korea is the priciest place to raise children from birth the age of 18
in terms of average income now china has been found to rank second and italy third this is
according to research by jeffrey's financial group which looked into 14 different countries
for more frank smith with deutsche welle live on the line frank it's been a while welcome back
good to be here thanks anahi i also have freelance journalist jack barton here in the studio jack
it's good to see you again it's great to be here right frank we'll start with you let's begin then
with a bit more details about this particular research which was reported by cnn last week
well it came from the jeffries financial group incorporated and it analyzed spending on child
care up to the age of 18 as a percentage of gdp gross uh domestic product it it looked at this
kind of in a broad context to try to put this into perspective you know when you're analyzing across
country with different metrics so for example in the west college education often young people
they'll take out loans and so that wasn't really factored in to the expense that parents paid in
the education of their of their children and also it looked at the the taxation a little bit and the
provision of uh public and private uh uh services and what i found really most interesting was that
the jeffries financial group is a is a financial services company that really concentrates on
wealth management and you'd think that it would have sort of a very conservative perspective
uh on issues like this on social issues like this and in fact it it advocated an increase
in terms of state provisions for for child care which you'd find astonishing it also pinpointed
especially china and south korea for being high on that spending category of those up to eighteen
sunni right and sting with that then jack like uh frank just mentioned countries in the far
east that is south korea and china top the list standing at first and second place respectively
followed by italy in third place what are your personal thoughts on these findings i think
there's a number of factors one is as frank mentioned it's comparative per capita of gdp
so we're not talking about it being the most expensive but being the most expensive in terms
of an income that the parents have so over here it's more than a hundred thousand dollars in china
it's about seventy five thousand dollars to raise a child to eighteen if you told that to
someone in america that only have to spend seventy five thousand 000 to be jumping for joy probably
planning a family of five but here in china those are bigger costs another factor is that
outside of east asia in most countries people tend to have aim for bigger families one of the reasons
because those comparative costs are lower so maybe a family of two or three but here you see parents
having far fewer families and you know south korea amongst one of the lowest birth rates in the world
if not the lowest so when they do have a child they tend to be willing to spend more on that
child as well and then one of the factors that play into that here of course is um the incredible
tutoring that goes on in south korea when i described to people in back in australia how much
out of school our tutoring goes on here and the expense involved they don't actually even believe
me so that all adds up more and then of course there is child care before they go to school i
know the government's tried to make it free but we know that people are spending about 198 000 won or
about 162 us dollars a month on that so all of those costs adding up really to make this
uh yeah a very very pricey place to raise a child right jack the universal understanding
is that child care is expensive everywhere and keeping in mind what uh jack himself has said
frank what do you believe is the reason behind this particular reality here in the far east then
well i think we might have to go back to confucian influence in terms of education south koreans
in particular are obsessed with education and childhood education and so i think that plays
into it as jack mentioned he talked about private education institutes what are called hogwan
here in south korea and the propensity of parents to to send them to several different institutes
and have several different tutors come into the home basically on a on a weekly basis and
and really there's there's kind of no ceiling to that also i think in south korea you have stronger
familial responsibilities i think families are a little bit closer knit here so there is that
uh i think degree of responsibility in terms of parenting is is a little bit stronger here
in south korea perhaps than in in the west where you might say to your to your ten-year-old child
you know go out of the house and and play around and come back when the sun comes down uh south
koreans really don't have that kind of attitude and keep their children on a much shorter leash
right jack speaking within your capacity as a well-traveled journalist then how do you explain
italy's high expenses in child rearing because italy uh in many ways is very similar uh to
korea and china and it has a very low birth rate the lowest in europe uh it is very pricey there
there's a huge bureaucracy and while the cost of secondary education is perhaps a little bit
cheaper than here the cost of childcare there is astronomical so if you look at the north of italy
uh and we mentioned about 162 a month here in the north of italy it's more closer to 670 dollars a
month even in the south which is much poorer is still above 450 a month in child care so you do
have all of these pressures you have wages that are very similar to south korea so the average
per capita wage is very similar and so when we look at the actual dynamics even though italy is
sitting in there in the european union in europe uh when we crunch the numbers down it's actually
very similar now the social circumstances are similar the financial circumstances
are very similar to south korea right and back here in south korea then frank keeping in mind
the causes of the costly child care here in the country that you shared what do you recommend
as part of efforts to ease this financial burden so to speak well i would agree with the
sort of rough conclusions that came out of this report expand and improve uh the public education
and community services system if we look at you know we've got to look at this in sort of
a comprehensive way to just pinpoint one thing i don't think is quite fair we need to look at
