More families will receive childcare allowances this year as part of government efforts to boost the nation's declining birthrate, a government spokesman said Tuesday.
During a Cabinet meeting, the government approved a revised enforcement ordinance to the childcare law that would expand the scope of low-income parents eligible for the childcare allowance to those with infants aged less than three, said the spokesman, Park Sun-kyoo.
Currently, the monthly 100,000 won allowance is limited to parents with infants aged less than two.
The allowance is for families that earn slightly more than the country's minimum monthly living cost of some 1.13 million won (US$1,000) for a four-member family.
South Korea has one of the world's lowest birthrates. The country's total fertility rate, which is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, stood at just 1.15 as of 2009, which is lower than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 1.71.