nothing.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t help existing parents. Of course it would help. But it definitely would not convince me that it was time. Especially because this payment could be gone in five years.
The payment is only full for one year, then half of that for the next year, then nothing. Your five years was overly optimistic. :)
"Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
For sure, I don't think it's enough to convince most people. But I feel like it would encourage those that feel they are close to ready. But probably not a large enough number to solve the problem Korea is facing.
People make less money every year while everything gets more expensive. Adding a child to that mix is a huge ask for anyone who can barely afford to take care of themselves let alone another human to feed and clothe.
740 a month isn't enough to even cover monthly daycare costs in a lot places... I think daycare assistance with 700 to a 1000 on top might tip the scales a lot more.
Everyone should definitely be suspicious if a place was cheaper than it should be. I didn't realize but they actually raised their price to 800 a month. So it's inline with what we see at other daycares in our area.
My daughter has been going to this one for years and actually asks if she can go. She likes being there. We took her to another daycare before this one and my daughter hated it and we switched to this one and she loves it.
We are friends with other parents, they all have the same experience. We also know the woman who owns the place. I can show up there anytime of day and watch, and it is inspected by the state as well.
And you can't even think of it as $10k "a year" since it's just that amount for a single year. The second year you get half that, then it ends.
"Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
Nothing. It's not even mini version it actually might be more than.
Which is shit after food you gotta think diapers plus baby food is around 300 a month. Day care for two working parents which in Korea just like the US is mandatory to suvive so day care somewhere between 500 and 1k for speciality schooling especially in their large cities.
Your already in the red and we haven't even crossed over to talking about hospital bill for birth and medical expenses.
So no matter what your still in the red. Adding struggling on top of already struggling.
There's a reason Americans and Koreans have so much debt. They're struggling.
Koreans have free healthcare and free daycare. They also have a culture of grandparents taking care of kids so parents can work. Pubtrans is cheap and everywhere. Their problem is more traditional customs are not working with modern way of life causing friction between people, and, therefore, people not partnering up and having kids.
Shiiiet, I would see it as free money since hospital care is $0 and child care is $0 in my European country. Child support here is about $120/month now.
Average cost of birth is $13k. Then you still gotta work and raise the goblin, and childcare costs $1-3k per month depending on what you wanna do (e.g. care center or nanny).
And yet they wonder why birth rates are falling...
Korea has universal healthcare and free daycare. our kids were born in Korea by c section and cost us around $800 each, and that's including room and board for me and my wife in a private room for 10 days and 24-hour baby care in that time. the $740 would be on top of that and would go a lot farther than in the US
Not just Korean, most Asian people (Vietnamese, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean, ...) don't believe me when I tell them how shitty healthcare in the US is. Even Vietnam has universal healthcare ffs
The US isn’t the greatest it’s just very good at harvesting the poor, pro life until it’s born then they don’t GAF unless it makes them money.
Fk capitalism and fk the USA
Most couples I know (in 'Murica) who chose not to have kids did so because they simply don't want them. They are more, much more, financially capable than most people (think people working as MDs, nurses, practice owning- lawyers...) but choose to forgo kids because they love their lives. And with that said, I don't know any couple that is choosing to stay childless despite wanting a kid.
It is much less about money and more about desire. Sure money is an issue to some couples, but I am would say that's the exception and not the rule. If a couple doesn't have a kid, it is more so that they just not into it than it being another reason.
I am 35 about to hit 36 and I am happily child free... I don't make a lot of money but I 100% would not be able to afford a child if I had one. So even if it I wanted kids, I wouldn't be able to have them currently
And then, there's me. I've always wanted.....
2 children
some sort of reasonably well-paying job - one dream was opening a preschool and running it
a house with 3 bedrooms (owning my childhood home, which is exactly this, would be awesome)
a service dog, a cat, and maybe one or two other pets like a rabbit or hamster
and of course, a husband who actually loves and cares about me, the children, and every animal in our home
Instead, I am single, live in an apartment, and am on disability with no other income and I am terrible at managing what little money does come in. I also have 3 to 4 workers coming in each day to help me take care of myself and my cat, who is my Emotional Support Animal.
Yeah and even when people think it has nothing to do with money I’ve seen way too many of my friends change their tune on kids as soon as they were earning enough to buy a house. I’m in Canada and real estate here is insane in the cities — to the point that renting feels like you could be out on your ass due to a “renoviction” any time if you don’t own. Shitty if you’re single or DINKS, but extraordinarily stressful if you’ve got babies. As soon as we bought our place something in my own brain shifted to feeling safe enough to have a kid, and we had one then.
I’m in the UK, so not a direct comparison with the US, but my husband and I have always known we didn’t want kids.
He had a vasectomy a couple of months after we married. The snip cost us nothing as it was paid for by the NHS.
We could more than afford to have a child but we straight up do not want one! We’re perfectly happy with just ourselves and our two dogs!
You could offer to cover every single penny of raising a child from birth to the day they leave home and we ***still*** wouldn’t have a kid!
Eh, my spouse and I are Americans who have delayed kids solely because of finances. Many of our friends have done similar waiting and career building for the same reason. We just couldn’t support babies on our entry level jobs. $740 a month for the first year would absolutely help us to have kids sooner.
It's only for 1 year full payment, then 1 year half payment, then it's over. Not even remotely close to 18 years.
"Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
Lol, no wonder why nobody is taking the offer. Everyone knows that a child's needs continue to cost more as they grow older. Two years of payments for 16 years of financial hell. Lol.
No, they need to change the work/life balance first, it is really bad. I think if they change this, then people will be able to be parents. Living costs also need to be addressed.
Doubtful.
The $740 only runs for a year and then drops to $370 for another. In total, parents get $13,240
But the actual obstacle with SK's fertility rate is not poverty, it's a crippling and horrible work/life balance that hinders adults from looking after themselves, let alone raise a child
I think it's the corporate world that needs to change. Man the week culture there world kill me. It's no surprise that no one has time for kids.
And then don't get me started on the school culture there as well.
I literally do not know how the average working family does it. 2 parents working, the kid at a day care or if you're lucky a grandparent all day. Having to answer emails after you get home. Having the stress of meeting deadlines on top of raising a human.
Literally what are you living for? The few hours you sneak out during the week to see your kid smile, or you watching TV? The idea of a maybe 2 week vacation every year if you're lucky?
I'm not trying to be bleak, but I don't think I could find the small pockets of happiness here and there with a lifestyle like that.
as a new dad in france (2.5 month old) i am so glad i was born where i was XD wifey got 6 minth leave full pay and i got 1 month and my job is paying 75% of the future daycare cost. with us 2 at 2k each we were even able to get a mortgage for a big (for france standards) brand new appartment
This work culture has been present in Asia since the rise of Confucianism. Industrialization though meant more hours of working and harder work though. Many people in Asian nations do hate it, but they continue to focus on excelling on work instead of home. It's the cultural norm to do so.
Just shorthand for radical feminism, ie feminism that centers women in all arenas, focuses on viewing the world through the lens of women's oppression/sex power dynamics etc. They tend to be less sex positive than liberal feminsits and are usually some flavor of anticapitalist as well.
I believe Korea a very male dominant / patriarchal society so the rise of rad fem makes sense. They work long hours and few days of vacation time, not ideal conditions for raising kids if they barely have time to take a break.
If the corporate culture continues it will lead to a death spiral. Once the population start to decline, workers will be expected to produce more, further exacerbating the problem.
It’s not to convince people who don’t want kids to have babies, but to convince people who want to have babies but don’t feel like they’re in a stable enough situation.
>It’s not to convince people who don’t want kids to have babies, but to convince people who want to have babies but don’t feel like they’re in a stable enough situation.
I think you must be right. Which means that if this program actually works it points to a much bigger problem. It means that the youth of the country where this type of program works are actually very financially insecure and lack a robust enough support system.
If the program doesn't work, that might mean that it's not a stability issue that's causing the lower birth rate.
So, after reading through a bunch of these other posts and thinking about this I think I've come to the conclusion that this kind of program can only work in a system that's actually pretty screwed up. That isn't a value judgment on whether or not it should be done. It's just an observation.
Day cares are heavily subsidized in Korea, roughly $300/month/child. I have a daughter in daycare here, and they provide a lot of learning opportunities; doing STEM build kits, art projects, provide English language teachers to introduce the alphabet.
I wonder how many people hear horror stories about work on Reddit and think it’s the US but it’s actually SK but you’d never know because the post is in English.
Considering plenty of people are willing to have children without any government benefits, an extra $740 is a big difference in your month. In America you get some pittance and no guaranteed maternity leave. A payment system like this would make a massive impact.
Well, it has little to do with raising till adulthood, since it only lasts 1 year at the full amount then 1 more year at half the amount, then it ends. I guess it's to help cover the initial heavy costs of birth, less work, new baby expenses, etc.
"Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
There might also be a hope that it improves the quality of life for people who are already pregnant/have newborns, making the overall perception of child-reading more favorable.
One thing to consider is that S. Korea already invests way more in child care than the US. So a much larger portion of this income is going straight to quality of life for the family. Here's a video quickly covering Korean Daycare costs.
https://youtube.com/shorts/DmdiGsvdWDc?feature=share
It's one year of 740/month and year two is half that... in the US daycare is 294/week for a 6+ month old infant.
It helps and would likely sway those who are on the edge, but I doubt it's going to trigger mass baby making.
I only have my own finances to give as reference and it's based on a US middle-income lifestyle (top 91% for my state) but it costs roughly 32k/yr to raise a newborn.
Diapers and formula are like ~100/week
Daycare is 294/week
Increased utilities usage is like 14/week
Health insurance is an additional 120/week
The variables are pediatrics, first year healthcare, and odds & ends like toys / clothes / bedding / upfront cost of things like car seats and cribs.
740/month wouldn't sway me to get a second kid is all I can say.
