The administration has decided to scrap the provision of free day care for all newborns to toddlers aged 2, beginning in March next year. It has also decided to cut subsidies for in-home child care as well. Of course, a cost overrun is behind the decision.
As a result, families in the top 30 percent income bracket will have to pay part of the bill when their children are sent to day care facilities. In addition, subsidies will be halved for in-home child care by mothers.
The ruling Saenuri Party denounces the administration for being irresponsible when it decided to scrap the universal provision of free day care just seven months after it went into practice. The main opposition Democratic United Party also claims the decision proves that the administration is unprincipled and incompetent in its child care policy.
The administration may have to shoulder part of the responsibility. But it was the ruling and opposition parties that advanced the universal provision of free day care for babies aged 0 to 2, which the administration had scheduled for 2014, when they passed the 2012 budget bill last December. They did so apparently because they wanted to curry favor with the electorate ahead of the parliamentary elections in April this year.
When the day care program started in February, housewives as well as working women enrolled their babies at day care centers in droves. No wonder the one-year daycare budgets of the municipalities, which shared the costs with the central government, had been exhausted by June or July. The central government had to subsidize an additional 435.1 billion won to help make up for the deficits.
Now women’s associations are up in arms against the administration’s decision. Who wouldn’t? But the problem is the central government would have to provide 718.5 trillion won ($642.4 billion) in additional subsidies if the day care program were to continue next year.
The ruling and opposition parties will undoubtedly to be tempted to commit themselves to reversing the administration’s decision and keeping the day care program intact. Who can easily ignore the demands from women’s organizations ahead of the presidential election? But they will be well advised to exercise self-restraint in keeping themselves from driven into folly again.
Just as households are required to live within their means, so is the nation. As Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik observes, the government cannot afford to provide free lunches at school and free medical care for all and halve the university tuition all at once. The painful cost overrun from the premature provision of free day care for all babies aged up to 2 should serve as a sobering reminder for the rival political parties and their presidential nominees.
