It seems like people aren’t just that into having babies these days.

South Korea, which is struggling with the world’s lowest fertility rate, saw its demographic crisis grow worse in 2023.

This despite the country showering its citizens with hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives to have children.

But South Korea isn’t alone.

A number of Asian governments including China and Japan have tried and failed to convince their citizens to have more babies.

But what gives? What incentives have they provided? And why don’t they work?

Let’s take a closer look:

South Korea

.South Korea’s fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, dropped to a fresh record low in 2023.

The average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive life fell to 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022, data from Statistics Korea showed on Wednesday.

Since 2018, South Korea has been the only member of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) to have a rate below 1.

The nation, which has around 50 million citizens, witnessed its number of births also dip 7.7 per cent to just 230,000.

“The number of newborns, birth rates, and crude birth rates (newborns per 1,000 people) are all at the lowest point since 1970” when data collection began, said Lim Young-il, head of the Population Census Division at Statistics Korea.

Lim told reporters that the average age to give birth in South Korea is 33.6, the highest in the OECD.

The country previously projected that its fertility rate is likely to fall further to 0.68 in 2024.

This despite spending billions to try to reverse the trend as the population shrank for a fourth straight year.

The country has offered citizens incentives such as boosting monthly allowances for parents of infants and reducing mortgage rates.

The country has since 2006 spent over $270 billion in schemes for couples such as cash subsidies, babysitting services and infertility treatment, as per The Guardian.

The BBC reported that couples who have children are given free taxis.

Those who are married do not have to pay for hospital bills or IVF treatment.

The South Korean government has made it a national priority to reverse the falling birth rate and in December promised to come up with “extraordinary measures” to tackle the situation.

South Korea’s capital Seoul had the lowest fertility rate of 0.55.

This is far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population.

According to Bloomberg, Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon is also mulling over setting up matchmaking program on behalf of the city.

The nation is also eyeing making it easier to hire foreign nannies to help women in childcare.

Meanwhile, ahead of elections in April South Korea’s major political parties vowed more public housing and easier loans in an effort to stem population decline, aiming to allay fears of “national extinction” as fertility rates crumble.

The parties’ focus on population in their election planks reflects growing alarm after spending of more than $270 billion in areas such as childcare subsidies since 2006 has failed to reverse record low fertility rates.

Being married is seen as a prerequisite to having children in South Korea, but marriages are also falling in the country with high financial burden cited as the main reason.

However, according to Bloomberg a number of factors including housing being eye-wateringly expensive, the cost of educating children and the competitive environment and increasing gender tensions are also cited.

According to BBC, children in the nation are sent to myriad expensive classes growing up including maths, English and even Taekwondo.

A 2022 study found that just two per cent of parents opted out of doing so – despite 94 per cent describing it as a burden.

Little wonder that the nation is the most expensive one in which to rear a child.

Couples also worry about taking time off work to care for their children.

The outlet cited a Korea National Assembly Research Service study as saying that South Korea has the fewest parents going on leave in the developed world.

Women who take breaks from their careers also find it difficult to keep their jobs and maintain their level of pay.

“There is an implicit pressure from companies that when we have children, we must leave our jobs,” Yenjin added.

“Having witnessed so many mothers around me give up their careers, I have decided not to follow the path to motherhood,” a 37-year-old office worker, who asked to be identified by her surname Jeon, told AFP.

Jeon, who has been married for four years, said the country’s rigid corporate culture was a primary reason for her decision, with greater flexibility at work “more important than government subsidies”.

“Raising a child is not possible without sacrificing the career of one parent in this environment,” she said.

Of all the OECD nations, South Korea has highest percentage of late-middle-aged women with temporary jobs.

South Korea also has the worst gender wage gap in the developed world.

Many women are choosing simply not to get married.

Yejin, 30, a TV producer, told BBC, “It’s hard to find a dateable man in Korea – one who will share the chores and the childcare equally.”

“And women who have babies alone are not judged kindly.”

In 2022, just two per cent of babies born in the country were outside of marriage.

The trend in the long-term could be devastating.

Time Magazine quoted a 2023 Statistics Korea forecast as estimating that the population would decline to 36.2 million by 2072.

