Cut high housing and education costs first

Practical and realistic solutions, not showpiece ideas, will save the country from a doom.

The nightmares from Korea’s ultralow birth rate may have already begun. First graders are expected to number below 400,000 for the first time during the school year beginning in March. The Ministry of Education estimates 413,056 to be eligible to start school this year. As 90 percent of eligible children usually report to school, the number of first-graders will likely fall under 400,000. Two years later, the number will likely fall below 300,000 if the current birthrate continues.

Korea is already an ultralow-birth society, referring to a country where total fertility rate (TFR) — which measures the average number of children a woman delivers over her lifetime — is 1.3 or lower. Korea’s TFR was 0.72 last year. At this rate, the country could disappear from the map. The Yoon Suk Yeol government is pledging all-out measures to solve the problem. President Yoon called for “an entirely new approach” to low birthrates in his New Year’s address after “coolly” assessing the factors behind them.

The lack of births requires our utmost attention. But we have merely voiced concerns without concentrating our efforts. The Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy became dysfunctional under political influence. The committee was led astray after former lawmaker Na Kyung-won was sacked from the vice chair post due to conflicts with the presidential office last January.

A scholar on demography said that Korea’s low birthrate is the result of “smart people,” pointing to the complicated issues behind the phenomenon — say, housing, jobs, child care and education. The issue therefore demands a comprehensive approach.

A comprehensive approach should not lead to a long, arbitrary grocery list. Eagerness to cover everything can only undermine a policy’s efficiency. The government has spent 380 trillion won ($290 billion) since 2006 on the goal of promoting births. But the rate has still gotten worse. The president said that past measures were unproductive as they were merely packaged for announcement on a certain date. If measures aim merely to illustrate the government’s will, they will also waste money as they have in the past.

The government must re-address the low-birth agenda, from square one, and prioritize actions that can bring immediate results. A close read of the study by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements can be a good start. It proposed an increase to the housing supply and preferential scores for housing subscription depending on the number of children per household, as the costs of housing and education are the primary reasons young people to defer marriage and childbirth. Practical and realistic solutions, not showpiece ideas, will save the country from a doom.