Gyeonggi-do Abolishes Income Limits for Maternal and Newborn Support, Standardizes Multi-Child Criteria to Two Children

Gyeonggi Provincial Government

Gyeonggi Province is planning to abolish the income criteria for the Maternal and Newborn Health Care Support Project and unify the multi-child criteria in 31 cities and counties from three children to two children.

The Population TokTok Committee Executive Committee held its 4th meeting on the 24th, receiving a review report from relevant departments on the suggestions from the citizen participation group and held additional discussions with experts.

Through the discussions on that day, Gyeonggi Province decided to abolish the income restriction for the Maternal and Newborn Health Care Project starting January next year. The existing project provided home services such as newborn care, cleaning, and laundry by health care workers visiting families with childbirth whose income was below 150% of the median income.

Also, following the government's relaxation of the multi-child criteria from three children to two children, the province decided to unify the standard accordingly. Currently, 18 cities and counties have set the multi-child criteria to two children through basic population policy ordinances, but 13 cities and counties still have the criteria at three children or do not have a common standard ordinance.

Gyeonggi Province plans to regularly survey the status of cities and counties and request the relaxation of criteria, and will announce the results.

In addition, discussions were held regarding cases where some insurance companies do not recognize "male full-time househusbands" as an occupation and mark them as "unemployed" when subscribing to insurance.

Some insurance companies may have different insurance premium rates between full-time housewives and unemployed individuals due to occupational risk classifications.

Accordingly, Gyeonggi Province requested improvements from three insurance associations, including the Life Insurance Association, to allow distinctions to be made in the occupation selection options when applying for insurance subscription.

Furthermore, to enhance the effectiveness of awareness improvement in response to low birth rates, starting next year, local "Wanso Moms" (moms who spread word-of-mouth very well) will participate in recruiting iWonderers, and incentives such as commendations will be strengthened for outstanding participants in childcare information promotion activities and awareness improvement content production.

Oh Byeong-kwon, the 1st Deputy Governor of Gyeonggi Province, said, "The online broadcast access record of the 3rd Population TokTok Committee showed about 1,000 participants, indicating high public interest in responding to low birth rates. We must take an active stance in thoroughly reviewing and reflecting the citizens' suggestions. I believe that our small and large efforts will be the foundation for creating a better tomorrow together with the citizens."

The Population TokTok Committee is a citizen participation committee aiming to policyize solutions to population issues such as low birth rates, and Gyeonggi Province holds follow-up executive committee meetings to discuss various suggestions from the citizen participation group derived from the committee as major agenda items.

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