A newborn baby unit at a Seoul hospital. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jul. 3 (Korea Bizwire) – South Koreans appear to consider job difficulties and education costs as the main causes of the nation’s low fertility rate, a survey showed Wednesday.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism unveiled the results of its big data analysis of about 310,000 social media posts for the past two years related to the low birthrate and aging population.
The words most frequently mentioned in connection with the cause of the low birthrate were “jobs” and “education cost.”
They were followed by “child rearing,” “workplace,” “discrimination,” “housing cost” and “dual-income family.” The country’s fertility rate hit a record low of 0.98 last year.
Regarding policies to boost childbirths, the most frequently mentioned terms in the postings were “state child care services,” “support for child rearing” and “work-life balance.”
With regard to the topic of an aging society, “jobs,” “health,” “elderly living alone” and “budget” ranked high on the list of popular related words.
(Yonhap)
