
Korean County Achieves Its Goal: Less Birth Control, More Babies - awl130
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/world/asia/korean-county-achieves-its-goal-less-birth-control-more-babies.html
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seunosewa
They knew the replacement rate was 2.1 babies and still consciously pushed the
birth rate far below that. Now they are aggressively pushing it in the other
direction.

It's almost as if the government agency in charge of manipulating the
population always needs to have something to do. They couldn't just say,
"We've achieved our goal of 2 kids per family. Let's go home!"

I suspect that the new initiative to increase the birth rate will drive it to
at least 3 births per couple, and then there will be a new expensive
initiative to reduce it again. That is how you create jobs.

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OSButler
There's a mildly amusing movie about the '70s Korean government's attempt to
reduce population growth in a rural village:
[http://asianwiki.com/Mission_Sex_Control](http://asianwiki.com/Mission_Sex_Control)
It shows some of the concepts that resulted in the stunted growth they're
addressing in the above linked article.

Nowadays the main issue appears to be that daycare is simply not affordable
for the average young Korean couple, which is why you may see children still
being raised by their grandparents instead. If the family is too far away,
then the mother may give up her job until the children have entered school.

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ddoolin
These days the government HEAVILY subsidizes day care. My wife and I have two
in day care and we pay next to nothing for both.

This is in Seoul...I'm not sure about outside of Seoul but I imagine it's
mostly similar. It's quite a controversial law and now always guaranteed
month-to-month as politicians argue back and forth about it.

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OSButler
This is interesting, as I've heard the exact opposite from friends in Seoul.
Is this a new law or s.th. tied to a specific income limit?

Out of my group of friends, none of them were able to afford day care and had
to make plans accordingly. It was either by getting help from the
grandparents, if the family was living close by, or by the mother quitting her
job and looking after the child(ren) until they would go to school or
kindergarten.

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ddoolin
There's two situations in which you can receive gov't subsidies:

1\. Foreigners married to Koreans (multicultural families; 다문화가족), or 2\. Low-
income/asset families

I'm not sure which applies to my family. Either could be as we are #1 but
sorta #2 as well since I'm not employed nor maintain perm. resident visa
status in Korea so my income doesn't really count.

I would encourage the people you know to look into it if they're multicultural
families.

[http://southkorea.angloinfo.com/family/toddlers/childcare/](http://southkorea.angloinfo.com/family/toddlers/childcare/)

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OSButler
Thank you for the additional information!

My guess is that they would not fall under the 2. category if the spouse
continues working, so that they may not be eligible for it then. The 1.
category would not be an option for them, as they are all Korean/Korean
couples. However, I will pass this on to my friends just in case they weren't
aware of the 2. category already, as the high day care costs topic has come up
quite often.

