In order to attract young men and women in the country to give birth to children, a private company in South Korea has offered to give 75 thousand Korean dollars (ie about two million Pakistani rupees) to its employees.
The company, Bo Young, made the announcement at a time when data released by the Korean government revealed that the country's birth rate is at a record low.
South Korea already had one of the lowest birth rates in the world, but the situation is getting worse.
According to data released by the official agency 'Statistics Korea' on Wednesday, the birth rate has further decreased to 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022.
In Dar al-Hakut Seoul, it is even less. There the rate is just 0.55.
Political concern about the declining birth rate in Korea has also been growing as various governments have implemented 270 programs since 2006 on child care, subsidized housing for newlyweds, and other related welfare programs to increase it. Billions of dollars have been spent.
The government has made it a national priority to reverse the declining population trend.
In South Korea, as in most countries, the first requirement to have children is to be married. But starting a married life requires a lot of financial resources due to which the trend of not getting married is increasing among young couples.
What are the benefits of having children in South Korea?
Statistics Korea estimates that despite all government efforts, the country's birth rate will further decline to 0.65 in 2025. Experts say that the main reason for this is the problems of women. If they want to work while having children, they face immense social pressure and face severe job discrimination.
Yejin, 30, is an unmarried TV producer. She cooks for her friends in her apartment on the outskirts of the capital Seoul. One of his friends opened a dinosaur cartoon on his phone in which the dinosaur says: 'Watch out! Don't lose your existence like us.'
Everyone laughed at this. "It's laughable, but it's a bitter truth because we know that we can cause our own extinction," Yejin said.
Like Eugene, all his friends are unmarried. In South Korea, there is an increasing number of young people who do not want to get married for financial reasons. And many couples who are married do not want to have children.
One of the steps taken by the Korean government to encourage children to have children is that the government gives 2250 Korean dollars to the parents of the child in the name of 'baby payment' for each child born. .
The crisis of declining population is so profound that if the rate continues, the number of working people in South Korea will be halved in the next 50 years. That is, half of the country's population will enter the retirement age, that is, half of the population will be over 65 years of age.
According to experts, private companies of the country have also come forward to avoid this crisis. Last week, Bo Young, a construction company in Seoul, announced that the company will pay $75,000 for the birth of a child for male and female employees. The company will pay this amount to the employees on every child born.
Since the year 2021, this company has paid about 5.3 million dollars to its employees in this regard. "If this rate continues, at some point the country will face an existential crisis," said Lee Jong-kyun, the 83-year-old chairman of Bo Young Company. The purpose of the financial support is to help support the family without compromising your career.'
Some other companies are also providing financial support to their employees to have children. Hyundai, the largest car manufacturer in South Korea, has also announced to give its employees $3,750 for each child born.
Why the trend of fewer children in some countries?
According to some experts, the birth rate should be 2.1% to maintain a balance between the population of a country and the number of young people. That is, a woman should have at least more than two children.
If the birth rate is less than this, the country's population gradually starts to decline. Due to low birth rate, after a certain period the number of teenagers and young adults in the country decreases and the number of old people starts increasing.
China is currently facing the same problem. In the past, China had a one-child policy for decades to control population. After a period, not only the population of the country started to decrease, but in the next thirty, forty years, the number of young people working there will also start to decrease.
The Chinese government has now changed this policy and is now encouraging young people to have a second child, but the new generation feels that having two children is a burden.
China's birth rate continues to decline. In the year 2022, this rate was 1.28. In the year 2023, China's population is recorded to decrease by more than 2 million.
Like China, Japan is also facing a crisis of low birth rates. A year ago, the ratio was 1.26.
In Japan, the trend of population decline started from the year 2005, while in the year 2023, the population decreased by 8 lakh.
Like Korea, young people in Japan prefer to remain unmarried. The government has set up a formal ministry staffed to help attract young boys and girls to each other and prepare them for marriage.
But despite all efforts, a large number of young people choose to remain unmarried or childless, fearing the hustle and bustle of life, financial pressures and the financial, mental and physical challenges of raising a child.
If the current birth rate continues, Japan's population will decrease by 30 percent in the next fifty years, and 40 percent of the population will be over 65 years of age.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called this trend 'Japan's most serious crisis'. Japan is the third largest economy in the world. But the costs of running a life are high. On the contrary, people's salaries are not increasing in proportion to the decline. Not only that, 40 percent of Japanese are part-time or contract workers.
Many critics say that the government has not taken necessary steps to ensure that children, women and minorities are positively accepted in the society.
Countries where the situation is completely different
More or less the same situation is flourishing in Far Eastern countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. But the situation in South Asia is slightly different.
It is home to three of the most densely populated countries in the world, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The population of these three countries has been increasing exponentially for many decades.
India and Bangladesh, with the help of the United Nations and other agencies, took many measures to control population, the most important of which was the family planning program.
India started a family planning program like 'Hum Do Hume Do' in the 1970s. Population control programs have been successful in large cities and the educated class, but have not had enough impact in towns and rural areas, resulting in continued population growth.
Since the 1990s, India's birth rate has been effectively declining. At present it has come down to 2.1. This rate is continuously decreasing.
In Kerala, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Maharashtra and many other states, the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate.
On the other hand, the population of Bangladesh grew rapidly, but the governments there took effective measures very quickly. The country has recorded a decline in birth rate every year since 1990. According to the United Nations Population Report, the birth rate of Bangladesh in 2023 was 1.93.
Among the three countries, Pakistan is the most backward. Family planning is not practiced effectively here. It is the only country in South Asia whose birth rate is much higher than the replacement rate.
At present this ratio is around 3.18. But gradually, the birth rate has decreased significantly in Pakistan, especially in urban areas. Although the current rate is comparatively very high, a steady decline in the birth rate has been recorded over the past ten years. The annual trend of decline is projected to decline further in the coming years.
Population decline is also being seen in other countries of Asia. Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Iran are also trending towards lower production.
When countries' population and birth rates decline rapidly, the first effect is that the number of people in their 20s and 30s declines and the population of people over 65 years old begins to rise.
Birth rates are declining in most European countries and the United States as well. This trend is gradually starting in Africa as well. In a changing world, the desire to marry and have children is shrinking.
'This will increase workforce migration'
Professor Anandita Ghoshal of Calcutta's Harbor Diamond University says that although the birth rate in South Asian countries is also on the rise, it is very slow compared to countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China. The population gap between the countries of the two groups will remain for a long time.
"A new type of migration has already begun gradually," she says. In earlier migration, most of the people were professional and highly educated. Most of the migration that will take place will be 'unskilled' and 'semi-skilled' people.
This process has already started in Bangladesh. Pakistan's workforce is gradually moving to countries that are considered difficult. Thousands of artisans, construction workers, carpenters, midwives and helpers are moving from India to new countries.
Professor Ghoshal says, 'Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal do not have job opportunities in proportion to the workforce.'
In these circumstances, the migration of young workforce to other countries, especially developed countries, will increase in the coming days. This situation will be seen all over the world in the coming days.'
She says that at every stage of human civilization, migration from one place to another in search of better opportunities has been a constant process. But the rapidly declining birth rate in developed and economically emerging countries of the world has created a deep social and humanitarian crisis.
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