Dr. Lee Chae-jeong (Associate Research Fellow) reviewed the need for preventive response to the crisis of daycare centers and kindergartens arising from the continuing decline in the number of newborn babies upon discussion of alternatives.
This study categorized the early childhood care and education (ECCE) services in the OECD members in terms of the government intervention in the social policy implementation process, and conducted analysis on whether the supply chain of ECCE services has been balanced with the distribution of infants and toddlers in 2019 and 2045 for each region.
Referring to the analysis of the OECD member states, Dr. Lee concluded that Korea’s ECCE services is overly dependent on market only and should be improved; she also presented rearrangement of ECCE service providers in consideration of demographic changes with the demand-supply gap analysis, emphasizing that dissection on the mid- to long-term plans is required to achieve a supply-demand balance of the ECCE services considering the demographic change resulting from rapid aging of the population.
“In Korea, a user selects the ECCE services in the private market and is compensated by the government,” said Dr. Lee. “It is necessary to improvement our market-overdependent system and to build up mid- to long-term plans for rearranging a framework itself to achieve a supply-demand balance in the light of the rapidly aging population.”
* “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).
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