Gwangju City to Provide Up to 6.8 Million Won Childcare Allowance Per Newborn Starting Next Year

Mayor Lee Yong-seop: "We Will Create a Better Environment for Having and Raising Children"

Gwangju City Hall

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 1st that starting from January next year, it will provide a total birth and childcare allowance of 5.8 to 6.8 million KRW per child to all newborns in the city.

The birth and childcare allowance aims to reduce the financial burden on households by alleviating parents' childcare expenses, taking a step closer to creating a "Gwangju, a good city to have and raise children." This is especially in line with the recent recommendation by the Gwangju Innovation Promotion Committee to introduce a basic childcare allowance that integrates the existing childbirth encouragement subsidies.

The "Gwangju Birth and Childcare Allowance" policy states that households residing in Gwangju for more than three months who have a child will receive a birth congratulatory payment of 1 to 2 million KRW (1 million KRW for the first child, 1.5 million KRW for the second child, and 2 million KRW for the third child and beyond), along with a monthly childcare allowance of 200,000 KRW for 24 months.

However, the Mother Box, which provided 100,000 KRW per newborn for childbirth encouragement, the childbirth congratulatory payments ranging from 100,000 KRW to 600,000 KRW, and hospital medical expenses subsidies up to 1 million KRW will be abolished.

To support the birth and childcare allowance, the city plans to complete social security consultations with the Ministry of Health and Welfare by August, enact related ordinances, and secure the budget to start providing the birth allowance for children born from January next year.

The total budget is expected to be 20.8 billion KRW in the first year of payment, 40 billion KRW in the second year, and 48.8 billion KRW from the third year onward.

Along with the birth and childcare allowance support, the city will also expand the functions of the Childcare Comprehensive Support Center, which currently provides various childcare information such as pregnancy and childbirth, part-time childcare, and 24-hour emergency care.

The city’s Childcare Comprehensive Support Center, currently operated within the Family Support Headquarters, will be relocated next month to the Cheomdan District in Ssangam-dong, Gwangsan-gu, where its functions will be expanded to include a toy library, psychological treatment room, and indoor playground. Additionally, a new Seo-gu Childcare Comprehensive Support Center will be established in the second half of the year at the current location, and plans are in place to add childcare comprehensive support centers in five autonomous districts in the future.

Meanwhile, Gwangju Metropolitan City's population peaked at 1,475,884 in 2014 and has been declining annually since. To maintain the current population, the total fertility rate needs to be 2.1, but due to the decreasing number of births, the number of newborns fell below 10,000 in 2018, recording 8,400 in 2019. The total fertility rate in Gwangju in 2019 remained at 0.92, the same as the national average.

The city regards overcoming low birth rates as a national critical task and has gathered various opinions through expert meetings and discussions of the Population Policy TF to realize "Gwangju, a good city to have and raise children."

As a result, it is expected that providing a monthly basic allowance will somewhat alleviate the childcare cost burden on parents.

Mayor Lee Yong-seop stated, "The city believes that maintaining an appropriate population is very important to secure the sustainability of the Gwangju community. On one hand, we will continuously improve related systems and environments to create a city where it is good to have and raise children, and on the other hand, we will focus on fostering the Gwangju-type job project and the artificial intelligence industry as future strategic industries to prevent population outflow and promote inflow."

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