The South Korean Government Has Added More Baby-Making Incentives For Parents To Rapidly Increase Their Waning Fertility Rate

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The South Korean government has added another strategy to improve their country’s waning birthrate; which has been remained to be one of the lowest in the world; through gender equality. 

In a desperate effort to increase their population, the government is now allowing both mothers and fathers to have their parental leave at the same time. They are also extending the father’s paid leave, as well as encouraging businesses to allow flexible working hours for their employees. Apart from this, they also have the highest gender wage gap as compared to other first world countries of 34.6%

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With the country’s replacement fertility rate at a low of 1.2 children per mother, South Korea is in dire need of babies to maintain the economy’s growth stability, and is hoping for an increase of the ideal 2.1 children per mother to keep the population at the level they need to reach.  Despite spending $136 billion since 2006 for family perks, in 2018, the government allotted another budget of nearly $20,000,000 just to make a bigger impact on the birth rate increase, which included this new incentive. 

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A growing concern of the country is its aging population over the age of 65 which currenty consists of 13.2% of its population. This has been estimated to increase to 24.5% (12.9 million) by 2030. Unless birth rates improve rapidly, the economy is expected to shrink by a whopping 5% by the time 2060 rolls around. 

In addition to gender equality and wage gaps, the government has also come up with more creative ways to encourage its citizens to make more babies. In 2010, an initiative called “Family Day” was launched to make corporations turn off all office lights by 7:30 p.m. on every third Wednesday of each month. This program as thought of to further ‘encourage the staff to get in the mood for childbirth and upbringing.’

 

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