Abandoning fertility-boosting policies is not the solution

Since the beginning of the year, there has been a lot of talk about the low fertility crisis, with both the ruling and opposition parties announcing several pledges. It's late but a welcoming change. As the fertility rate fell to 0.78 last year despite investing about 280 trillion won over 16 years, it is essential to review what went wrong. However, recent books and columns argue that we need a different approach as the government’s efforts have failed.

A book published late last year attributed the failure of population policies to the rising socioeconomic status of women, arguing that “the influence of feminism has led to the spread of values that prioritize women's individual lives more, and the social value of child rearing has declined.” A researcher recently wrote in a liberal newspaper column that “the Hungarian solution of giving more money to raise the birth rate is evidence that the state sees its citizens as livestock that respond to stimuli.” According to the researcher, the real solution is to “stop obsessing over births and populations and make people feel that the state listens to their pain and supports their happiness.”

The former is a recent argument from some conservative circles, which appears to assume that if women are prevented from entering the workforce, they will revert to staying at home and raising children as before. However, this perspective is not only unrealistic in the current Korean society but also undesirable, as it is the state's responsibility to support the self-actualization of its citizens. The latter argument comes from some progressive circles and seems to stem from a rejection of the idea that population policies instrumentalize and objectify women. However, the argument that 'if we want to prevent young people from harming themselves, we need to create a country where young people are happy, rather than raising the handrails of the Mapo Bridge or increasing patrols' is only plausible to hear but unhelpful for shaping effective policies.

Most experts propose similar solutions to address low birth rates: reducing childbirth and childcare burdens, supporting work-family balance, ensuring affordable housing, and attracting immigrants. These methods have proven successful overseas. However, their effectiveness in Korea is hindered by other variables, such as skyrocketing housing prices. Additionally, insufficient resources are allocated to help couples overcome psychological anxiety and fulfill their desire to have children. According to the Bank of Korea, net family-related government spending, excluding housing loans, accounts for only 1.4% of gross domestic product (GDP), about two-thirds of the average for OECD member countries (2.2%).

"Not spending money because spending money didn’t solve the problem of low fertility cannot be the solution," said one expert. "We need to figure out how to spend more effectively." To tackle this demographic crisis, we should follow standard tactics, but there's a need to increase the scale of support and narrow its focus. A good starting point is to differentiate between unmarried men and women, couples who do not have their first child, and couples who do not have their second child. Then, establish priorities and provide tailored policies.