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| South Korea’s demographic crisis has deepened with the release of data showing its birthrate – already the world’s lowest – fell to a new record low in 2023, despite billions of dollars in government schemes designed to persuade families to have more children. | |||||||
Reports that South Korea’s population had shrunk for the fourth straight year came soon after neighbouring Japan reported a record decline in its population last year, along with a record fall in the number of births and the lowest number of marriages since the end of the second world war.| The average number of children a South Korean woman has during her lifetime fell to 0.72, from 0.78 in 2022 – a decline of nearly 8% – according to preliminary data from Statistics Korea, a government-affiliated body. The rate is well below the average of 2.1 children the country needs to maintain its current population of 51 million. | Since 2018, South Korea has been the only member of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) to have a rate below 1. In addition, South Korean women give birth for the first time at the average age of 33.6 – the highest among OECD members. | If the low fertility rate persists, the population of Asia’s fifth-biggest economy is projected to almost halve to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. | Lim Young-il, head of the population census division at Statistics Korea, told reporters: “The number of newborns in 2023 was 230,000, which was 19,200 fewer than the year before, representing a 7.7% decrease.” | Since 2006 the government has invested more than 360tn won ($270bn) in programmes to encourage couples to have more children, including cash subsidies, babysitting services and support for infertility treatment. | South Korea’s major political parties are showcasing policies to stem population decline ahead of April’s national assembly election, including more public housing and easier loans, in the hope of dampening growing alarm that the country is facing “national extinction”. | | |
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