[Exclusive] Joo Hyung-hwan "Only 2 Trillion Won Budget for Work-Family Balance"

Low Birthrate Budget Restructuring Underway for Low- and High-Level
Only 20.5 Trillion Won Allocated to Care Budget
Population Policy Evaluation Center to Conduct In-Depth Evaluation of Large-Scale Low Birthrate Budget

The Low Fertility and Aging Society Committee (LFASC) analyzed last year’s government budget proposal and found that the budget allocated for work-family balance measures to overcome low fertility amounted to about 2 trillion won. LFASC has been conducting a restructuring process to eliminate “bubble budgets” that have been classified as low fertility measures despite having minimal effect on encouraging childbirth, by filtering out budgets that are not substantially related to increasing the birth rate.

On the 17th, Ju Hyung-hwan, Vice Chairman of LFASC, stated this during the opening remarks at the inauguration ceremony of the Population Policy Evaluation Center. Vice Chairman Ju said, “After rigorously reviewing the government budget’s low fertility policy budget together with the Korea Development Institute (KDI), we found that the amount invested in the care sector in 2023 was only 20.5 trillion won.” He added, “In particular, the budget supported for work-family balance, which has been verified domestically and internationally to be highly effective, was only 2 trillion won.”

LFASC separately identified family support budgets related to childcare leave, childcare support, and child allowance within South Korea’s low fertility budget, and when compared with the family expenditure budgets of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the related budget is estimated to be around 23 trillion won. It is especially noted that most of the work-family balance budget was invested in the childcare sector. An LFASC official explained, “The 2024 budget is also reported to be not significantly different from the scale of the 2023 analysis disclosed by Vice Chairman Ju.”

Vice Chairman Ju stated, “One of the reasons why low fertility measures have not succeeded is the failure to properly allocate budgets to effective areas,” and said that going forward, budgets will be intensively invested in upgrading the work-family childcare system. To this end, the Population Policy Evaluation Center, established by LFASC at the Korea Institute of Public Finance, plans to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the large-scale low fertility budget starting from this year’s budget proposal to analyze its effectiveness.

Vice Chairman Ju said, “The Population Policy Evaluation Center plans to introduce in-depth evaluations that go beyond simply checking the implementation performance of low fertility policies by central and local governments, analyzing policy effectiveness and public satisfaction as well,” and added, “This year, we will analyze the input-output effectiveness of various care service programs such as allowances and daycare center support promoted by government ministries and local governments, and reflect the results in the budget process.”

Established legally through the amendment of the Enforcement Decree of the Framework Act on Low Fertility and Aging Society in March, the Population Policy Evaluation Center plays a role in identifying the causes of the world’s lowest birth rates despite massive budget investments and proposing improvement measures. It operates with two teams: the Policy Evaluation Team and the Strategic Research Team.