In an effort to reverse its record-low birth rate, South Korea is looking to extend parental leave for working parents.
Under a plan announced by South Korea’s labor minister Lee Jeong-sik on Monday, couples will each be allowed to take up to a year and a half off in parental leave, up from the current one year. Both parents are eligible so long as they’re working, though the pay structure for this new allowance is yet to be confirmed.
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It’s unclear when the proposal will be put to a vote, but if confirmed, the change will make South Korea’s already generous parental leave the longest in Asia. It’ll also be by far the longest paternity leave offered in the world.
The move is aimed at enticing parents in South Korea to have more kids and boost the country’s birth rate—the world’s lowest—officials from the ministry of employment and labor said.
The country’s fertility rate declined for the sixth straight year in 2021 to 0.81, the average number of children a woman will have in her reproductive years. That’s far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population size without migration, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In comparison, the fertility rate was 1.37 in Japan and 1.66 in the United States, both countries with an aging population.
In South Korea, such demographic trends have caused officials to worry about a shrinking workforce and depopulation.
The country of nearly 52 million people is currently the fastest aging country among the 38 rich nations in the OECD. And despite spending over $200 billion over the past 16 years on childcare subsidies and parental leave support, the government has been unable to reverse the trend.
Part of the problem, the government has said, is South Korea’s long work hours, rising cost of living, and a lack of work-life balance. Parental support is one solution they’ve given new parents, in an attempt to alleviate some of the stress involved with raising children.
According to numerous studies, parental leave can help improve couples’ mental health and relationship with their newborns. Allowing both parents to take parental leave is also known to improve gender equality, as childcare and household chores are distributed more evenly among both parents.
Since paid parental leave was first introduced in South Korea in 2001, the number of employees who use it has increased dramatically. Men, in particular, have begun taking advantage of this culture shift in South Korean workplaces, where long hours are the norm and taking time off has historically been frowned upon. In 2007, 310 fathers took paid leave, but by 2019, that number had swelled to 22,297. In 2021, over 29,000 men took paternity leave.
According to South Korea’s current law, couples must take their parental leave before the child is eight years old and for the first three months of full-time parental leave, couples can receive 80 percent of their monthly earnings—funded through the government’s employment insurance system—should that number fall between 700,000 won ($563) and 1.5 million won ($1,205).
For the remaining nine months, parents can receive 50 percent of their monthly salary, with the limit set between 700,000 won ($563) and 1.2 million won ($964).
According to a 2019 report from the United Nations Children’s Fund, Japan formerly granted the longest paid leave for fathers, at about 30 weeks, among OECD and European Union countries.
