South Korea plans to provide every family with a newborn child a monthly allowance of 1 million won ($740), in its latest move to encourage more births and try to address the world’s lowest fertility rate.
The handout will begin next year at a level of 700,000 won a month and then rise to the full amount in 2024, according to a budget proposal unveiled this week. Once the child turns one, the stipend will be reduced by half and run for a further year.
Dubbed locally as "parent pay,” the 1 million-won allowance was among a series of election campaign pledges by President Yoon Suk-yeol to address Korea’s dangerously low birth rate. Yoon, who took office in May, has described the demographic outlook as a national "calamity.”
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