Every spring, when warm rays of sunshine herald the start of South Korea’s baking summer, fountains across Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun plaza suddenly burst into life, sending cooling jets of water into the air.
In any other city in the world, such an inviting sight would tempt young children to charge through the spray. But in the heart of the Korean capital, shouts of childlike delight are rare.
For a first-time visitor to Korea, there is a gnawing feeling that something is missing. Then it finally dawns – the children.
South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, and it continues to plummet, reaching new record-breaking troughs every year.
The latest figures show it fell by another 8 per cent in 2023 to 0.72, which is the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime.
For South Korea’s kindergarten teachers, the national dearth of children is already painfully evident and impacting their career prospects.
The country’s record-low birth rates are projected to cause the closure of roughly one-third of daycare centres and kindergartens by 2028, a report by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education warned in January.
This would mean the number of these institutions slipping from 39,053 in 2022 to just 26,637 in 2028, with 12,416 at risk of shutting down.
It’s a situation that London could soon find itself in. In Britain, nurseries are already closing due to government underfunding; babies are also quickly becoming a “luxury item”, says Joeli Brearley, the chief executive and founder of mothers charity Pregnant Then Screwed. “We’re running out of them. It is no surprise to us that fertility rates have hit the floor. We have one of the most expensive childcare sectors in the world, so much so that for three quarters of mothers, it no longer makes financial sense to work. With childcare fees outstripping the cost of housing for more than two thirds of families, almost half of families are borrowing money to pay their childcare bills.”
In England and Wales, the average birth rate declined to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. With its birth rate of just 0.72 children per woman, South Korea’s fertility rate is so critically low that experts predict the population will have halved by the year 2100.
It seems governments would rather have low wages than a high birth rate.
Child care is a strictly first world phenomena for like all of history, extended family and neighbors would help with child rearing.
Yes, when those family and neighbors are so bound for countless hours in schedules they can’t control for menial and poverty wages, it’s little surprise the “village” no longer can help.
My “village” lives across 3 continents so really it’s just us and the daycare… Where we live it’s usually the grandparents we see with the kids, can’t say we’re not a bit jealous but on the other hand I wonder how much time these parents spend with the kids since they’re always working and then handing them off to enjoy to some downtime.
Finally some good news
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/06/stubborn-expectations
I would hope the reaction to this development is not to advocate policies to “restore” population growth. That’s the last thing the planet needs, and stems from a misplaced allegiance to economic fantasies rather than to the community of life (the economy would fail anyway without a functioning ecosphere). A natural population decline by the non-violent process of simply not bearing children would be a gift to humanity and to the earth that supports us.
Wasnt getting a job in south korea very arduous? I remember reading something about there being extremely high competition rate for getting good job there.
Having neighbour like north korea makes messing around with not supporting people like this extremely dangerous should their military start running short of soldiers due to low population.
I mean getting a job isn’t the hardest part. Getting a good paying job with nice benefits is. Generally the biggest companies will have jobs with good pay and benefits. However, those companies can still have bad working hours. For a better work life balance you work for the government.
So they will do something about it, right…? Right?!
Of course, their solution is making girl go to school earlier and graduates sooner so they can get married and have kids at younger ages.
Can’t think of anything wrong with that, such a brilliant move.
/s
Headline makes it sound like South Korea is going to kidnap our children.
