Government agency comes up with nationalistic and discriminatory policies to solve low birth rate

A researcher at the Korea Institute of Public Finance has sparked controversy by suggesting that girls be admitted to school a year early or that the state arrange marriage meetings to solve the low birthrate. He also suggested lowering the age of entering school and emigrating the elderly overseas to increase the number of working-age population. Critics have accused the institute, which is supposed to study the government's population policy, of coming up with nationalistic and discriminatory policies.
In the May issue of Public Finance Forum, a periodical of the Korea Institute of Public Finance, senior research fellow Jang Woo-hyun defined Korea's population problem as a decline in the proportion of the working-age population and examined measures to increase the fertility rate as one of the policies to increase the working-age population.
Jang diagrammed the fertility decision-making process into seven stages and suggested policies for each stage. Among these, the policy to support the success of dating became controversial.
Jang gave examples of how the government can help make dating successful by arranging meetings, improving their sociability, or supporting their self-improvement.
He also suggested allowing women to start school a year earlier.
“Men's development is slower than women's,” Zhang argued, “so allowing women to enter school a year earlier could help make it easier for men and women of the right age to be more attracted to each other in the future.”
This seems to be in line with the argument made by some academics who propose admitting men later because men are no match for women in the same age group.
The assumption that non-marital childbearing is antagonistic to marital childbearing is also controversial.
Jang argued that “policies that support non-marital relationships, promote cohabitation, or support cohabitation and childbearing discourage marriage and marital childbearing.” He said that adopting non-marital childbearing support policies in France and elsewhere “could reduce the incentive to marry and reduce the number of marriage and childbearing households,” and that “without clear empirical evidence, this is not a policy direction that should be adopted.”
This argument is at odds with the academic argument, which suggests that reducing the disadvantages for having a child, whether in a married or unmarried cohabiting family, will help boost fertility.
In addition, Jang proposed a number of controversial policies to increase the number of working age population, such as enrolling children in elementary school at the age of 5 and out-migrating of the dependent (elderly) population. The lowering of the elementary school entrance age was proposed by former Education Minister Park Soon-ae in 2022, but was canceled due to public backlash. It led to Park's resignation.
“With regard to a 5-year-old early school admission, “To be able to enter the working-age population at a younger age is a valid consideration to counteract the decline in the working-age population,” Jang wrote of the 5-year-old elementary school entry. Migration of dependents to countries with lower cost of living and milder climates could also “contribute to a quantitative increase in the proportion of the working-age population,” Zhang wrote.
Critics have criticized the population policy as discriminatory against women and the elderly, and anti-human rights, as it only examines population policy from a nationalistic perspective. “The reason why the low birthrate policy is not effective is because it is going against the people's desire for recognition of ‘individual freedom,’” said Shin Kyung-ah, a professor of sociology at Hallym University. “(Jang's article) is completely contrary to this. It is an anti-constitutional idea that violates basic human rights.”
The Korea Institute of Public Finance is in the position that “The opinions expressed by the author are his own and do not represent the official views of the institute.”
However, criticism cannot be avoided in that a research institute that studies low birthrate policies published a manuscript containing unorthodox claims by a researcher without properly reviewing it.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.