From the Bloomberg news services ---The South Korean government is spending $20 billion to raise the country's birthrate, the lowest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members, to fuel economic growth. Hong Jaime says she isn't changing her mind about becoming a mother.``I don't want to get hindered by raising babies, in terms of time, money and energy,'' said Hong, 31, a magazine journalist in Seoul who has been married for three years and doesn't plan to have children. ``I want careers and freedom.''
The fate of South Korea's $788 billion annual economy may hinge on the lifestyle chosen by women like Hong. In the past 20 years, South Korea's economy expanded sevenfold. After 2010, growth will begin slowing unless the birthrate rises, according to the Korea Development Institute, a state-run research group.
``It's not a simple problem that the government can fix with a few policies,'' said Lim Eun Jung, 29, deputy director of President Roh Moo Hyun's committee seeking solutions to the demographic predicament. The government must persuade citizens to back efforts to reverse the population trend, she said.
The government decided last year that urging women to have more babies was the best solution. President Roh set up the 25- person investigative committee in December, then pledged $20 billion over five years to subsidize education, child care, maternity leaves and infertility treatments.
The problem is of the government's own making. For 40 years, it discouraged families from having more than two children, fearing that population growth would undermine economic prosperity, according to the Korea Economic Institute in Washington. Abortion was legalized in 1973, and maternity benefits for women having a third child were ended in 1984.
The effort succeeded so well that births dropped to 476,000 last year from 1 million in 1970, National Statistical Office figures show. The low birth rate also resulted in the world's fastest-aging population...
