hankyoreh

Sept. 16. (Cheong Wa Dae pool)

By Ahn Seon-hee, Staff writer

As of next year, the government is to pay the full cost of daycare for families with a monthly income of up to 4.5 million Won ($3,861) who place their infant children at daycare facilities. In the case of multicultural families, all daycare costs are to be subsidized regardless of income. Additionally, all students at vocational high schools are to have their matriculation fees and tuition fees paid by the government.

The Lee Myung-bak administration announced that it held a meeting for citizen economy countermeasures Thursday at the Gwacheon Government Complex, presided over by President Lee. During the meeting, these “three core issues of working-class hope in the 2011 budget plan” were discussed and a decision reached to earmark 3.7 trillion Won for them in next year’s budget.

The “three core issues” announced by the Lee administration Thursday are fairly revolutionary in content, including full support for daycare expenses for working and middle-class families and essentially free education at vocational high schools.

Analysts say this is a reflection of the “working class-friendly” policy emphasis that the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) has recently been pushing strongly. However, other elements, including the restriction of childcare allowances to only those in the near-poverty class or lower, prevent it from yet being viewed as a “full-scale expansion of the welfare budget.”

Thursday’s announcement was a preliminary declaration of three areas the Lee administration views as its “working-class budget” prior to the announcement of the full 2011 budget on Sept. 28.

In response to the entire 2011 welfare budget, the administration only said, “Rather than continuing the rate of increase in overall government expenditures, it will maintain a high level in spite of difficult financial conditions.”

To begin with, the administration’s decision to expand full support for daycare expenses to 70 percent of all families with children in daycare is indeed quite unprecedented. It could be seen as an expansion of the scope of free daycare recipients beyond the working class to include the middle class as well.

“Other welfare systems all emphasize low income earners, but we decided to make day care extend even to the middle class,” said a Finance Ministry official. “This is how determined the government is about day care.”

However, the childcare allowance, which is support for families that are not using daycare facilities such as nursery schools, was only expanded in “dribbles.” In its announcement, the administration painted a rosy picture, saying that it would “increase the scope of recipients from those one year of age or younger to those two years of age, and the amount of support from 100,000 Won per month to as much as 200,000 Won.” This included 200,000 Won for less than one year of age, 150,000 Won between age one and two, and 100,000 Won for two years of age.

In reality, the families receiving support were limited to basic livelihood security recipients and members of the near-poverty class, defined as 1.63 million Won monthly income for a family of four. These families represent only around 6.5 percent of total households.

The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs (MOHW) has stated it plans to expand the scope of childcare allowance recipients to 70 percent of all households, but the Finance Ministry has opposed this move, citing the difficulty procuring resources for it.

“We have expanded daycare support even though the budget conditions are not good,” said an MOHW official. “Increasing childcare allowance support on top of that is difficult to accept under the present circumstances.”

Sources also indicate that the Finance Ministry is even more adamantly opposed to expanding the childcare allowance because it presents considerable potential to lead into the introduction of “child allowance,” a welfare system in which families are paid a fixed amount of money for each child.

The decision to provide full support for tuition and matriculation costs for students attending vocational high schools could be interpreted as the implementation of free education at these schools.

The government explained that it plans to build an “educational ladder of hope” by subsidizing education costs for disadvantaged classes. However, the fact that the plan contains no mention of support for low-income students at humanities high schools has prompted some observers to question its ability to meet its purpose as stated by the government.

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