Critics label as ‘absurd’ idea from government-backed thinktank as country seeks to address population decline
A government thinktank in South Korea has sparked anger after suggesting that girls start primary school a year earlier than boys because the measure could raise the country’s low birthrate.
A report by analysts at the Korea Institute of Public Finance said creating a one-year age gap between girls and boys at school would make them more attractive to each other by the time they reached marriageable age.
The claim is based on the idea that men are naturally attracted to younger women because men mature more slowly. Those women, in theory, would prefer to marry older men.
We need to make a distinction between child care and early childhood education (ECE). Korea does have ECE programs at their universities and so presumably there are spaces available at ECE programs. However these are expensive because they’re staffed by highly educated professionals, so only well-off parents can afford them.
This is of course true in any country with a highly educated populace. The issue has been called “cost disease.” When you have a highly efficient, highly productive economy, you end up having to pay less productive workers more. For example, compare a typical office worker with a hairdresser. An office worker today is far more productive than they would’ve been a hundred years ago. On the other hand, the hairdresser today is exactly as productive as they were a hundred years ago.
Hairdressing productivity has not increased at all whereas office work has. So if you want hairdressers to still exist you need to pay them a lot more than you would have a hundred years ago (commensurate with the increase in productivity of office workers), otherwise the hairdresser might as well get an office job!
You can see this story repeating itself throughout both Korean and Western economies (and anywhere else where productivity has increased dramatically). And in all of these countries you can see a lot of reliance on foreign workers to fill in these sorts of low skill jobs (such as basic childcare).
The other aspect of professional child care facilities that I see no one talking about is real estate. These facilities need a ton of space in some really expensive areas to handle a relatively small number of children. Paying for an in-home childcare worker can be a lot cheaper than a professional facility for the simple reason that you don’t have to pay for the overhead of the facility’s rent and maintenance costs.