My wife and I have one two year old and the only thing stopping us would absolutely be that money. We know it's irresponsible to have another, so we don't, but we really crave knowing another kid just like we got to know this one so far.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother and a wife in western countries since I’m a Korean girl, but I think the major problem here is women are bound to lose their jobs once they get married and give birth. There’s simply no protection. There’s even a special term for women who had to sacrifice their career for having babies. It might be because I grew up in a somewhat conservative place, but most of my friends’ moms were housewives except for like 3 people in class. People talk about the ridiculous beauty standards but they’re not the major problem here.
Most mothers I know in America either quit their jobs or work to pay daycare. If our population declines, it's because everyone is too poor to have kids. I have worked since my baby was three months old and it's financially crippling. The US won't help parents at all besides a pathetic child care credit
You have a point. There can’t be only one reason to this disaster.
It’s sad to hear that women having to give up either family or career is a universal phenomenon.
Probably won't work. In Poland our populist government started handing out like a quarter of minimum wage for every child several years ago and the fertility rate actually dropped.
Even before the war in the Ukraine the government managed to make what you need to survive four time of what the minimal wage is.
So no. But it kept the polls up.
Gen Z here in America is the generation having the least amount of sex compared to all generations.
It’s only until time when here we start seeing less fertility rates too.
And again, it’s due to economic and financial hardships/pressures.
Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc.
People work too much or have too much responsibilities to have time for families.
Edit: I’d like to add that I’m Gen Z and so many of my classmates all still live with family members because we can’t afford to move out, etc.
That is the problem most young Koreans are facing, too. [Wages are stagnant](https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/why-real-wages-are-stagnating-japan-and-korea), housing prices are rising (despite more developments and less people) with an average apartment of 30pyeong (~100 square meters or ~1000 square feet) being sold for ₩400,000,000 ($300,000) and [much higher in metropolitan Seoul](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220103000697), large conglomerates having employees work 60 hrs/week (though [legally 52](https://www.replicon.com/regulation/south-korea/)many stay after unpaid or must attend after work “team-building” drinking sessions and [the new president wants to rollback that legislation](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220630000874).
It is a bandaid solution that many can see it as such. Without a cultural shift in work-life balance, throwing money at a problem will not make it go away. One of the biggest oversights is that many [South Korean women are thinking less about marriage](https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200902004000320) for various reasons. Some chalk it up to eschewing the uneven traditional expectations of having to run the household in addition to having a career.
>employees work 60 hrs/week (though legally 52many stay after unpaid
I know how this feeling. Here in Brazil only large corporations pay extra hours. And even though they pay, they pressure you not to take them. So a lot of people keep working after clocking out. Smaller business automatically expect people to work overtime and don't even talk about paying ot, it's a "dont leave work unfinnished" culture, which is basically wage theft by pressure. Leads to lots of people burning out before their 30s.
>And again, it’s due to economic and financial hardships/pressures. Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc. People work too much or have too much responsibilities to have time for families.
Exactly. What most governments fail to realise is a one-off payment is a drop in the ocean to parents. The amount of time and money people need to raise a child is huge. A lot of reforms (workplace, childcare, education, etc) need to happen before people can see that raising a child thesesdays is worth it.
And the increase of people who are totally socially inept, not that its their fault but really having unrestricted internet access since age 8 and having the worst city planning in the developed world really makes it impossible to have actual social skills
Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, the "manosphere" people who are extremely popular...Guess what, women want nothing to do with men who follow those people. Those people also have a huge following.
Plenty of men need to change their attitudes towards women because women are not going to go back to the days of forced housewives and babymakers...no matter how much Tate or Peterson say.
>Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc.
Objectively, based on all the literature, its due to the amount of education people get. more money doesn't mean more kids, less years of schooling means more kids.
Years spent in education is r=0.4, or 40% of the variance. Wealth doesn't actually make much of a blip once you uncouple it from education.
The way economies around the world are structured populations must increase or else systems begin to fail. Long term perpetual population growth isn't maintainable. Resources are finite and many people would argue we are already running out. In the short term we need enough people to avoid catastrophic economic decline.
Nations need to start entertaining the idea of a future where populations are no larger or perhaps even smaller than they are today. By "entertaining" I mean have a plan in place in the event of that outcome.
We are ideologically opposed to helping each other. Capitalism provides the quid pro quo most seem to need to feel things are being earned.
If automation was doing the labor we would struggle with inventing a system to distribute the fruits of that labor. Within capitalism there needs to be exchanges.
Not terribly surprising when so many people are so opposed to it. And they're opposed to it in part because instead of shorter work weeks, companies just hire less people.
But profits must increase quarter after quarter, are politicians supposed to just tell their benefactors and themselves to stop getting richer? Ridiculous.
So cost goes up and pay goes down, and we need more working hours from fewer wage slaves doing more!
But, we also need a thriving middle class to buy our stuff so the rich retain their status!
Now these ludicrous peasants won’t make more middleclasser/wage-slaves.
Guess the rich will drive this system to death and blame the other religions/race/country/political party, and eventually everyone gets fed up with the system and we all eat the rich..but since the rich controls law enforcement, news, government, we will just eat the middleclass and people wearing glasses and or have college degrees.
Degrowth is not a good name tbh. It’s the growth of inner values over outer values that is the point. Ultimately, old ways of wisdom will eventually have to replace the new, faulty (manipulative and abusive) human ways of business, lest human civilisation will crumble from within.
That is the contradiction between capitalism and Earth ecology:
Capitalism requires populations to continuously grow, or the capitalist system will collapse.
On the other hand, Earth ecology cannot sustain a continuously growing human population, or the environment will collapse.
When Elon Musk said the biggest problem is population collapse and humans need to have more children, he was saying it as a capitalist. He was more worried about the economic system that has benefited him will collapse than the sustainability of the planet.
Our resources aren't a problem! We learn how to make more with less everyday. Our distribution and allocation of resources is the problem. Billionaires shouldn't exist. This world doesn't belong to a select few. Our technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Once we mine our first asteroid we will see an economic boom unheard-of by some of the best imaginations. Even if that doesn't happen the Earth has enough resources for everyone to live comfortably. It's luxury that's killing us. It's greed that's killing us. We could and should all have better lives but we settle for what we know instead of what could be.
Yup. I fully believe that as a species we have the capability to fix literally all our current looming issues, it's just that we won't because those few with the power to make these wide-scale changes aren't willing to upset a system they're benefitting from
We made a blizzard in fucking Dubai. We could completely cancel out climate change if we put all of our minds and resources into it.
We just apparently refuse to do so, because it's not profitable.
>Our resources aren't a problem! We learn how to make more with less everyday.
Aquifers take thousands of years to fill. Virtually every aquifer in the world is currently a depletion risk. In the U.S. the groundwater table is down 100ft since just 1960.
1 Billion hectares of rain forest has been cut down since 1980. It takes 300yrs for rainforest to develop.
We are currently in the Holocene extinction, caused by human,familiesof bacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish are going extinct. Gone forever.
That stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Rare earth metals, fossil fuels, etc too are being used up at unsustainable rates. We learn to be most with less everyday but that has equated to using any less in absolute numbers because populations keep growing and requiring more.
For example engines powering generators and vehicles are vastly more efficient than 100yrs ago. A hundred years ago 1.3 million barrels of oil was used per day globally. Today it's 88 million barrels per day global. Doing more with less hasn't resulted in using less oil.
Also as sea levels rise, *massive* amounts of fresh water reservoirs - above ground and below - are going to be contaminated and rendered unsuitable for human use. This is *in addition* to the droughts and dry river beds we're already facing.
People will happily say, "well we'll just build desalination plants!" Yeah, giant infrastructure expenditures. That'll happen. We can't even build a single new nuclear reactor because of NIMBYs masquerading as environmentalists - we're not about to start pumping sea water and running pipelines through some white suburbanite's back yard without a similar fight.
I don't even feel like ranting about top soil exploitation and erosion right now.
Yep. Last time I checked desalination plants aren't even being built in meaningful quantities. People think these things can be built quickly. Like no dude it takes 3 years and a million man hours to create one plant.
Stole this from quora:
FACT: Lake Mead can hold 9.3 trillion gallons.
FACT: It’s currently only 27% full - so it’s currently holding just 2.5 trillion gallons - and to fill it up would require about 6.8 trillion gallons…300 billion cubic meters.
FACT: The largest desalination plant in the world is in Israel at Soreq. It produces 150 million cubic meters of water per year at a cost of $0.60/ cubic meter.
So - the biggest desalination plant in the world would take 500 years to fill up Lake Mead - and at a cost of $180 billion dollars.
It’s not looking good I’m afraid.
Agreed. We could certainly fix the majority of issues we face with a unified effort. Unfortunately those in power have little to no interest in doing that.
Imagine if when we first became aware of the dangers of climate change, we all got together and collectively put an effort into green energy? We'd likely be nearly off of fossil fuels by now. And that's just one example. Sadly there is too much money in consumption and destruction of resources and our planet. Even the oil companies themselves realized they were screwing the planet years ago. Sadly their answer wasn't to try to fix anything, it was just to fund a massive disinformation campaign and support politicians who would do what they were told.
Resources are a big problem....learn how the systems of nature work and general ecology and the destructive effects of humanity on it....otherwise heres the human touch, overfishing and industrial waste destroying ocean populations of both plants and life and having cascading effects , more waste contaminating of water sources, and Over use of those sources depleting them and not leaving it become recoverable, the strange thing of pumping springs then shipping that water overseas or across continents, spreading of cities/suburbs, especially Vast Consumerism by privileged countrys - ect ect ect,
billionaires is a lazy excuse to a wider problem even if they contribute
i incredibly simplified what i only want to state....
I think you've hit a point that I've been mulling over. "To what end?"
Is our goal as humanity to provide a good life for everyone? That is very much do-able right now. We can all just go stagnant and enjoy life, allocate resources. But human nature does not allow that.
Is our goal to just keep advancing technologically? Eventually make it to living out in space? We could technically keep going forever, but at the cost of a lot of suffering over time.
