By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
A lawmaker called on policymakers to consider investing part of the national pension fund in building state-sponsored childcare centers, saying that the investment will be helpful in stopping falling birthrates as well as meeting demand for social services.
Rep. Won Hee-mok of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) said the low birthrate will lead to the decrease of workers aged from 15 to 64 and this means that the pension fund will gradually deplete year by year if no dramatic measures to boost the rate are taken.
Gender experts, however, are skeptical about the proposal, saying having more government-funded social facilities may encourage women to consider pregnancy but its effect on raising the rate will be limited.
The lesson from some European countries says that falling birthrates are related to inequalities between men and women in society as well as workplace, and therefore the spending-oriented policy will reveal limitations in fixing the problem, they said.
The total fertility rate (TFR), an average number of children born to a woman during her life time, in Korea was as low as 1.19, far below the population replacement rate of 2.1.
This indicates that the government will be asked to spend more for social policies in an era of ageing population.
The declining birthrate also suggests that Korea is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) having the lowest birth rate.
Won proposed using part of the pension fund to build more government-funded childcare facilities in order to encourage women to have more babies, claiming the investment will help stop or moderately boost the falling birthrates.
A 2008 public opinion survey conducted by the National Statistical Office found that 57.7 percent of parents answered that when raising children, they felt burden most because household spending on private education was too high and sending their children to childcare centers required them to spend much.
Professor Lee Jae-kyung of Ewha Womans University said building more government-funded childcare centers will help women to have babies, but the material investment alone will not resolve Korea's declining birthrate fundamentally.
``Empirical studies find that countries that have strong rankings in the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) such as Sweden and Norway tend to have higher birthrates than countries that are ranked low in the report,'' the gender expert told The Korea Times.
The GDI is an indicator developed by the United Nations to measure inequalities between men and women in a country in the areas of long and healthy life, knowledge and a decedent standard.
European countries are ranked higher in the index, indicating that these countries offer more equal opportunities to women than other countries that are ranked lower.
Lee said the fact that these countries have higher birthrates than other countries implies that an increase of government spending on social services itself will not directly lead women to have more children.
``I think that people's perception of equality between men and women in society affects their decision of having or having not babies after marriage,'' she said.