Some villages in South Korea “haven’t heard babies crying in 18 years,” said Lee Kwon Hee, an official who was quoted in today’s NY Times. So the country has changed its national health care plan to cover reversing vasectomies and tubal ligations, in order to spur more couples to have more children.
“In South Korea, the decline has been so precipitous that it caught the government off guard. Policies designed to discourage more than two children, like vasectomies and tubal ligation, were covered. ‘In the next two or three years, we won’t be able to increase the birthrate,’ said Park Ha Jeong, of the Health ministry. ‘But we have to stop the decline or it will be too late.
Unlike many western countries, Korea doesn’t have immigrants coming in who have more babies. Some of the elementary schools are down to a tenth of the number of students as in the 1970s. When one young couple in the village of Seokdong celebrated the birth of twins, they were given $1100 as a cash incentive.
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