A debate over whether people who choose not to have children should pay extra taxes has flared online in South Korea, reviving a contentious question about who bears the cost of the country's demographic decline.
South Korea's total fertility rate rose to 0.80 in 2025 from 0.75 in 2024, an increase of 0.05, according to Statistics Korea on the 8th. It was the first return to the 0.8 range in four years, but the figure remains about half the OECD average of 1.43. Despite more than 378 trillion won spent on low-birth-rate programs over 18 years starting in 2006, the fertility rate has fallen 35%, from 1.23 to 0.80.
Against that backdrop, a person identified as A, who said they are raising two elementary school children, posted on an online community that a low-birth-rate tax should be levied on childless couples and people who choose not to marry.
A argued that children born now will be the taxpayers and health insurance contributors sustaining society in 20 to 30 years, and that people who did not have children will also benefit from the social infrastructure and medical services that future generation maintains. "This is not about forcing people to have children, but about recognizing in taxes and social insurance the social contribution made in raising the next generation," A wrote.
The public, however, is unfavorable toward such a tax. In a survey of 2,011 men and women aged 25 to 49 by the Presidential Committee on Low Birth Rate and Aging Society, 68.2% of respondents said they opposed paying a separate tax or additional health insurance premiums to fund birth-rate policies.
By gender, 77.5% of women opposed the idea, far higher than the 59.6% of men. Experts said the gap reflects concern about social stigma, because such a tax could be read as a punitive levy aimed at women who do not have children.
Kim Yun-tae, a sociology professor at Korea University, said distrust also shaped the opposition, as government birth-rate policies have produced little result and people question whether taxes should be raised to fund more of them.
Japan Is Already Collecting It
Japan has already put a similar system in place. Starting in April this year, it began collecting an additional "child and child-rearing support levy" through medical insurance premiums from all subscribers to public medical insurance. The charge runs about 250 to 300 yen per person a month and will be raised in stages through fiscal 2028 to secure about 1 trillion yen a year.
Because everyone pays regardless of whether they have children, the levy has drawn strong criticism within Japan as a de facto singles tax. France, by contrast, has drawn attention as a case of raising funds without social stigma, collecting broad social security taxes and then allocating them to policies for children and women rather than imposing a dedicated low-birth-rate tax.
Opinion was also split on expanding benefits for households with children. Only 51.5% of respondents said they favored broader tax benefits for such households, while 51.8% and 55.1% respectively supported giving families with young children priority in queues and parking. Analysts said the results show that while the public recognizes the severity of the low-birth-rate problem, an emphasis on mechanical equality remains strong.
