By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate a human being in terms of money. Every baby is born with limitless value. But if one has to figure out how valuable the first baby is for a mother monetarily, how much will it be? The Korea Institute of Public Finance has provided a clue to that question. It estimated that the first baby is worth around 120 million won ($130,000) for its mother.
After analyzing how 5,000 households made choices in the labor market, it estimated a utility function for females, using consumption, leisure, the number of children, and labor supply as parameters. The function was designed in such a way that it increases as consumption, leisure or the number of children go up. The marginal utility, however, decreased as the number of children went up.
While the computation showed that the first baby is worth around 120 million won for women, childbirth itself decreased the marginal utility by around 130 million won, it said.
When adding consumption cuts, psychological uneasiness and the estrangement of friends following marriage, the opportunity cost to a woman getting married is estimated to be around 140 million won, the institute said.
Hence, despite the 120 million won value that the first child gives a woman, the scarce government subsidies for childcare can't be much of a carrot for single women to choose marriage. Women, however, are getting married because of the additional gains from the husband's income, according to the institute.
``While the fixed cost of marriage is considerable, government subsidies are too small to induce childbirth,'' said Woo Suk-jin, a researcher at the institute. He explained that this could be one of the reasons why women are delaying marriage.
According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), the average age of a bride on her first marriage was 27.1 years last year, continuing the upward trend from the 26.1 of 1998. The average age for having a first child was 29.2 years.
He also said that a flexible working system allowing female workers to choose their working hours would be effective in promoting childbirth.