Free childcare system

Confusion mirrors policy disunity, poor preparation

Despite attacks from deficit hawks and welfare minimalists, the ruling Saenuri Party has decided to push ahead with a free daycare system for all toddlers. And to help ease funding crises at local administrations, it will likely draw about 620 billion won from the government’s contingency funds.

All these are moves heading in the right direction but they should have less to do with the governing party’s vote-gathering tactics for Dec. 19 presidential election than with the nation’s long-term growth strategy.

Which in turn explains the need for politicians and bureaucrats to think over what has caused the ongoing confusion on free childcare services.

It all goes back to 2007, when then presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak pledged to provide public daycare services for all children 5 years or younger free of charge. Like most other campaign pledges, it had been forgotten until another major election loomed. In the lead up to parliamentary polls this April, the Saenuri Party dusted it off, implementing it from March.

The government and its party have wasted five long years without making proper preparations before introducing a system that can bring about significant changes to people’s lives. Part of the reason was disunity within the ruling camp. Bureaucrats, especially the budgetary authorities, were at odds with politicians’ welfare promises, criticizing them as election season populism.

Such a lack of policy unity and the resultant impromptu implementation ― for instance by expanding beneficiaries of free daycare center use from the bottom 70 percent in the income bracket to everyone ― led to explosive demand and a far earlier depletion of budgets than expected at local autonomous bodies. So the problem is neither the lack of budget nor politicians’ populism but the disunity and inconsistency within the Lee administration.

Had the officials made careful, sufficient preparations, they could have avoided concentrating benefits on only daycare center users and divided subsidies evenly to people who would rather take care of their children at home. Actually, industrial countries encourage homecare of toddlers less than 24 months old, as no one can replace their own parents at so young an age.

Nor should the current confusion serve as an opportunity for welfare doomsayers to exaggerate what they claim is the danger of a universal welfare system, calling for a return to selective welfare.

“The government has to provide daycare for the grandchildren of chaebol families under the present system, and this is not befitting a fair society,” Vice Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said, adding it would be better for the ministry to spend more on poor people. Sounds plausible enough, but Kim does not seem to understand the true meaning of public welfare.

Public welfare is not something in which the government takes money from the rich and gives it to poorer people. It is a sort of social insurance that everyone buys jointly to prepare for situations anyone can run into, such as education, childcare, unemployment and aging, at far cheaper prices.

Without a proper welfare system, including free childcare, the nation’s economic growth itself will become unsustainable. Warnings against election-year populism are necessary but political conservatism should not be allowed to disguise itself as fiscal responsibility. <The Korea Times>

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