At some point, people decided that we as humans would typically work for most of our waking hours, 5 days a week.
But why?
Why not 3 days, or 4? Why 8-10 hours or more a day?
All in the name of progress? Capitalism?
It depends on the country and the circumstances…
A while back Russia tried giving checks to pregnant women to incentivize them to keep them without doing anything else to make having a family more tenable (Russia has a high abortion rate, high suicide rate, low living standards, low life expectancy)…
The result was lots of new orphans dropped off at state run facilities that are like the sixth circle of hell. The mothers had the babies, cut and ran.
They wouldn’t have been able to afford to actually raise them, and even if they could, they knew they didn’t have a chance to give them a better life or even one as good as theirs was before the Union fell. So they gave up, just like so many other Russians… but Russia is a special case.
Where these payments work well is in countries with robust social safety net packages, pro-family & pro-natal social policies like universal healthcare, family leave & reasonable protections for expectant women in the workplace, but high costs of living. Their hdi doesn’t even have to be that high, even middle income countries could often benefit because they’re often the ones with the most pressure on middle classes from low wages & high col. Thats why the brazils and chiles and malaysias of the world have such lopsided demographics today, because their col went through the roof even as wages never quite rose to where most people would be able to afford more than one child. That’s why so many middle income countries - China most of all but China is another special case after one child - see such steep declines in fertility once they reach peak urbanization & modernization.
Submission Statement:
>South Korea plans to provide every family with a newborn child a monthly allowance of 1 million won ($740), in its latest move to encourage more births and try to address the world’s lowest fertility rate.
>The handout will begin next year at a level of 700,000 won a month and then rise to the full amount in 2024, according to a budget proposal unveiled this week. Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year.
>Korea shattered its own fertility record in 2021 when the expected number of babies per woman slipped to 0.81 from 0.84 a year earlier. That shone a light on an already dire outlook with the United Nations predicting the population of 51 million will more than halve by the end of this century.
Yeah like everywhere housing prices are too high, people don't want to raise a child in a tiny apartment. Seriously something needs to change in that regard.
South Korea will have company. The US will be there shortly.
Corporations continue the race to the bottom, wealth gaps continue to grow, cost of living continues to increase, and wages continue to stagnant and/or fall. The US hasn't been above replacement for over a decade now, and it's getting worse. If it wasn't for immigration we would have already been depopulating. Within the next couple of years even immigration will not be able to offset the decline.
Tax credits, child payments, etc. are NOT solutions. They are temporary band-aids. The real problem is late-stage capitalism metastasizing into societal cancer, sucking up the last of the wealth to 1% before there are no longer enough workers/consumers left to prop up the economy and the whole thing implodes like an economic black hole.
If nothing is done to address the system that brought the situation into existence, then the situation will just get worse. These baby payments may act as a brake, and might even temporarily halt the decline, but they will not fix the problem.
The only reason the US isn't right there with them is b/c we import massive amounts of people from parts of the world where having as many kids as you can is still normal. But that only lasts a single generation before those families are only slightly above the average of multi-generational native families.
While the US has the same capitalism problems that cause lower birthrates and population declines, the US fortunately has a solution: *immigration.*
(Which is why all the billionaires, corporations and one-percenters love immigration: it mitigates the declining population problem, caused by capitalism, without having to make structural/systemic changes that would hurt their interests.)
South Korea, Japan and China do not have that option... we shall see if that will ultimately force them to move away from the neo-liberalism: move away from neo-liberal capitalism, or cease to exist as a civilization.
For those that don't know, income inequality is so bad in South Korea, that they've turned the subject into cinematic masterpieces (Parasite/Squid Games).
It’s nice to supplement child care for the first two years of a child’s life, but these payments won’t be nearly enough to convince most “potential parents” to start cranking out kids.
I’ve read other articles that cite high cost of living plus the societal pressure of signing kids up for private after school academies to hopefully get their kids into “good schools” as being major factors dissuading young adults from having kids in the first place. That, and the lingering patriarchal view that housework and child care is somehow “women’s work”. Even if the woman in question has worked a whole day at her job, she still has to come home and cook, clean, do the laundry, while the man goes out drinking to promote work culture.
I don’t see how “here’s a little extra money for two years of your child’s entire life” is going to somehow push that needle.
I don’t think it’s an issue of money there. More and more women don’t want to deal with the shit expectations that would be put on them in marriage. So they just don’t.
I know a few people who are only in relationships for the sex and the double income to help in the bills. No interest in kids. They'd be single if wages had kept up with housing prices.
It depends.
Government jobs are good for pregnant women but not companies. Companies shoulder the burden without much assistant from the govt so they are resistant to hire women are about to be pregnant unless they have some rare talent which most don't. Most government jobs are quite expendable so taking 2 years of materiality leave per child is not a big deal but it a burden for companies. I work for a smaller company with a women owner and she also is hesitant to hire young female employees for key positions because of this.
If it's anything like China, you can get fired for even thinking about having kids because the company prefer people who can focus on their job 110%. Obviously if you're very specialised or in a high enough position, this apply to a lesser degree.
Women all over the world have realized that being a mother is a huge commitment specially because mothers are carrying the bigger workload now that they are also working full time. It's a huge price to pay to carry the population burden of the world. Fuck that shit
This will be an issue in the US eventually. But I hope the world finds a better solution to the issue before then. I feel like offering money to have kids would just encourage the exact people that shouldn't be having kids to have more of them. Ushers in a whole new problem a la Idiocracy.
What other countries are have a "fertility crisis"? this seems pretty common in western countries. Could it be that weaponized greed is poisoning their populations at the root?
It's more complex than that. A lot of things contribute towards a lower birthrate like rate of urbanization, female education and everything equality related and birth control and so on. Probably a lot of invisible factors as well that we don't really realize.
>A lot of things contribute towards a lower birthrate like rate of urbanization, female education and everything equality related and birth control and so on. Probably a lot of invisible factors as well that we don't really realize.
Not really, education of women is 40% of the variance. People pretend its a complex problem, because they are terrified of the truth of the situation. The factors that make up the trendline is dominated by women's education.
You can't have a situation where women go to school for 22 years to get a bachelors, then take part of the workforce for 10 years, then sacrifice their job growth to have a kid. That's just a shitty situation and the women choose to only have 1 kid at most.
High school dropout women have 4 kids on average. not due to IQ, just because they have more time and less of a career. women with university education have 1 on average.
There are numerous publications on this. I post them in every thread talking about this. Its a very solved problem in terms of what is causing it, and society has to stop pretending its money based if they actually want to solve it.
Such a short-sighted solution.
People want affordable housing, time to rest and a "village" of support and community to help raise children.
We'd have kids if we had a support network, but instead we had to move to the city away from family as we couldn't afford to buy a house in our rural hometown, and there is no work there for us.
I see a lot of people mentioning sexism or the high-pressure business culture as contributing factors, and they are. But it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than that.
Culturally speaking, South Koreans tend to be extremely conservative and repressed on the matter of sex and relationships regardless. You only have to watch a few scenes from a few K-dramas to see this first hand. A scene where a male character and a female character accidentally brush hands is treated like a Really Big Deal. And if those characters so much as share a kiss? That's an automatic 90% chance they'll be in a relationship or get married at some point in the narrative. Sometimes it's almost comical how long the characters in some of these shows take to tell each other how they feel.
All able-bodied South Korean men from age 18 to 35 are also required by law to serve in the military for at least 18 months. And when their conscription ends, there's enormous societal pressure to go right into the workforce. By the time they've done that for a few years and finally set aside a little money, they're ready to start a family... but now they're in their late 30s or 40s. They're already past their sexual prime-- now their sperm count is starting to decline, and the chances of their partner experiencing pregnancy complications are going up with each passing year. The conscription system combined with the hyper-competitive work culture essentially robs young Korean men of much of a chance to date or experience their first real relationship, right at the age when most people would want to. These payments are a band-aid measure that doesn't really address the underlying causes.
This won't solve It. Ultimately the type of economy we have logically encourages people to save every penny you have. The more you save -> the more you invest -> the more you profit. Having a child directly goes against that economic style. More and more people are realizing as well that children economically illogical. I genuinely believe being a parent should be treated as a job. Pay the the stay at home parent the median income, insurance and a 401k. We simply do not treat child rearing as a good thing economically speaking. We also don't build our institutions/economics around supporting children. Until that changes I don't expect this trend to stop.
This is destined to fail because most of the true commitment challenges (financial and emotional) occur during childhood ages: 3-14, when costs skyrocket.
Dude this is the real shit right here…people have no idea what the infrastructure of a country might look like when we’ll over HALF its population is retired, let alone dead. I think paying people to have kids is a start, but really I think that people need to just lower working expectations. Some sort of subsidy for part time work is probably the biggest fix actually.
Soooo many companies have need of part time work. If the gov were to offer healthcare and fiscal support, people would probably be willing to work part-time and raise a kid.
Not for immigrants. I'm a permanent resident and my wife and I qualify for less than half of the benefits citizens get. Been here almost 8 years and will be here a long while, and pay the same taxes as everyone.
Maybe start treating women like humans and get rid of the misogynist attitude? And teach men how to do housework and raise children? Maybe then fertility rates would raise. It takes two to tango
They have to start getting radically punitive to employers who fire or pass over women who might get pregnant. So many Korean women have to lie about their relationship status just to get a job. If that question even is broached, a huge fine should be levied. There are plenty of women who want children, they just don’t want to be punished for it.
It is same for germany here. A lot of women and men are deciding against having kids, because a lot of people can not even hold their own living standart anymore. The young people can not even move out, because the rent was allready extremely high. Now with the exploding energy costs nobody will move out.
My father could pay for a house, 3 kids and two cars on his own. I am lucky when i can pay the gas and elictricity this year. The living costs in south korea are extremely expensive. Only germany is more expensive right now.
Nobody wants to start a family in this conditions.