the tax rates in south korea 37 percent personal tax 25 corporate tax and look specifically at the
social welfare spending which in south korea is you know pretty close to the bottom of the oecd
at just about 12.2 percent and then the household benefits that are paid out of that is at the very
bottom of those countries reporting data so i would argue that south korea needs to consider
you know increasing perhaps it's taxation and investing that money in public education and
public community services right well jack people say it takes a village to raise a child
and keeping in mind what frank has just said do you suppose the government here
does need to shoulder a heavier burden i do think that the government needs to shoulder
a heavier burden but there also needs to be a cultural shift as well there's always a
big race in south korea to get into those big three universities we know the names the sk
and the y and perhaps too much attention is focused and so too much money is spent
trying to get the children into those areas if there was a more level playing field in terms
of high schools in terms of universities if there was more a sense of you know
getting a piece of paper that will get you a good job from many other educational institutions
i think there'd be a lot less pressure a lot less money spent and part of that would be a large part
of that would come through a government effort to ensure there was quality uh education right across
the boards at many institutions even though at the moment there might be and the perception might
be just that you're getting it at those uh few so definitely look there always education there needs
to be more money spent on education because that ensures a prosperous next generation education
and infrastructure and health are always the key but at the same time i think there needs to be a
a bit of a cultural shift here as well right frank this research by jeffrey's financial group looked
into the costs of feeding clothing educating as well as entertaining children now with regard
to the latter that is entertaining children what are your thoughts on the availability
of affordable entertainment venues for children here in south korea well i just want to go back
first to comment a little bit about on what jack said and i really agree with what he said and you
know young people here are being educated you know very highly as we mentioned but it's being divided
between public and private too much on the private end and that doesn't result in what we want to see
which in a democracy in the meritocracy which is equal opportunity now when we talk about you know
entertainment services you know many of them are private you know i look out my window i live in
a high rise here it's there's a lot of density in terms of you know living space residential living
space but a very small playground for my apartment in a private area and a public playground and
public facilities are a little bit few and far between comparatively so i i think south korea
could really do a lot more in terms of public park space public play areas if we talk about
say swimming pools i have to you know get in a car to go to a private swimming pool and you know free
open swimming when i was a child for example i could walk to a swimming pool two blocks or a few
blocks in in a couple of directions to get to one and i could go to free open swimming i wouldn't
have to register for a for a class i could go to free open swimming any any sort of day i myself
taught tennis for a community center that was heavily subsidized by the government so
that anybody with just a few dollars to spend could spend some time uh in in sort of tennis
recreation so i think uh south korea would could really learn a lesson in terms of broadening
its uh social community spending sun he right jack beyond korea your country australia ranked
quite favorably on that particular list now child rearing in australia was found to cost 2.1 times
in the country's average gdp per capita do you care to explain this reality over in australia
for us yeah of course that's much lower than south korea or china or other but there's fairly simple
reasons behind this one is that we have some of the highest wages in the world in fact we have
the highest minimum wage in the world at almost 15 us dollars that's about two-thirds higher
than even in the united states but also on top of that there's very good state-funded education and
there's a lot of trust in it so private schools exist private schools are expensive uh people with
the money might be inclined to send their children there but that's not to say that if you want to
be the prime minister or ceo of a company you actually have to go to one of those schools you
can just as easily have come from a state school and state schools will cost you anywhere up to 500
a year in fees so you know the fees are so low you could almost say they're almost non-existent and
on top of that you have very very high income um but apart from that i would say it's more on the
trust in state institutions and it's more on the high level of education in stated institutions
that is a much bigger fact than the actual income right and here's the million dollar question then
jack how do you suppose was that trust in state institutions fostered uh by spending
in state institutions uh by trying to attract good teachers into state institutions and obviously in
the private schools there's always going to be an imbalance there because they will be able to
pay a little bit more but you know the quality of teachers is high state schools try to attract and
some of the state schools try a little harder than others in fact there's one state school
in melbourne that essentially has the same reputation as a private school if not better
so people try and compete to get into this state school but overall it is it's a very level playing
field what you might get in a private school is a little bit more specialized education and
particularly when it comes to music or the arts or this sort of thing but across the board when
we're talking about math sciences you're likely to get just as good in education in a state school
and and that's a very conscious policy it's not a chance uh and australia is quite a
used to be at least an egalitarian society and there'd be a sense of outrage if the schools
didn't function in that way right frank now i understand you've been away from your country
canada for quite a while now but could you share with us a bit about the cost of child rearing
