highlights
Each couple will be allowed to take a leave of up to one and a half years
Fertility rate in South Korea to drop to 0.81 in 2021
spent over $200 billion over the past 16 years
Seoul, South Korea has come up with a new plan for working parents in an effort to boost its record-low birth rate. According to a report in Vice News, South Korea is considering increasing parental leave for working parents. Under a plan announced Monday by South Korea’s Labor Minister Lee Jeong-sik, each couple will be allowed to take up to a year and a half as parental leave, up from the current one year. Both the parents are eligible as long as they are working. However, the pay structure for this new allowance is yet to be confirmed.
It is not clear when the new proposal will be voted on, but if passed, the change would make South Korea’s already generous parental leave the longest in Asia. This will also be the longest paternity leave in the world so far. The move is aimed at getting parents in South Korea to have more children and boost the country’s birth rate. Let us tell you that the country’s fertility rate has come down to 0.81 in 2021. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), that is much less than the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population size without migration. In comparison, the fertility rate was 1.37 in Japan and 1.66 in the United States.
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In South Korea, such demographic trends have caused officials to worry about a shrinking workforce and population. The country of about 52 million people is currently the fastest aging of the 38 rich countries in the OECD. The government has been unable to reverse the trend, according to the report, despite spending more than $200 billion over the past 16 years on childcare subsidies and parental leave support.
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Tags: parents, Population Policy, south korea, world news
FIRST PUBLISHED : January 11, 2023, 11:42 IST