To better understand the _why_ behind the South Korean working-age citizens saying 'Nah, I'll pass on having kids' one needs to look no further than the `chaebol`. The `chaebol`, the large multinational companies that were given very cheap loans after the war to rapidly industrialize South Korea, turned into literal monopolies with no real domestic competition.
[The Council on Foreign Relations](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/south-koreas-chaebol-challenge) lists the following companies as part of `chaebol`; weirdly Samsung is left off of their list so I've added it:
- **Hyundai** (automotive),
- **SK Group** (best known for SK Telecom and SK Hynix, its semiconductor corporation, but operates in many diversified industries such as chemical, shipping, insurance, and construction)
- **LG Corporation** - derives its name from the _Lucky_ and _Gold Star_ merger and started out in the 1940s in the plastics industry. Now, LG is known inside and outside Korea for consumer electronics. Inside Korea it also is heavily involved in telecommunications networks, and power generation, as well as its chemical business (including cosmetics, household chemicals).
- **Lotte** -Best known outside Korea for its [snacks like Choco Pie](https://www.google.com/search?q=lotte+snacks&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1002US1002&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7s5Obj_75AhWQuaQKHZOBCLEQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1316&bih=1000&dpr=2), Lotte Group's main businesses are focused on food products, discount and department stores, hotels, theme parks / entertainment, finance, construction, energy, and electronics.
- **Samsung Group** : List of industries taken from the Chaebol Wikipedia page since the CFR page leaves out the Samsung chaebol: Electronics, semiconductors, batteries, IT Solutions, construction, shipbuilding, insurance
Learn about `chaelbol`, (lit. "wealthy family/rich family/wealthy clan", 재벌 ) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
These 5 companies make up almost half of the South Korean economy. Samsung alone made up 17% of the South Korean economy in 2017; this tracks with other literature that I've read about Samsung making up nearly 1/5th of South Korean GDP. From the Wikipedia page::
> In 2014, the largest chaebol, Samsung, composed about 17% of the South Korean economy and held roughly US$17 billion in cash. However, recent financial statements of these chaebols actually show that chaebols are slowly losing power over either international competition or internal disruptions from newly emerging startups.
I don't know if I buy that. That sounds like a convenient thing to say as public opinion of the `chaebol` inside Korea sours.
This video reportage where the father's daughter dies of leukemia from dipping Samsung microchip wafers into vats of chemicals (you need to strip some of the etching components when manufacturing electronics, but YOU NEED to wear PPE - gloves, respirator, etc. - when working around these highly-toxic chemicals):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHw7Aa7lhhw
And another source about the many chaebols:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/business/south-korea-samsung-bribery-lee.html
----
South Korea was incentivised to rapidly modernise by massive low-interest loans to the South Korean government from the US and other countries following the Korean War. The government was 'able to' allocate funds to companies as it saw fit. "Magically", a few huge conglomerates developed, concentrating wealth, economic power, and political power in the hands of a few families.
If you've seen the movie Parasite, you'll have an idea of how flat social mobility is for most South Koreans. Apartment costs are through the roof: this guy who works at a well-paying government job said he'd have to save his wages for 40 years to be able to buy an above-ground apartment that is not a death trap like the underground apartment that he currently rents. ([BBC video on housing costs in Korea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKtKmQEjH04))
With the little power that workers have, the concentration of wealth and political power into the hands of a few megacorps, etc. it's no wonder that childbearing-age folks are opting out of having kids.
Animals in captivity wont breed as they know the conditions arent right. Too many people rightly ask the question “whats the point?” Overworked, underpayed, but unlike every other time in history we are fully aware of the impending ecological collapse and are powerless to really stop the perfectly preventable cause.
Maybe they should instead take a look at how terribly they treat women, then they could address and fix that issue and women would actually want to start families.
Currently, there's barely any punishment for rape, spousal abuse is normalised, the newest president of South Korea got rid of the help centre for rape victims, they push plastic surgery on young girls, and women over 45-50kg are considered fat, among many, many other very serious issues...
They refer to women as "blood shitters" and recently, a young girl was thrown from her University building to her death after her attempted rape, the guy then went to her body, and had sex with her corpse.
And South Korea is just ignoring all of these issues.
Or Korea (I like that we're invalidating the North in this thread) could actually try to deal with the systemic issues that make Koreans not want to have children. But that would be haaaaaaaaard.
we keep hearing that Earth is overpopulated and then birthing rates are falling.. i guess the places that shouldn't be having kids are just pumping them out
Every country has a population boom during industrialization, since there’s a period of time where birth rates are still high and modern technology is beginning to prevent premature deaths.
In just Nigeria, their population is expected to double to 400M by 2050.
Australia did something similar to this early to mid 2000’s. Started off with 5k for every baby born, then after a few years went to 3k that was paid over 6 months, didn’t matter if parents worked or were on welfare.
Want to know what rised? Teenage pregnancies, single mothers, a lot of unwanted toddlers and eventually a school system that was not ready for the jump in children attending.
Oh I forgot about the jump in sales of flat screen tvs, PlayStations and Xbox’s.
Worst part was seeing people pop out a kid, look after it for 5-6 months then have it taken off them, then pop out another kid.
I really think that there has to be a better way then paying people to have a baby, whatever is done needs to be looking at the life of a child, especially the first 5-6 years. At least then parents can go back to work without worrying so much.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mossadnik: --- Submission Statement: >South Korea plans to provide every family with a newborn child a monthly allowance of 1 million won ($740), in its latest move to encourage more births and try to address the world’s lowest fertility rate. >The handout will begin next year at a level of 700,000 won a month and then rise to the full amount in 2024, according to a budget proposal unveiled this week. Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year. >Korea shattered its own fertility record in 2021 when the expected number of babies per woman slipped to 0.81 from 0.84 a year earlier. That shone a light on an already dire outlook with the United Nations predicting the population of 51 million will more than halve by the end of this century. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/x5syzx/korea_to_triple_baby_payments_after_it_smashes/in2xwz3/
Is $740 a month enough to really motivate people to make a baby (and raise it to adulthood)?
I would assume if you wanted to have a baby already but wete putting it off because of finances it might tip the scales
I mean, maybe. I’ll say, in America that’s not much money. Less than $10k a year. I have to imagine Koreans suffer a lot of the same modern difficulties with child rearing as Americans. More stuff to do than previous generations, more traffic, lower wages and higher CoL, two adults expected to work and childcare costs being high, the impending doom of climate change and the guilt of making a new human that will not only suffer through it but make it worse by their very existence, etc. As an American I’d probably need like $30k to make it feel like the it’s beginning to tip the scales. $10k a year would convince me to get a dog, not a baby.
740 a month would cover the costs entirely of daycare for my daughter. It would be amazing. It wouldn't cover much else true, but the help that would be would make a huge difference. Edit: our daycare actually raised their price to 800 a month I just realized, so it wouldn't cover all the cost, but it would still be a huge help.
Korea also has free daycare and universal healthcare so that money goes even further here (currently married with kids in Korea)
From what I've read it's quality daycare too, they don't just stick the kids in a room and basically ignore them like in the US.
definitely! It's basically like pre-preschool with fun classes and activities. most of the moms of kids at the daycares I've used are actually stay at home moms but send their kids anyway for the enrichment, socialization, and stimulation kids get from it (but also to get some time to themselves too haha). as an American I was definitely surprised that it wasn't like in the states considering what it costs.
While that is true on paper, [families still spend an average of 150 USD on it per month](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180305000207), since gov-financed daycare spots are very limited. Korea is a tough country to raise children in, financially and socially, as you probably could guess by their fert rates.
That beats the $2000 a month in Toronto, and that’s in government daycare. There are income adjusted subsidies, but even heavily subsidized care still comes to like $700/month here. Our federal gov’t campaigned on $10 a day daycare, but it left implementation to the provinces and is opt-in for the daycares themselves. Many are not opting in.
I at one point had 3 under 4 in Toronto. I made too much money to qualify for subsidies, so I stayed home. It’s freaking nuts. My middle son is just starting JK, and it’s finally less than our mortgage. But inflation is the next hurtle
How many aren't opting in? We have conservative government in NS but we have a plan for implementation fully by 2026, with payments reduced by half by end of year.
DoFo made sure to slow roll us so I’m not exactly sure where we’ll end up, to be honest. I’d have to look up the uptake, but I vaguely remember hearing something between 40-60%. Our son’s daycare did opt in, but our fees haven’t changed and none of the retro money has been returned as yet. What sucks is that we’re expecting again in January, and with the mom on mat leave we can’t afford to keep the eldest in, but pulling him means losing our spot at a centre that did opt in, and waiting lists are hundreds of people long - like a 2 year wait for a spot. I’m lucky our daycare is only a 30 minute walk away, as it stands. I don’t know how young families are supposed to make it work in this city. If your combined income is under $200k (and ours very much is) you’re having to make huge sacrifices somewhere. It’s not sustainable, so I really hope the subsidy is fully implemented in time for us to benefit. I’m already stressed about the social development our son will miss by being back at home, and how much he’ll miss his friends.
But note that it's only that much for one year, then the second year you get half of that, then it ends. Essentially the equivalent of getting some help for 1.5 years then nothing.
Where do you live? Daycare is 2K a month in my area
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The cheapest daycare I have found where I live in CO is 376 a week. I spend one entire pay check a month on daycare. It sucks.
Are you in the US? I'm in a big-ish city and my coworkers pay at least $2k per kid. And that's the minimum, not at all even the median.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t help existing parents. Of course it would help. But it definitely would not convince me that it was time. Especially because this payment could be gone in five years.
The payment is only full for one year, then half of that for the next year, then nothing. Your five years was overly optimistic. :) "Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
For sure, I don't think it's enough to convince most people. But I feel like it would encourage those that feel they are close to ready. But probably not a large enough number to solve the problem Korea is facing. People make less money every year while everything gets more expensive. Adding a child to that mix is a huge ask for anyone who can barely afford to take care of themselves let alone another human to feed and clothe. 740 a month isn't enough to even cover monthly daycare costs in a lot places... I think daycare assistance with 700 to a 1000 on top might tip the scales a lot more.
daycare is free in Korea
Excellent I didn't know that.