in canada and the support perhaps available to working parents there working parents in
canada get a a child stipend of 500 dollars per month per child so it does get some support there
and also when we talk about those other programs surrounding school for example here in south korea
my daughter goes to school from 9 to 12 usually sometimes 9 to 2 but usually just 9 to 12 and
then it's perhaps an after school program whereas when i grew up in canada i went to school from
nine o'clock until three o'clock and then in my elder grades in grade five six seven in elementary
school i could play on teams and and stay busy in the afternoons as well so the the school day
here is much shorter and i think you know to to reiterate what jack was saying about trust
i don't think the the south korean public and south korean parents really trust the public
school system and that's one of the reasons that they do so much private tutoring often you know
educators would kind of point out that children are sleeping when they go to
public education and then they wake up to really study hard and take seriously
their studies at at private institutes at academies at hogwans here right now frank
you've set yourself up now i'm going to ask you a difficult question based on your observations
then as a foreigner looking into the academic situation here in the country what do you
suppose is a reason perhaps for this lack of trust within the public education here in the country
well i think it's something that really developed over time you know i would say that the
privatization of the uh education system and the that that happened over time it's not something
that you can dial back easily you have very strong vested interest groups in the private education
sector that that want to see their market protected fixing that is going to take the kind of
private spending that they do in australia there's no such thing as a free lunch jack pointed out
very accurately the priorities that the government in australia has in making private education
and public education and specifically public education equal in terms of its quality and that's
going to be expensive right and jack back to you then so it's been established by this religious
research that korea is the most expensive country to raise a child in terms of average income
having said that is it money well spent in terms of education do you think well i think this all
feeds into something that you know frank was just talking and you were talking about why is it the
imbalance and i think some of it has come from the history of career if we look at the development of
the economy and of the education system it's come so recently and so fast and of course the private
schools were some of the first to establish big educational institutions so it was natural that
they attached got a lot of kudos but now if we move forward i i would say part of me wants to say
any amount of money spent on education is money well spent but the other half of me thinks that
if you're spending all of that money just to get your child into the right university and then once
they get in there it's just okay we'll just study enough now to pass having the bit of paper with
the university name on that's the important thing i'd kind of say no it's not money well spent um
because you're not you know university is where you really need to focus and get that quality
um the quality information that you're seeking and the other thing is there's too much focus on rote
learning and that feeds into this cram tutoring so you're not getting a critical thinking good
critical thinking in the education system and for south korea that is so important because
you're not going to get good high-tech science research and development without that focus in
the education system so there's too much focus on rote learning just to get you into one of these
universities and not enough attention paid um you know of course to getting into a multitude of
well-funded uh universities and and then focusing in the university and focusing not just on what
you're learning but how you're learning it to be more critical about what you're learning so when
you come out you've really got that mind that can develop new things for the country right and not
that i disagree with you but um frank keeping in mind what jack has just said there are pundits
there who do claim that the availability of such public such private uh institutions for education
which also include quite a lot of subjects not covered at school for example you could have uh
dancing classes taught in english for your child if she or she he or she is interested in it and
that kind of exposure that kind of availability has in essence pushed our economic standard to
to world levels what are your thoughts on that frank well i agree with you i think
you know something like dancing or you know let's say taekwondo that's very popular here
uh being serviced by private education private institutes is a great idea what i think we see
too much of is things like math and science and english language study done at private institutes
that could be and and should be in a sort of equinox equinomous society a an egalitarian
society done in the private education system and that's you know again what what i would advocate
right frank with regard to money well spent that in terms of ensuring a safe environment for child
growth what are your thoughts there's no ceiling to what you will spend i i'll use this the analogy
that we use in in politics talking about national security there's no ceiling to what a country will
spend to ensure its national security and as a parent you know there's no ceiling to what i'll
spend in terms of my my daughter's education i'd like to see her you know do more of that in school
and also i think it's important to recognize what jack mentioned about what they're studying
how they're studying as young people there's too much rote learning going on
and too much infamous emphasis placed on education as a young person and then when they have that
you know mental and social capacity to discuss and learn more complicated things they're considered
to be already sort of done when they when they get into you know their freshman university and
junior university years when they should be really dialing up that that critical thinking education
right hopefully there will be improvements in the future of course then frank thank you very much
for your time and your thoughts and jack here in the studio thank you for your insights today