KICCE 육아물가지수 연구(Ⅲ)

Abstract

This study produced the third-year computation of Korean Childrearing Price Index(CPI) and Parents’ Perception of Childrearing Costs for the Korean household of young (0~5 year old) children. 2015 KICCE Childrearing Price Index(CPI) indexes (I~III, IV~VI) all got higher compared to the 2014 indexes, showing 1~4% of annual increase. This is understood to be resulting mainly from the increase of ECEC costs and prices. However, the increase rate of KICCE CPI for low income families with 0-5 year of young children, were relatively lower than the other SES class' CPIs. This is interpreted that the low income families tend to buy relatively lower or lowest price of childrearing products, in other words showing the lack of buying power of high quality-high price products. The online CPI’s increase rate was not low, even higher than off-line market price index of childrearing products. The online purchase need to be accompanied by specific searching strategies of the lowest prices of a product. Otherwise, the increase steepness of online CPI is usually higher than off-line index's. Parents’ Perception of Childrearing Costs for the household of 0~5 year old children, is different between 0-2 and 3-5 olds. This is partially due to the government's more concentrated efforts and funding of child care supports for younger children of 0-2. The perception of costs is higher for the household with 3-5 olds. Despite of this trend, overall 2015 Parents’ Perception of Childrearing Costs got better slightly, compared to 2014’s.