South Korea’s Plan to Rank Towns by Fertility Rate Backfires

SEOUL, South Korea — For years, local officials in South Korea, which has one of the world’s lowest birthrates, have tried ever more inventive plans to encourage women to have babies.

They have offered generous maternity-leave policies, cash allowances and even boxes of beef and baby clothes to families with newborns.

Then the national government tried its hand.

On Thursday, it rolled out an online “birth map” that used shades of pink to rank towns and cities by the number of women of childbearing age. But the reaction was so overwhelmingly negative, especially among women, that the website was shut down within hours of its introduction.

“They counted fertile women like they counted the number of livestock,” an angry blogger wrote in an online commentary with the headline “Are Women Livestock?” “Did they think that men would flock to a town with more childbearing-age women?”

A low birthrate is one of South Korea’s most urgent socio-economic challenges. Amid rising costs of living and education, women are increasingly moving into the job market, but they often find it all but impossible to keep their careers and raise children.

Many women still feel pressure to quit their jobs once they become pregnant. For many women working in the private sector, especially those employed at smaller businesses, an extended parental leave with the option of returning to work remains a dream (by law, one can take up to a year off). Even if a woman returns to work, finding affordable day care centers can be difficult, although the government is racing to add more of them.