Seoul has record-low newborn babies

By Park Hyong-ki

The number of newborn babies stood at 406,300 last year, down more than 7 percent from 2015 and the lowest since Statistics Korea began collecting data in 2000, the state institute said Wednesday.

This year, the figure is expected to fall below 400,000, which is feared to further slow down productivity and consumption while weighing on economic growth, something Japan’s economy has experienced over the past two decades.

Last year, the country’s birthrate fell from 1.24 to 1.17 per woman, according to the statistics bureau’s initial data.

Sociologists and economists say that Korea has the lowest birthrate among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This will cause serious economic repercussions unless the country comes up with a long-term policy that can help improve and reshape its changing demographics.

“We need to approach and solve this with a long-term view. We should concentrate our policy resources on today’s teenagers and fixing the current social system involving private education and Seoul’s overpopulation,” said Prof. Cho Young-tae, a sociologist at Seoul National University’s School of Public Health. “These steps will help prevent them from experiencing what today’s young adults are going through — unemployment, late marriages and social instability.”

Korea has to accept the reality that its birthrate has been dropping and will continue to fall as long as social costs rise such as those of education, childcare and real estate, which are forcing newlyweds to push back pregnancy until they feel financially secure. Cho expects the number of newborns to drop to 220,000 within 10 years.

The adverse social circumstances beset by growing economic uncertainties have altered the way Korean society views children — from being “a promising asset to a heavy debt,” said Prof. Yoon Ja-young, an economist at Chungnam National University.

“What is worrisome is that we are not looking into ways to improve our social safety-net system for workers such as issues concerning the unemployment allowance and the growing number of non-regular employees, which is affecting the birthrate,” Yoon said.

It could take more than 20 years to possibly turn the tide with regards to the changing demographics, Yoon said, citing France as an example, which took years to see its birthrate rebound slightly after improving its social security benefits for female workers.

Short-term government policies such as offering tax credits of up to 1 million won for newlyweds to encourage having babies is not effective, both Cho and Yoon said.

Vice Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok recently admitted in a seminar on Korean demographics that Korea has achieved little even though it spent 80 trillion won to curb its low birthrate and aging population over the last decade. The country became a society with an ultra-low birthrate in 2001 when the rate stood at 1.3 children per woman.