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Increased baby bonus unlikely to help boost birthrate: study
A nurse holds a newborn baby at a postnatal care center in Yanggu County, Gangwon Province, Dec. 4. Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
The government's expanded cash bonus for childbirth beginning this year will have little effect on boosting the country’s falling birthrate, according to a survey, Friday.
Starting in 2022, the government provided families with 2 million won ($1,500) for each child born to assist parents in meeting prenatal expenses. This year, this amount increased to 3 million won for a second child or more and 5 million won for twins.
However, in the survey conducted by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education under the Prime Minister’s Office, 37.7 percent of the respondents said they do not plan to have an additional child even with the government offering expanded cash bonus. Notably, this marked an increase of nearly 10 percentage points for people deciding not to have any more children from a year earlier, despite the bonus increase.
The survey targeted 2,000 people who had already received the benefit for their children.
Those who were positive about having an additional child stood at 46.4 percent, down by 8.7 percentage points from a year earlier.
“Increasing the cash bonus may raise the level of satisfaction for policy recipients and assist their household economy, but such satisfaction does not last long and the policy is not expected to induce additional births in the long term,” the institute said in its report.
When asked about how satisfied the respondents were with the cash bonus, the figure stood at 4.47 on a five-point scale, down from 4.79 tallied from a year earlier.
The most common reason cited by those unsatisfied with the bonus was an insufficient amount. They said, on average, 5 million won would be the right amount.
Lee Yoon-jin, a senior researcher at the institute who authored the study, said the cash bonus policy seems to have little effect on encouraging people to decide on having more children, considering that the country’s fertility rate has kept falling even after the government implemented that policy.
“In addition, increasing negative responses about additional childbirth are attributed to recent inflation. This implies that the government should consider a dramatic increase to the amount offered,” Lee said.
Lee noted that those in their 20s, those whose monthly income is less than 3 million won and those who have one child cited financial burden as the biggest reason for not having additional children.
“These people show a willingness to have more children if the amount of the bonus increases,” she said.
In 2022, Korea registered a total fertility rate of 0.78, surpassing its own previous record for the world's lowest fertility rate.
This has led various government offices as well as private companies to draw up and prepare relevant policies in a bid to overcome the significantly decreasing fertility rate that is feared to accelerate the demographic cliff, referring to a major decline in the working population.