Paying People to Have Kids
Worried about overpopulation? Well, in Korea they’re worried about underpopulation due to an overall birth rate of just 1.08 kids per woman. So what are they doing about it? Among other things, a number of financial institutions have begun offering perks to couples that have kids. For example, you can get a 2% discount on life insurance if you have a kid after signing up for a policy with Dongbu Insurance Co., and you get an extra 1% discount for each additional kid. Similarly, Woori bank offers a 0.5% interest rate reduction for families with three or more kids under the age of 20. And over at the Industrial Bank of Korea you can get a 0.1% increase in your interest rate for each new baby that you have, up to a maximum interest rate increase of 1%. Is it just me, or is there something a little creepy about this?
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Population control has always been a touchy subject, it’s simply the reverse of the one-child rule in China because of overpopulation.
What’s interesting and not often mentioned is that in some (if not all) EU nations there is disproportionately more financial support from the government when you have kids than when you don’t. This is all funded by their high taxes over there but you get significant breaks (much more so than in the US) for children. While it’s not meant to stimulate population growth and is geared more towards helping new families get started, it does have similar effects.
Comment by — May 24th 2006 @ 8:33 amInteresting numbers. I’ve been thinking (and blogging) about this lately, too.
Comment by — Jun 16th 2006 @ 12:27 pm