(By a Special Reporting Team)
Yoon Hyun, a middle-level manager at a large corporation, and Hwang Ji-young, a doctorate course student, had to wait for eight months to enroll their 4-year-old daughter at a daycare facility run by a district office. They don't give their daughter any kind of private tutoring, apart from a buying a set of learning equipment that includes a visiting tutor to play with the kid. However, they spend more than W1 million ($800) a month on their child: paying a baby-sitter and the visiting tutor, and costs for snacks clothes and toys.
The burden of childcare expenses is a major factor causing the younger generation to avoid becoming parents. According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, as of 2003, Korean households have to spend an average of W825,000 a month raising one child until the kid becomes an adult. Dual-income families have to spend more.
Developed countries such as France and Japan divide all households based on their income into diverse categories and accordingly support them with daycare facility subsidies. The governments offer childbirth-incentives and dependent allowance regardless of the families' incomes. However, Korea provides financial support including daycare center fees only for low-income families, who are supported under the social security law.
According to the Ministry of Gender Equality, while parents bore 74.6 percent of the childcare expenses last year, the government bore only 25.4 percent. Korean parents bore a share of childcare expenses as much as four times heavier than that of parents in other developed countries like Sweden (17 percent), Japan (46.6 percent) and the United States (59 percent). Considering that only 10 percent of Korea's children enjoy the benefit of going to daycare centers, 90 percent of parents have to take on the whole burden without any official help.
According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, of the pie of childcare expenses, W825,000 a month, education costs are largest slice, at W306,000.
Korean parents are now turning to the government to support them for the childcare expenses, like the governments of the developed countries do for their citizens. In a survey on 1,033 women in their 20s and 30s conducted by the Chosun Ilbo and Gallup Korea, 83 percent of the respondents expressed discontent with Korea's current childbearing and nurturing support policies. Regarding the childcare expenses, the respondents wanted more financial support for raising children and incentives such as tax breaks for childbirth.
France is the most successful example in raising the birthrate by adopting proactive childbirth encouragement policies, including providing dependent allowance. Christian Jacob, the minister in charge of family-related affairs, said in April that starting next year, France would spend 10 billion euro on support for young parents' childcare. With the financial support called "Welcoming the Newborns," the French government will provide childcare expenses to parents in various ways from the time a child is born until the kid turns 3.
Japan divides all households into seven categories and supports them for daycare center fees according to the households' incomes.
Experts suggest that like France or Japan, the Korean government should increase the support for childcare expenses in order to raise the birthrate. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs proposed in a report last year that the government should expand the financial support for childcare to include all children because pregnancy, childbirth and upbringing have a social function to produce the next generation of a country.
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