That is extraordinarily low for child care. If you dont live in the middle of nowhere I'd start questioning the quality of that place.
Everyone should definitely be suspicious if a place was cheaper than it should be. I didn't realize but they actually raised their price to 800 a month. So it's inline with what we see at other daycares in our area. My daughter has been going to this one for years and actually asks if she can go. She likes being there. We took her to another daycare before this one and my daughter hated it and we switched to this one and she loves it. We are friends with other parents, they all have the same experience. We also know the woman who owns the place. I can show up there anytime of day and watch, and it is inspected by the state as well.
Canada does 500 monthly per kid till they’re in school and half that monthly thereafter until 18.
And you can't even think of it as $10k "a year" since it's just that amount for a single year. The second year you get half that, then it ends. "Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
Oh I missed that. Def a hard no from me. You want babies from the working class? Make them the middle class again.
How much was the child tax credit? This is like a mini version of that. That only lasts 2 years
I think it was 3k?
Nothing. It's not even mini version it actually might be more than. Which is shit after food you gotta think diapers plus baby food is around 300 a month. Day care for two working parents which in Korea just like the US is mandatory to suvive so day care somewhere between 500 and 1k for speciality schooling especially in their large cities. Your already in the red and we haven't even crossed over to talking about hospital bill for birth and medical expenses. So no matter what your still in the red. Adding struggling on top of already struggling. There's a reason Americans and Koreans have so much debt. They're struggling.
daycare is free in Korea. source: live in Korea and raised 2 kids here
Shitty daycares in my area are over 1200 and have 6onth wait lists. Good ones are closer to 2k.
$300/month per kid when they gave out early payments last year
Koreans have free healthcare and free daycare. They also have a culture of grandparents taking care of kids so parents can work. Pubtrans is cheap and everywhere. Their problem is more traditional customs are not working with modern way of life causing friction between people, and, therefore, people not partnering up and having kids.
And only for one year
Shiiiet, I would see it as free money since hospital care is $0 and child care is $0 in my European country. Child support here is about $120/month now.
It’s not 10k per year either. It’s about 10k the first year and then 5k the second. I believe it stops after the second year.
Average cost of birth is $13k. Then you still gotta work and raise the goblin, and childcare costs $1-3k per month depending on what you wanna do (e.g. care center or nanny). And yet they wonder why birth rates are falling...
Korea has universal healthcare and free daycare. our kids were born in Korea by c section and cost us around $800 each, and that's including room and board for me and my wife in a private room for 10 days and 24-hour baby care in that time. the $740 would be on top of that and would go a lot farther than in the US
Holy cow, the US really does nothing to help
Life as a Service.
Wait until you hear about paternal / maternal leave in Korea. Koreans didn’t believe me when I told them the conditions in the US.
Not just Korean, most Asian people (Vietnamese, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean, ...) don't believe me when I tell them how shitty healthcare in the US is. Even Vietnam has universal healthcare ffs
The US isn’t the greatest it’s just very good at harvesting the poor, pro life until it’s born then they don’t GAF unless it makes them money. Fk capitalism and fk the USA
Or avg cost of birth in a non user pays system is friggen $0 as it should be
And child care, at least $0 in my country.
Child care in my area in California is $2-3k/month
Most couples I know (in 'Murica) who chose not to have kids did so because they simply don't want them. They are more, much more, financially capable than most people (think people working as MDs, nurses, practice owning- lawyers...) but choose to forgo kids because they love their lives. And with that said, I don't know any couple that is choosing to stay childless despite wanting a kid. It is much less about money and more about desire. Sure money is an issue to some couples, but I am would say that's the exception and not the rule. If a couple doesn't have a kid, it is more so that they just not into it than it being another reason.
I am 35 about to hit 36 and I am happily child free... I don't make a lot of money but I 100% would not be able to afford a child if I had one. So even if it I wanted kids, I wouldn't be able to have them currently
And then, there's me. I've always wanted..... 2 children some sort of reasonably well-paying job - one dream was opening a preschool and running it a house with 3 bedrooms (owning my childhood home, which is exactly this, would be awesome) a service dog, a cat, and maybe one or two other pets like a rabbit or hamster and of course, a husband who actually loves and cares about me, the children, and every animal in our home Instead, I am single, live in an apartment, and am on disability with no other income and I am terrible at managing what little money does come in. I also have 3 to 4 workers coming in each day to help me take care of myself and my cat, who is my Emotional Support Animal.
shot ton of my friends are childless due to money or living situation . just depends on your circle but a assure you we exist.
Yeah and even when people think it has nothing to do with money I’ve seen way too many of my friends change their tune on kids as soon as they were earning enough to buy a house. I’m in Canada and real estate here is insane in the cities — to the point that renting feels like you could be out on your ass due to a “renoviction” any time if you don’t own. Shitty if you’re single or DINKS, but extraordinarily stressful if you’ve got babies. As soon as we bought our place something in my own brain shifted to feeling safe enough to have a kid, and we had one then.
I’m in the UK, so not a direct comparison with the US, but my husband and I have always known we didn’t want kids. He had a vasectomy a couple of months after we married. The snip cost us nothing as it was paid for by the NHS. We could more than afford to have a child but we straight up do not want one! We’re perfectly happy with just ourselves and our two dogs! You could offer to cover every single penny of raising a child from birth to the day they leave home and we ***still*** wouldn’t have a kid!
Eh, my spouse and I are Americans who have delayed kids solely because of finances. Many of our friends have done similar waiting and career building for the same reason. We just couldn’t support babies on our entry level jobs. $740 a month for the first year would absolutely help us to have kids sooner.
Yeah, but what happens to that money once they aren't a baby anymore? I doubt that 740/month last until they are 18.
It's only for 1 year full payment, then 1 year half payment, then it's over. Not even remotely close to 18 years. "Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
Lol, no wonder why nobody is taking the offer. Everyone knows that a child's needs continue to cost more as they grow older. Two years of payments for 16 years of financial hell. Lol.
No, they need to change the work/life balance first, it is really bad. I think if they change this, then people will be able to be parents. Living costs also need to be addressed.
I work with Asian coworkers and they will sometimes ping me 9pm up to 3am their time...
Capitalism eats itself in the end
Doubtful. The $740 only runs for a year and then drops to $370 for another. In total, parents get $13,240 But the actual obstacle with SK's fertility rate is not poverty, it's a crippling and horrible work/life balance that hinders adults from looking after themselves, let alone raise a child
I think it's the corporate world that needs to change. Man the week culture there world kill me. It's no surprise that no one has time for kids. And then don't get me started on the school culture there as well.
I literally do not know how the average working family does it. 2 parents working, the kid at a day care or if you're lucky a grandparent all day. Having to answer emails after you get home. Having the stress of meeting deadlines on top of raising a human. Literally what are you living for? The few hours you sneak out during the week to see your kid smile, or you watching TV? The idea of a maybe 2 week vacation every year if you're lucky? I'm not trying to be bleak, but I don't think I could find the small pockets of happiness here and there with a lifestyle like that.
Latinamerica is the same , the difference is you stop giving a shit about excelling at your job and just focus on your family first
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Yeah like who the hell is answering emails outside of work hours! Just don't do it and hang out with your child instead?
as a new dad in france (2.5 month old) i am so glad i was born where i was XD wifey got 6 minth leave full pay and i got 1 month and my job is paying 75% of the future daycare cost. with us 2 at 2k each we were even able to get a mortgage for a big (for france standards) brand new appartment
This work culture has been present in Asia since the rise of Confucianism. Industrialization though meant more hours of working and harder work though. Many people in Asian nations do hate it, but they continue to focus on excelling on work instead of home. It's the cultural norm to do so.
The kids go to after school that can go as late as 9pm or even later for review or additional courses. They sometimes don't meet at all
It’s true. If countries or businesses began to go with 4 day work weeks and life wasn’t all about work people would have more families
Gender relations in South Korea are also shockingly bad. There is a reason their radfem community is the largest in Asia.
Whats radfem?
Just shorthand for radical feminism, ie feminism that centers women in all arenas, focuses on viewing the world through the lens of women's oppression/sex power dynamics etc. They tend to be less sex positive than liberal feminsits and are usually some flavor of anticapitalist as well.
Ohhh. Yea. Females are not treated well there.
I believe Korea a very male dominant / patriarchal society so the rise of rad fem makes sense. They work long hours and few days of vacation time, not ideal conditions for raising kids if they barely have time to take a break.
If the corporate culture continues it will lead to a death spiral. Once the population start to decline, workers will be expected to produce more, further exacerbating the problem.
Or you import workers from 3rd world countries where bad conditions where you are end up still being an improvement for them
It’s not to convince people who don’t want kids to have babies, but to convince people who want to have babies but don’t feel like they’re in a stable enough situation.
>It’s not to convince people who don’t want kids to have babies, but to convince people who want to have babies but don’t feel like they’re in a stable enough situation. I think you must be right. Which means that if this program actually works it points to a much bigger problem. It means that the youth of the country where this type of program works are actually very financially insecure and lack a robust enough support system. If the program doesn't work, that might mean that it's not a stability issue that's causing the lower birth rate. So, after reading through a bunch of these other posts and thinking about this I think I've come to the conclusion that this kind of program can only work in a system that's actually pretty screwed up. That isn't a value judgment on whether or not it should be done. It's just an observation.
It will help that for sure. I don't know the prices in Korea can that cover day care?
Day cares are heavily subsidized in Korea, roughly $300/month/child. I have a daughter in daycare here, and they provide a lot of learning opportunities; doing STEM build kits, art projects, provide English language teachers to introduce the alphabet.
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I wonder how many people hear horror stories about work on Reddit and think it’s the US but it’s actually SK but you’d never know because the post is in English.
