South Korea to Cut Mortgage Rates for New Parents to Push Births
- Korea has been struggling with world’s lowest fertility rate
- Housing costs often blamed for reluctance to have babies
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South Korea plans to offer mortgages with advantageous interest rates to parents of newborns in the latest effort to fight the decline in fertility rates and slow the aging of society.
Parents will be eligible to apply for a mortgage with a rate of between 1.6% and 3.3% for five years if they have had a child in the last two years and together earn 130 million won ($98,200) or less annually, according to a statement from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. That’s about 1 to 3 percentage points cheaper than loans offered by commercial banks, it said.