[In-Depth Look] How to Encourage Marriage and Childbirth in This Land

Japan, a representative low birthrate country, saw its number of newborns fall below 900,000 for the first time last year, plunging the entire society into anxiety. However, during the same period, South Korea's number of newborns barely reached 300,000.

This is only about one-third of Japan's number despite South Korea's relatively smaller population size. South Korea, which produces attractive Hallyu stars and is admired by young people worldwide, is actually a much more severe infertile society than Japan, which is known as a dating-averse society represented by terms like "herbivore men" and "diet men."

Of course, the government has recognized the seriousness of the declining birthrate and has introduced a variety of birth promotion policies. These include childcare costs, infertility surgery expenses, parental leave, and childbirth incentives. Even in the politically polarized arena where ideological conflicts over social welfare are intense, there is little disagreement on birth promotion issues. After all, with the current birthrate, welfare debates themselves would be meaningless because it would be impossible to sustain the current level of public welfare.

However, despite unified national attention, both marriage and birth rates continue to decline relentlessly. Perhaps we fundamentally misunderstand this issue. The young generation born since the mid-1980s, who have reached marriageable age, is commonly called the "N Generation."

A common description of them is that they are the children of baby boomers who grew up in the most competitive educational environment. In other words, they grew up under intense parental interference, which was very exhausting. For the N Generation, home may be less a happy sanctuary and more a tiring outpost of competition.

Naturally, for this generation, marriage becomes a tiring choice where interfering parents increase and the parenting war begins. Nevertheless, government policies mostly assume that most young people want to start families and focus on alleviating economic difficulties to support this.

However, in reality, young people seem to consider marriage or childbirth as options only when they are relatively better than remaining single or childless.

This may be a somewhat unconventional claim, but to make it easier for young people to form families, shouldn't we reduce the burden of parental interference? Currently, the rising divorce rate in South Korea is mainly driven by twilight divorces among baby boomers in their 50s and 60s, the parent generation.

Whether or not they lived competitively, it is hard to say that they set an example of a happy family themselves. Yet, if they are as passionate about their children's marriage and childbirth as they were about competing in education, what would happen? Probably, due to parental interference, it would be extremely exhausting for the younger generation to form a modest family in this land.

There is no appropriate policy method to reduce parental interference, but activating cohabitation-style marriages adapted to our circumstances, as in Europe, could be a solution.

We must actively accommodate young people who reject traditional marriage, which involves complicated conditions and understandings from both parents and significant economic burdens related to wedding ceremonies. It is necessary to create an institutional framework that allows them to focus more effectively on their own love and happiness while forming families.

Next, young people in South Korea who choose to form families and raise the next generation should be provided with relatively definite benefits compared to those who do not.

If we are not in a position to debate various details to raise the birthrate, national benefits should be concentrated on young people who choose marriage and childbirth regardless of social class. For example, subsidies may be effective for low-income groups, while tax benefits might be more effective for high-income groups. This is especially true because public welfare in old age, which those without children will receive, will ultimately be supported by children raised in families.

Lee Tae-yeol, Senior Research Fellow, Korea Insurance Research Institute

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.