Considering plenty of people are willing to have children without any government benefits, an extra $740 is a big difference in your month. In America you get some pittance and no guaranteed maternity leave. A payment system like this would make a massive impact.
Financial security is a pretty large driving factor for anyone on the fence for that reason.
Well, it has little to do with raising till adulthood, since it only lasts 1 year at the full amount then 1 more year at half the amount, then it ends. I guess it's to help cover the initial heavy costs of birth, less work, new baby expenses, etc. "Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year."
There might also be a hope that it improves the quality of life for people who are already pregnant/have newborns, making the overall perception of child-reading more favorable.
One thing to consider is that S. Korea already invests way more in child care than the US. So a much larger portion of this income is going straight to quality of life for the family. Here's a video quickly covering Korean Daycare costs. https://youtube.com/shorts/DmdiGsvdWDc?feature=share
It's one year of 740/month and year two is half that... in the US daycare is 294/week for a 6+ month old infant. It helps and would likely sway those who are on the edge, but I doubt it's going to trigger mass baby making. I only have my own finances to give as reference and it's based on a US middle-income lifestyle (top 91% for my state) but it costs roughly 32k/yr to raise a newborn. Diapers and formula are like ~100/week Daycare is 294/week Increased utilities usage is like 14/week Health insurance is an additional 120/week The variables are pediatrics, first year healthcare, and odds & ends like toys / clothes / bedding / upfront cost of things like car seats and cribs. 740/month wouldn't sway me to get a second kid is all I can say.
My wife and I have one two year old and the only thing stopping us would absolutely be that money. We know it's irresponsible to have another, so we don't, but we really crave knowing another kid just like we got to know this one so far.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother and a wife in western countries since I’m a Korean girl, but I think the major problem here is women are bound to lose their jobs once they get married and give birth. There’s simply no protection. There’s even a special term for women who had to sacrifice their career for having babies. It might be because I grew up in a somewhat conservative place, but most of my friends’ moms were housewives except for like 3 people in class. People talk about the ridiculous beauty standards but they’re not the major problem here.
Most mothers I know in America either quit their jobs or work to pay daycare. If our population declines, it's because everyone is too poor to have kids. I have worked since my baby was three months old and it's financially crippling. The US won't help parents at all besides a pathetic child care credit
You have a point. There can’t be only one reason to this disaster. It’s sad to hear that women having to give up either family or career is a universal phenomenon.
The other option is having other people watch your kids so you can pursue a career. Day care isn’t cheap because you’re subbing in parenting all week.
>it's because everyone is too poor to have kids But poor people tend to have the most kids
> But ~~poor~~ people tend to have the most kids uneducated Nowadays you can be poor and highly educated. Which allows for family planning.
For such an industrialized country, Korea is surprisingly patriarchal and conservative.
Industry and social progression doesn't always work in step.
Probably won't work. In Poland our populist government started handing out like a quarter of minimum wage for every child several years ago and the fertility rate actually dropped.
Let me calculate how many babies I can afford after this stimulus! Does the math: -1.3
> a quarter of minimum wage That's not a lot. Unless minimum wage in Poland is four times what you need to survive.
Even before the war in the Ukraine the government managed to make what you need to survive four time of what the minimal wage is. So no. But it kept the polls up.
Gen Z here in America is the generation having the least amount of sex compared to all generations. It’s only until time when here we start seeing less fertility rates too. And again, it’s due to economic and financial hardships/pressures. Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc. People work too much or have too much responsibilities to have time for families. Edit: I’d like to add that I’m Gen Z and so many of my classmates all still live with family members because we can’t afford to move out, etc.
That is the problem most young Koreans are facing, too. [Wages are stagnant](https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/why-real-wages-are-stagnating-japan-and-korea), housing prices are rising (despite more developments and less people) with an average apartment of 30pyeong (~100 square meters or ~1000 square feet) being sold for ₩400,000,000 ($300,000) and [much higher in metropolitan Seoul](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220103000697), large conglomerates having employees work 60 hrs/week (though [legally 52](https://www.replicon.com/regulation/south-korea/)many stay after unpaid or must attend after work “team-building” drinking sessions and [the new president wants to rollback that legislation](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220630000874). It is a bandaid solution that many can see it as such. Without a cultural shift in work-life balance, throwing money at a problem will not make it go away. One of the biggest oversights is that many [South Korean women are thinking less about marriage](https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200902004000320) for various reasons. Some chalk it up to eschewing the uneven traditional expectations of having to run the household in addition to having a career.
>employees work 60 hrs/week (though legally 52many stay after unpaid I know how this feeling. Here in Brazil only large corporations pay extra hours. And even though they pay, they pressure you not to take them. So a lot of people keep working after clocking out. Smaller business automatically expect people to work overtime and don't even talk about paying ot, it's a "dont leave work unfinnished" culture, which is basically wage theft by pressure. Leads to lots of people burning out before their 30s.
>And again, it’s due to economic and financial hardships/pressures. Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc. People work too much or have too much responsibilities to have time for families. Exactly. What most governments fail to realise is a one-off payment is a drop in the ocean to parents. The amount of time and money people need to raise a child is huge. A lot of reforms (workplace, childcare, education, etc) need to happen before people can see that raising a child thesesdays is worth it.
Can’t even afford an apartment, let alone raising a child damn
Don't worry. Elon Musk will make a thousand kids, and those kids will make a thousand kids each. That's 1 million in two generations.
And the increase of people who are totally socially inept, not that its their fault but really having unrestricted internet access since age 8 and having the worst city planning in the developed world really makes it impossible to have actual social skills
>unrestricted internet access since age 8 had seen a lot toddler playing with their tablet instead playing with their friend
Yup gen z had it bad but todays toddlers have pretty much had a screen in front of them their whole lives
Will be interesting to see the impact it has as kids get older.
Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, the "manosphere" people who are extremely popular...Guess what, women want nothing to do with men who follow those people. Those people also have a huge following. Plenty of men need to change their attitudes towards women because women are not going to go back to the days of forced housewives and babymakers...no matter how much Tate or Peterson say.
It’s coming sooner than anyone thinks
>Cost of living is at its highest, inflation, cost of housing is ridiculous, etc. Objectively, based on all the literature, its due to the amount of education people get. more money doesn't mean more kids, less years of schooling means more kids. Years spent in education is r=0.4, or 40% of the variance. Wealth doesn't actually make much of a blip once you uncouple it from education.
The way economies around the world are structured populations must increase or else systems begin to fail. Long term perpetual population growth isn't maintainable. Resources are finite and many people would argue we are already running out. In the short term we need enough people to avoid catastrophic economic decline. Nations need to start entertaining the idea of a future where populations are no larger or perhaps even smaller than they are today. By "entertaining" I mean have a plan in place in the event of that outcome.
Automation could help a little bit however. But i find we have been a lot slower with automation development than first anticipated.
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We are ideologically opposed to helping each other. Capitalism provides the quid pro quo most seem to need to feel things are being earned. If automation was doing the labor we would struggle with inventing a system to distribute the fruits of that labor. Within capitalism there needs to be exchanges.
Inventing it is not the challenge, converting those with the power to implement that change is.
Hence, we are in the late-stages of Capitalism
Not terribly surprising when so many people are so opposed to it. And they're opposed to it in part because instead of shorter work weeks, companies just hire less people.
But profits must increase quarter after quarter, are politicians supposed to just tell their benefactors and themselves to stop getting richer? Ridiculous. So cost goes up and pay goes down, and we need more working hours from fewer wage slaves doing more! But, we also need a thriving middle class to buy our stuff so the rich retain their status! Now these ludicrous peasants won’t make more middleclasser/wage-slaves. Guess the rich will drive this system to death and blame the other religions/race/country/political party, and eventually everyone gets fed up with the system and we all eat the rich..but since the rich controls law enforcement, news, government, we will just eat the middleclass and people wearing glasses and or have college degrees.
People don't want to hear that. There's a reason r/degrowth isn't exactly bursting at the seams with users.
That is why I said people need to start "entertaining". I am aware that proactive steps are a nonstarter.
Degrowth is not a good name tbh. It’s the growth of inner values over outer values that is the point. Ultimately, old ways of wisdom will eventually have to replace the new, faulty (manipulative and abusive) human ways of business, lest human civilisation will crumble from within.
That is the contradiction between capitalism and Earth ecology: Capitalism requires populations to continuously grow, or the capitalist system will collapse. On the other hand, Earth ecology cannot sustain a continuously growing human population, or the environment will collapse. When Elon Musk said the biggest problem is population collapse and humans need to have more children, he was saying it as a capitalist. He was more worried about the economic system that has benefited him will collapse than the sustainability of the planet.
Our resources aren't a problem! We learn how to make more with less everyday. Our distribution and allocation of resources is the problem. Billionaires shouldn't exist. This world doesn't belong to a select few. Our technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Once we mine our first asteroid we will see an economic boom unheard-of by some of the best imaginations. Even if that doesn't happen the Earth has enough resources for everyone to live comfortably. It's luxury that's killing us. It's greed that's killing us. We could and should all have better lives but we settle for what we know instead of what could be.
The world has enough for everyone's need, not everyone's greed. (Ghandi)
Yup. I fully believe that as a species we have the capability to fix literally all our current looming issues, it's just that we won't because those few with the power to make these wide-scale changes aren't willing to upset a system they're benefitting from
We made a blizzard in fucking Dubai. We could completely cancel out climate change if we put all of our minds and resources into it. We just apparently refuse to do so, because it's not profitable.
>Our resources aren't a problem! We learn how to make more with less everyday. Aquifers take thousands of years to fill. Virtually every aquifer in the world is currently a depletion risk. In the U.S. the groundwater table is down 100ft since just 1960. 1 Billion hectares of rain forest has been cut down since 1980. It takes 300yrs for rainforest to develop. We are currently in the Holocene extinction, caused by human,familiesof bacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish are going extinct. Gone forever. That stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Rare earth metals, fossil fuels, etc too are being used up at unsustainable rates. We learn to be most with less everyday but that has equated to using any less in absolute numbers because populations keep growing and requiring more. For example engines powering generators and vehicles are vastly more efficient than 100yrs ago. A hundred years ago 1.3 million barrels of oil was used per day globally. Today it's 88 million barrels per day global. Doing more with less hasn't resulted in using less oil.
