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| A nurse cleans newborn babies' cradles at a hospital in this file photo. The nation's birthrate was 1.18 last year, the lowest among OECD member nations. / Korea Times file |
By Yoon Ja-young
The low birthrate is accelerating aging of the society and depleting the country's growth potential.
Hyundai Research Institute stated in a report that the government should learn from European countries, which succeeded in pulling up the birthrate through diverse economic, social and cultural policies.
Korea's birthrate stood at 1.19 last year, compared with 2.82 in 1980. It is posing a pall on the nation's economic growth.
While Korea has seen birthrate falling upon rising national income, the report noted that some developed countries in Europe, such as Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, France, U.K. and Belgium, have successfully maintained birthrate at above 1.7. The average birthrate of these countries stands at 1.9.
According to the institute, these countries have adopted diverse policies to boost the birthrate.
Most of all, they made intensive investments in family and childcare policies.
They are spending on average 3.4 percent of GDP for family and childcare policies while Korea allocated only 0.81 percent of GDP in 2009.
"The government support differentiates how the child is raised. As government spending is small, family takes up a huge part of the childcare, adding to the economic and psychological burden of the females," the report noted.
It is also no secret that high private education spending is related to the low birthrate. While the European countries mentioned in the report spend 6.8 percent of GDP in public education and 0.55 percent in private education, public education akes 5 percent and private education 2 percent in Korea.
It also notes that flexible working hours raises the birthrate, as well as economic participation by women.
The institute said that Korea should be more flexible in immigration policies. "While immigrants take on average 11 percent of the population in these European countries, they take only 1 percent in Korea."
Also notable is that European countries are open to diverse types of families. "Despite low birthrate, childbirths not from married couples take 52.6 percent in Europe. It seems to be related with high birthrate," the report said. It added that Korea should raise legal status of de facto marriages or unmarried moms.
Though pregnant moms are getting older in both regions, 20 percent of the married women in Europe have three children or more. However, only 10 percent are the same in Korea.
The institute noted that the developed economies recorded on average 1.8 birthrate when their per capita GDP was $20,000. "The Korea's low birthrate is more serious, relatively and absolutely…Economic, political, and socio cultural factors are all working negatively in pulling up the birthrate. It would be difficult to raise it in the short term."
"Due to traditional values, the surroundings for marriage and childbirth is still unfavorable for women. They are thus hesitating marriage and childbirth," the report said.
"There should be not only incentives but also some legal measures to effectively run childbirth policies," it added.
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