Oxford Professor David Coleman once designated South Korea as the first candidate for "national extinction," while Elon Musk warned of a "population collapse." For years, South Korean society has been obsessed with the "numbers" of total fertility rates. However, Professor Lee Chul-hee’s new book, From Population to Humans, argues that the essence of the problem lies not in statistics, but in the "structural reality" of the youth's lives.
The author identifies the sharp decline in marriage and the plummeting rate of first-child births as the decisive factors. Specifically, housing costs and private education expenses are analyzed as the two main pillars obstructing childbirth. Rising real estate prices act as a critical barrier, forcing non-homeowning youth to abandon marriage and children altogether. Meanwhile, exorbitant private education costs exert economic pressure that discourages even those with one child from having a second. As the cost of raising a single child exceeds household capacities, multi-child families are becoming a rarity in Korean society.
Furthermore, the dual structure of the labor market, employment instability, and insufficient gender equality lead individuals to perceive childbirth as an "irrational choice." The critique that government policies over the last 20 years have disproportionately benefited middle-to-upper-class households, leaving many in the "blind spot" of policy support, is particularly stinging.
Ultimately, the key to addressing the low birth rate begins with discarding the goal of "increasing the fertility rate" itself. Moving away from viewing children as mere figures to fill a population pyramid, society must create a foundation where young people can feel stable in their present lives and plan for their futures. Unless housing stability, educational innovation, and improvements in the labor environment are prioritized, even the most radical support measures will fall short of reversing the tide of demographic collapse.
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