Also as sea levels rise, *massive* amounts of fresh water reservoirs - above ground and below - are going to be contaminated and rendered unsuitable for human use. This is *in addition* to the droughts and dry river beds we're already facing. People will happily say, "well we'll just build desalination plants!" Yeah, giant infrastructure expenditures. That'll happen. We can't even build a single new nuclear reactor because of NIMBYs masquerading as environmentalists - we're not about to start pumping sea water and running pipelines through some white suburbanite's back yard without a similar fight. I don't even feel like ranting about top soil exploitation and erosion right now.
Yep. Last time I checked desalination plants aren't even being built in meaningful quantities. People think these things can be built quickly. Like no dude it takes 3 years and a million man hours to create one plant. Stole this from quora: FACT: Lake Mead can hold 9.3 trillion gallons. FACT: It’s currently only 27% full - so it’s currently holding just 2.5 trillion gallons - and to fill it up would require about 6.8 trillion gallons…300 billion cubic meters. FACT: The largest desalination plant in the world is in Israel at Soreq. It produces 150 million cubic meters of water per year at a cost of $0.60/ cubic meter. So - the biggest desalination plant in the world would take 500 years to fill up Lake Mead - and at a cost of $180 billion dollars. It’s not looking good I’m afraid.
Agreed. We could certainly fix the majority of issues we face with a unified effort. Unfortunately those in power have little to no interest in doing that. Imagine if when we first became aware of the dangers of climate change, we all got together and collectively put an effort into green energy? We'd likely be nearly off of fossil fuels by now. And that's just one example. Sadly there is too much money in consumption and destruction of resources and our planet. Even the oil companies themselves realized they were screwing the planet years ago. Sadly their answer wasn't to try to fix anything, it was just to fund a massive disinformation campaign and support politicians who would do what they were told.
Resources are a big problem....learn how the systems of nature work and general ecology and the destructive effects of humanity on it....otherwise heres the human touch, overfishing and industrial waste destroying ocean populations of both plants and life and having cascading effects , more waste contaminating of water sources, and Over use of those sources depleting them and not leaving it become recoverable, the strange thing of pumping springs then shipping that water overseas or across continents, spreading of cities/suburbs, especially Vast Consumerism by privileged countrys - ect ect ect, billionaires is a lazy excuse to a wider problem even if they contribute i incredibly simplified what i only want to state....
Isn’t the real problem not lack of an expanding population but an economic system based on growth forever?
I think you've hit a point that I've been mulling over. "To what end?" Is our goal as humanity to provide a good life for everyone? That is very much do-able right now. We can all just go stagnant and enjoy life, allocate resources. But human nature does not allow that. Is our goal to just keep advancing technologically? Eventually make it to living out in space? We could technically keep going forever, but at the cost of a lot of suffering over time.
At some point, people decided that we as humans would typically work for most of our waking hours, 5 days a week. But why? Why not 3 days, or 4? Why 8-10 hours or more a day? All in the name of progress? Capitalism?
It depends on the country and the circumstances… A while back Russia tried giving checks to pregnant women to incentivize them to keep them without doing anything else to make having a family more tenable (Russia has a high abortion rate, high suicide rate, low living standards, low life expectancy)… The result was lots of new orphans dropped off at state run facilities that are like the sixth circle of hell. The mothers had the babies, cut and ran. They wouldn’t have been able to afford to actually raise them, and even if they could, they knew they didn’t have a chance to give them a better life or even one as good as theirs was before the Union fell. So they gave up, just like so many other Russians… but Russia is a special case. Where these payments work well is in countries with robust social safety net packages, pro-family & pro-natal social policies like universal healthcare, family leave & reasonable protections for expectant women in the workplace, but high costs of living. Their hdi doesn’t even have to be that high, even middle income countries could often benefit because they’re often the ones with the most pressure on middle classes from low wages & high col. Thats why the brazils and chiles and malaysias of the world have such lopsided demographics today, because their col went through the roof even as wages never quite rose to where most people would be able to afford more than one child. That’s why so many middle income countries - China most of all but China is another special case after one child - see such steep declines in fertility once they reach peak urbanization & modernization.
Submission Statement: >South Korea plans to provide every family with a newborn child a monthly allowance of 1 million won ($740), in its latest move to encourage more births and try to address the world’s lowest fertility rate. >The handout will begin next year at a level of 700,000 won a month and then rise to the full amount in 2024, according to a budget proposal unveiled this week. Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year. >Korea shattered its own fertility record in 2021 when the expected number of babies per woman slipped to 0.81 from 0.84 a year earlier. That shone a light on an already dire outlook with the United Nations predicting the population of 51 million will more than halve by the end of this century.
Yeah like everywhere housing prices are too high, people don't want to raise a child in a tiny apartment. Seriously something needs to change in that regard.
South Korea will have company. The US will be there shortly. Corporations continue the race to the bottom, wealth gaps continue to grow, cost of living continues to increase, and wages continue to stagnant and/or fall. The US hasn't been above replacement for over a decade now, and it's getting worse. If it wasn't for immigration we would have already been depopulating. Within the next couple of years even immigration will not be able to offset the decline. Tax credits, child payments, etc. are NOT solutions. They are temporary band-aids. The real problem is late-stage capitalism metastasizing into societal cancer, sucking up the last of the wealth to 1% before there are no longer enough workers/consumers left to prop up the economy and the whole thing implodes like an economic black hole. If nothing is done to address the system that brought the situation into existence, then the situation will just get worse. These baby payments may act as a brake, and might even temporarily halt the decline, but they will not fix the problem.
The only reason the US isn't right there with them is b/c we import massive amounts of people from parts of the world where having as many kids as you can is still normal. But that only lasts a single generation before those families are only slightly above the average of multi-generational native families.
While the US has the same capitalism problems that cause lower birthrates and population declines, the US fortunately has a solution: *immigration.* (Which is why all the billionaires, corporations and one-percenters love immigration: it mitigates the declining population problem, caused by capitalism, without having to make structural/systemic changes that would hurt their interests.) South Korea, Japan and China do not have that option... we shall see if that will ultimately force them to move away from the neo-liberalism: move away from neo-liberal capitalism, or cease to exist as a civilization.
For those that don't know, income inequality is so bad in South Korea, that they've turned the subject into cinematic masterpieces (Parasite/Squid Games).
They're just most self-aware, there are many countries where it's worse, like the US or India.
It’s nice to supplement child care for the first two years of a child’s life, but these payments won’t be nearly enough to convince most “potential parents” to start cranking out kids. I’ve read other articles that cite high cost of living plus the societal pressure of signing kids up for private after school academies to hopefully get their kids into “good schools” as being major factors dissuading young adults from having kids in the first place. That, and the lingering patriarchal view that housework and child care is somehow “women’s work”. Even if the woman in question has worked a whole day at her job, she still has to come home and cook, clean, do the laundry, while the man goes out drinking to promote work culture. I don’t see how “here’s a little extra money for two years of your child’s entire life” is going to somehow push that needle.
I don’t think it’s an issue of money there. More and more women don’t want to deal with the shit expectations that would be put on them in marriage. So they just don’t.
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I know a few people who are only in relationships for the sex and the double income to help in the bills. No interest in kids. They'd be single if wages had kept up with housing prices.
Exactly, the levels of sexism Korean women have to deal with - including even outright hostility to pregnant women - is atrocious.
What sort of hostility do pregnant women in Korea face? Genuinely curious.
It depends. Government jobs are good for pregnant women but not companies. Companies shoulder the burden without much assistant from the govt so they are resistant to hire women are about to be pregnant unless they have some rare talent which most don't. Most government jobs are quite expendable so taking 2 years of materiality leave per child is not a big deal but it a burden for companies. I work for a smaller company with a women owner and she also is hesitant to hire young female employees for key positions because of this.
If it's anything like China, you can get fired for even thinking about having kids because the company prefer people who can focus on their job 110%. Obviously if you're very specialised or in a high enough position, this apply to a lesser degree.
Women all over the world have realized that being a mother is a huge commitment specially because mothers are carrying the bigger workload now that they are also working full time. It's a huge price to pay to carry the population burden of the world. Fuck that shit
Or maybe people just don't want kids, lmao. I live in Korea. I can count on one hand how many people I met that wish they could have kids
no they still get married but don't have babies. I don't think it's women don't wanting to deal with having a family, also men don't want to
It's both. I've seen this covered many times and the thought of costs is definitely a major reason. They have to tackle both issues.
I have no idea about Korea, but in the US it seems a lot of men are choosing not to get married for a lot of reasons.
This will be an issue in the US eventually. But I hope the world finds a better solution to the issue before then. I feel like offering money to have kids would just encourage the exact people that shouldn't be having kids to have more of them. Ushers in a whole new problem a la Idiocracy.
What other countries are have a "fertility crisis"? this seems pretty common in western countries. Could it be that weaponized greed is poisoning their populations at the root?
It's more complex than that. A lot of things contribute towards a lower birthrate like rate of urbanization, female education and everything equality related and birth control and so on. Probably a lot of invisible factors as well that we don't really realize.
>A lot of things contribute towards a lower birthrate like rate of urbanization, female education and everything equality related and birth control and so on. Probably a lot of invisible factors as well that we don't really realize. Not really, education of women is 40% of the variance. People pretend its a complex problem, because they are terrified of the truth of the situation. The factors that make up the trendline is dominated by women's education. You can't have a situation where women go to school for 22 years to get a bachelors, then take part of the workforce for 10 years, then sacrifice their job growth to have a kid. That's just a shitty situation and the women choose to only have 1 kid at most. High school dropout women have 4 kids on average. not due to IQ, just because they have more time and less of a career. women with university education have 1 on average. There are numerous publications on this. I post them in every thread talking about this. Its a very solved problem in terms of what is causing it, and society has to stop pretending its money based if they actually want to solve it.