That’s a 30 per cent decrease.

At the current rate, the population will reduce in half by 2,100.

Expert also worry about the potential impact such a trend could have.

Time Magazine quoted Shin Seung-keun, a professor of fiscal policy at Tech University of Korea, as saying, “From medical services to welfare, demand for spending will increase while fewer taxes will be collected as the number of young people decreases.”

South Korea is not alone in the region struggling with a rapidly ageing population.

The fertility rate in neighbouring Japan’s hit a record low of 1.26 in 2022, while China recorded 1.09, also a record low.

Japan

Neighbouring Japan is grappling with the same issue.

On Tuesday the fast-ageing nation announced that the number of births there had also dropped to a new low in 2023.

The number of babies born in Japan last year fell for an eighth straight year to a new low, government data showed Tuesday, and a top official said it was critical for the country to reverse the trend in the coming half-dozen years.

The 758,631 babies born in Japan in 2023 were a 5.1 per cent decline from the previous year, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. It was the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899.

The number of marriages fell by 5.9 per cent to 489,281 couples, falling below a half-million for the first time in 90 years — one of the key reasons for the declining births. Out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan because of family values based on a paternalistic tradition.

Japan in 2023 announced it would spend $22 billion on trying to fix its low birthrate, according to Foreign Policy.

This includes doubling spending on childcare by the early 2023 and raising the income cap for child cash benefits.

But experts say this is unlikely to work due to increased costs of living, wage stagnation, and gender inequality which forces many women to choose between motherhood and a career.

“If women view economic independence and child-rearing as mutually exclusive, they’ll often choose independence,” Haruka Sakamoto, a researcher at the Department of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo, told Foreign Policy.

Indeed  surveys show that many younger Japanese balk at marrying or having families, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living that rises at a faster pace than salaries and corporate cultures that are not compatible with having both parents work.

Crying babies and children playing outside are increasingly considered a nuisance, and many young parents say they often feel isolated.

This comes despite the country having one of the most generous childcare leaves in the developed world.

Japan ranks second among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) when it comes to childcare leave.

It allows 52 weeks of leave, while the OECD nations, on average, allow just 10.4 days of leave.

According to The Straits Times, fathers are also allowed four weeks of paternity leave within eight weeks of their child’s birth.

They are also allowed childcare leave until the infant turns one.

All the while they are paid a lowered salary that is exempt from tax.

Companies are also mandated to allow employees with young children – under the age of three – to work fewer hours.

Like South Korea, Japan too has a problem with the cost of education for children.

According to Foreign Policy, though public education is much less expensive than private it is still not free.

The cost of childcare also adds up.

The outlet quoted a 2021 survey as showing that the annual cost of caring for two children amounted to around half the salary of an average couple – both of whom are working full-time.

Haruka Sakamoto, a researcher at the Department of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo, told Foreign Policy money is a big problem – specifically the lack of it.

“While in the past, people have explained Japan’s low sex and relationship culture as stemming from interest in anime and fictional characters that supplant interest in real-life relationships, it’s actually an economic issue,” Sakamoto said.

Michiko Ueda-Ballmer, a political scientist at Syracuse University in the United States who studies social isolation among Japanese youth, told _Foreign Policy t_hat many young women want to married “but they simply cannot afford it.”

But it’s not all about money either.

Yuka Minagawa, a social demographer at Sophia University in Tokyo, said, “Thus far I did not find a single post that suggests the amount of child allowance as a source of a struggle.”

Minagawa said it is the lack of shared responsibility of child care and domestic work between men and women, pressure and conflict in managing work and family, and stress due to strong norms about motherhood in society that are to blame.

Those that work and have children say they understand why fewer women ae choosing to have kids.

“Japan’s work culture is notorious for long hours at the office, little flexibility, and expectations around after-work drinking with colleagues. It makes doing things like taking your kid to the doctor, going to a school event, or just taking time off, incredibly difficult if you don’t have a supportive boss,” a piece in Bloomberg noted.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Tuesday that the ongoing declining birth rate is at “critical state.”