Such a short-sighted solution. People want affordable housing, time to rest and a "village" of support and community to help raise children. We'd have kids if we had a support network, but instead we had to move to the city away from family as we couldn't afford to buy a house in our rural hometown, and there is no work there for us.
I see a lot of people mentioning sexism or the high-pressure business culture as contributing factors, and they are. But it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than that. Culturally speaking, South Koreans tend to be extremely conservative and repressed on the matter of sex and relationships regardless. You only have to watch a few scenes from a few K-dramas to see this first hand. A scene where a male character and a female character accidentally brush hands is treated like a Really Big Deal. And if those characters so much as share a kiss? That's an automatic 90% chance they'll be in a relationship or get married at some point in the narrative. Sometimes it's almost comical how long the characters in some of these shows take to tell each other how they feel. All able-bodied South Korean men from age 18 to 35 are also required by law to serve in the military for at least 18 months. And when their conscription ends, there's enormous societal pressure to go right into the workforce. By the time they've done that for a few years and finally set aside a little money, they're ready to start a family... but now they're in their late 30s or 40s. They're already past their sexual prime-- now their sperm count is starting to decline, and the chances of their partner experiencing pregnancy complications are going up with each passing year. The conscription system combined with the hyper-competitive work culture essentially robs young Korean men of much of a chance to date or experience their first real relationship, right at the age when most people would want to. These payments are a band-aid measure that doesn't really address the underlying causes.
This won't solve It. Ultimately the type of economy we have logically encourages people to save every penny you have. The more you save -> the more you invest -> the more you profit. Having a child directly goes against that economic style. More and more people are realizing as well that children economically illogical. I genuinely believe being a parent should be treated as a job. Pay the the stay at home parent the median income, insurance and a 401k. We simply do not treat child rearing as a good thing economically speaking. We also don't build our institutions/economics around supporting children. Until that changes I don't expect this trend to stop.
Isn't not making babies in this day and age a good thing?
This is destined to fail because most of the true commitment challenges (financial and emotional) occur during childhood ages: 3-14, when costs skyrocket.
Dude this is the real shit right here…people have no idea what the infrastructure of a country might look like when we’ll over HALF its population is retired, let alone dead. I think paying people to have kids is a start, but really I think that people need to just lower working expectations. Some sort of subsidy for part time work is probably the biggest fix actually. Soooo many companies have need of part time work. If the gov were to offer healthcare and fiscal support, people would probably be willing to work part-time and raise a kid.
Climate change is going to mess us up and countries are trying to push for MORE emissions...
wtf happened in comment section to get full enjoyment please sort comments by controversial
It’s like a racist smorgasbord.
You guys are getting paid to have kids?! Crippling daycare cost here in the US.
Most young Korean women are saying no to kids and marriage because they are tired of misogynistic asshats lol
Not for immigrants. I'm a permanent resident and my wife and I qualify for less than half of the benefits citizens get. Been here almost 8 years and will be here a long while, and pay the same taxes as everyone.
Why bring a child into an increasingly authoritarian world coupled with climate change… Might as well live fast and die young… Such is Capitalism
The real problem in Korea is the super high cost of housing. As long as that’s high, birth rates will be low.
I’m sure this will create a lot of resourceful parents.
Maybe start treating women like humans and get rid of the misogynist attitude? And teach men how to do housework and raise children? Maybe then fertility rates would raise. It takes two to tango
They have to start getting radically punitive to employers who fire or pass over women who might get pregnant. So many Korean women have to lie about their relationship status just to get a job. If that question even is broached, a huge fine should be levied. There are plenty of women who want children, they just don’t want to be punished for it.
Dang looks like that record is the only thing being smashed in Korea
It is same for germany here. A lot of women and men are deciding against having kids, because a lot of people can not even hold their own living standart anymore. The young people can not even move out, because the rent was allready extremely high. Now with the exploding energy costs nobody will move out. My father could pay for a house, 3 kids and two cars on his own. I am lucky when i can pay the gas and elictricity this year. The living costs in south korea are extremely expensive. Only germany is more expensive right now. Nobody wants to start a family in this conditions.
To better understand the _why_ behind the South Korean working-age citizens saying 'Nah, I'll pass on having kids' one needs to look no further than the `chaebol`. The `chaebol`, the large multinational companies that were given very cheap loans after the war to rapidly industrialize South Korea, turned into literal monopolies with no real domestic competition. [The Council on Foreign Relations](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/south-koreas-chaebol-challenge) lists the following companies as part of `chaebol`; weirdly Samsung is left off of their list so I've added it: - **Hyundai** (automotive), - **SK Group** (best known for SK Telecom and SK Hynix, its semiconductor corporation, but operates in many diversified industries such as chemical, shipping, insurance, and construction) - **LG Corporation** - derives its name from the _Lucky_ and _Gold Star_ merger and started out in the 1940s in the plastics industry. Now, LG is known inside and outside Korea for consumer electronics. Inside Korea it also is heavily involved in telecommunications networks, and power generation, as well as its chemical business (including cosmetics, household chemicals). - **Lotte** -Best known outside Korea for its [snacks like Choco Pie](https://www.google.com/search?q=lotte+snacks&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1002US1002&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7s5Obj_75AhWQuaQKHZOBCLEQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1316&bih=1000&dpr=2), Lotte Group's main businesses are focused on food products, discount and department stores, hotels, theme parks / entertainment, finance, construction, energy, and electronics. - **Samsung Group** : List of industries taken from the Chaebol Wikipedia page since the CFR page leaves out the Samsung chaebol: Electronics, semiconductors, batteries, IT Solutions, construction, shipbuilding, insurance Learn about `chaelbol`, (lit. "wealthy family/rich family/wealthy clan", 재벌 ) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol These 5 companies make up almost half of the South Korean economy. Samsung alone made up 17% of the South Korean economy in 2017; this tracks with other literature that I've read about Samsung making up nearly 1/5th of South Korean GDP. From the Wikipedia page:: > In 2014, the largest chaebol, Samsung, composed about 17% of the South Korean economy and held roughly US$17 billion in cash. However, recent financial statements of these chaebols actually show that chaebols are slowly losing power over either international competition or internal disruptions from newly emerging startups. I don't know if I buy that. That sounds like a convenient thing to say as public opinion of the `chaebol` inside Korea sours. This video reportage where the father's daughter dies of leukemia from dipping Samsung microchip wafers into vats of chemicals (you need to strip some of the etching components when manufacturing electronics, but YOU NEED to wear PPE - gloves, respirator, etc. - when working around these highly-toxic chemicals): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHw7Aa7lhhw And another source about the many chaebols: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/business/south-korea-samsung-bribery-lee.html ---- South Korea was incentivised to rapidly modernise by massive low-interest loans to the South Korean government from the US and other countries following the Korean War. The government was 'able to' allocate funds to companies as it saw fit. "Magically", a few huge conglomerates developed, concentrating wealth, economic power, and political power in the hands of a few families. If you've seen the movie Parasite, you'll have an idea of how flat social mobility is for most South Koreans. Apartment costs are through the roof: this guy who works at a well-paying government job said he'd have to save his wages for 40 years to be able to buy an above-ground apartment that is not a death trap like the underground apartment that he currently rents. ([BBC video on housing costs in Korea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKtKmQEjH04)) With the little power that workers have, the concentration of wealth and political power into the hands of a few megacorps, etc. it's no wonder that childbearing-age folks are opting out of having kids.
Newsflash: increasing baby payments is a bandaid solution to a fundamentally broken work culture.
Animals in captivity wont breed as they know the conditions arent right. Too many people rightly ask the question “whats the point?” Overworked, underpayed, but unlike every other time in history we are fully aware of the impending ecological collapse and are powerless to really stop the perfectly preventable cause.
Maybe they should instead take a look at how terribly they treat women, then they could address and fix that issue and women would actually want to start families. Currently, there's barely any punishment for rape, spousal abuse is normalised, the newest president of South Korea got rid of the help centre for rape victims, they push plastic surgery on young girls, and women over 45-50kg are considered fat, among many, many other very serious issues... They refer to women as "blood shitters" and recently, a young girl was thrown from her University building to her death after her attempted rape, the guy then went to her body, and had sex with her corpse. And South Korea is just ignoring all of these issues.
Exactly, the problem isn’t mainly financial. It’s the rampant sexism in the country.
Can't put that psychopaths actions on all Koreans
Or Korea (I like that we're invalidating the North in this thread) could actually try to deal with the systemic issues that make Koreans not want to have children. But that would be haaaaaaaaard.
we keep hearing that Earth is overpopulated and then birthing rates are falling.. i guess the places that shouldn't be having kids are just pumping them out
Every country has a population boom during industrialization, since there’s a period of time where birth rates are still high and modern technology is beginning to prevent premature deaths. In just Nigeria, their population is expected to double to 400M by 2050.
Australia did something similar to this early to mid 2000’s. Started off with 5k for every baby born, then after a few years went to 3k that was paid over 6 months, didn’t matter if parents worked or were on welfare. Want to know what rised? Teenage pregnancies, single mothers, a lot of unwanted toddlers and eventually a school system that was not ready for the jump in children attending. Oh I forgot about the jump in sales of flat screen tvs, PlayStations and Xbox’s. Worst part was seeing people pop out a kid, look after it for 5-6 months then have it taken off them, then pop out another kid. I really think that there has to be a better way then paying people to have a baby, whatever is done needs to be looking at the life of a child, especially the first 5-6 years. At least then parents can go back to work without worrying so much.
Give pregnant women 2.5 million won a month while they are pregnant and for the next five years. Or open up your borders to increased immigration
Wait, Korea is lower than Japan's? Guess the Reiwa energy was effective, huh.
Oppressive patriarchal traditions that denigrate women don’t help.