“The period over the next six years or so until 2030s, when the younger population will start declining rapidly, will be the last chance we may be able to reverse the trend,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called the low births “the biggest crisis Japan faces,” and put forward a package of measures that have included more support and subsidies mostly for childbirth, children and their families.

But experts say they doubt whether the government’s efforts will be effective because so far they have largely focused on people who already are married or already are planning to have children, while not adequately addressing a growing population of young people who are reluctant to go that far.

The public doubt it as well.

Foreign Policy quoted an April survey as showing that 80 per cent of public don’t think Kishida’s plans will amount to much.

The number of births has been falling since 50 years ago, when it peaked at about 2.1 million. The decline to an annual number below 760,000 has happened faster than earlier projections predicting that would happen by 2035.

Japan’s population of more than 125 million is projected to fall by about 30 per cent to 87 million by 2070, with four out of every 10 people at age 65 or older.

A shrinking and aging population has big implications for the economy and for national security as the country seeks to fortify its military to counter China’s increasingly assertive territorial ambitions.

Echoing similar warnings made previously by Kishida, ruling-party lawmaker Goshi Hosono on Wednesday called the low birth rate a “national threat”.

“If the situation is left alone, the economy will lose its vitality and social security will become difficult to maintain,” he said.

China

China’s population fell for a second consecutive year in 2023, as a record low birth rate and a wave of COVID-19 deaths when strict lockdowns ended accelerated a downturn that will have profound long-term effects on the economy’s growth potential.

The National Bureau of Statistics said the total number of people in China dropped by 2.08 million, or 0.15 per cent, to 1.409 billion in 2023.

That was well above the population decline of 850,000 in 2022, which had been the first since 1961 during the Great Famine of the Mao Zedong era.

According to SCMP, the high cost of living and education are putting off Chinese parents from having more children.

This despite parents being offered a number of incentives including cash rewards and subsidies on homes.

Business Insider reported that the Hangzhou government has been giving new parents $2,800 for having their third child.

Wenzhou city, in southeast China, is giving parents $416.70 in subsidies per child.

Chinese cities have allowed couples to take up to 30 days of paid marriage leave.

That number was earlier just three.

Changshan County in the Zhejiang province offered brides 25 and under $138 to get married.

It said it was doing so to promote “age-appropriate marriage and childbearing.”

Some provinces are also trying to tamp down on the practice of ‘bride price’ – essentially dowry.

Cities like Beijing and Sichuan are also offering to pay for fertility treatment.

China experienced a dramatic nationwide COVID surge early last year after three years of tight screening and quarantine measures kept the virus largely contained until authorities abruptly lifted curbs in December 2022.

Total deaths last year rose 6.6 per cent to 11.1 million, with the death rate reaching the highest level since 1974 during the Cultural Revolution.
New births fell 5.7 per cent to 9.02 million and the birth rate was a record low 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022.

Births in the country have been plummeting for decades as a result of the one-child policy implemented from 1980 to 2015 and its rapid urbanisation during that period. As with earlier economic booms in Japan and South Korea, large populations moved from China’s rural farms into cities, where having children is more expensive.

“As we have observed again and again from other low fertility countries, fertility decline is often very difficult to reverse,” University of Michigan demographer Zhou Yun said.

Further denting appetite for baby-making in China in 2023, youth unemployment hit record highs, wages for many white-collar workers fell, and a crisis in the property sector, where more than two-thirds of household wealth is stored, intensified.

The fresh data adds to concerns that the world’s No.2 economy’s growth prospects are diminishing due to fewer workers and consumers, while the rising costs of elderly care and retirement benefits put more strain on indebted local governments.

Long-term, UN experts see China’s population shrinking by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019.
China’s population aged 60 and over reached 296.97 million in 2023, about 21.1 per cent of its total population, up from 280.04 million in 2022.

Experts say nations may ultimately not have much of a choice in how to deal with the problem.

“From Japan to Europe, aging is getting increasingly common and the key question is how we’ll address shortfalls in the working population able to support economic growth and the transition of industrial structures,” Shin In-chol, a professor of urban sociology at the University of Seoul, told Time Magazine.

“Ultimately we have to make do with the people we already have or bring in help from elsewhere,” he added.