A play is disappearing.
A woman with a baby carriage in Seoul/Reuters
The demographic crisis in South Korea is deepening, with new data showing that the country's birth rate - already the lowest in the world - will fall to a new low in 2023, despite billions of dollars in government programs designed to persuade families to have more children.
The news that South Korea's population shrank for the fourth straight year came shortly after neighboring Japan reported a record drop in its population last year, along with a drop in births and the lowest number of marriages since the end of World War II.
The average number of children a South Korean woman has in her lifetime will drop to 0.72, from 0.78 in 2022 - a drop of nearly 8% - according to preliminary data from the Korea Central Bureau of Statistics, a government-affiliated body.
The rate is much lower than the average of 2.1 children that the country needs to maintain its current population of 51 million people.
As of 2018, South Korea is the only country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to have a rate below one child on average.
In addition, South Korean women give birth for the first time at an average age of 33.6 - the highest among OECD countries.
"Birth is on my list, but there are opportunities to advance and I don't want to be fired," said Gwak Tae-hee, a 34-year-old junior manager at a Korean dairy manufacturer who has been married for three years.
She considered starting fertility treatments last year to try to have a child, but ended up volunteering for work projects to improve her career prospects.
"I don't know about other places, but working two to three days a week doesn't get you anywhere in Korean companies. I hope it's not too late when I try next year or the year after," Gwak said.
Cha Ji-hee said that she used to spend $5,400 a month on two nannies for her four children, while her husband was working abroad.
"What family can spend that kind of money to raise children?" said Hye, who is on an extended leave from her career. in nuclear power plants, while her husband works abroad to support the family.
Without changing the trend, the population of South Korea will shrink by half by the end of the century/Reuters
If this low fertility rate continues, the population of the world's 13th largest economy is expected to nearly halve to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Lim Yong-il, head of the census department at the Korea Central Bureau of Statistics, told reporters: "The number of newborns in 2023 was 230,000, 19,200 less than the previous year, representing a 7.7% decrease."
Since 2006, governments in Seoul have invested more than 360 trillion won ($270 billion) in programs to encourage couples to have more children, including cash grants, babysitting services and support for fertility treatments.
The current administration, led by conservative President Yoon Seok-yeol, has made combating the falling birth rate a national priority, and in December he promised to formulate "extraordinary measures" to deal with the situation.
However, financial and other incentives fail to convince South Korean couples to have children.
They cite the costs of raising children and skyrocketing real estate prices, the lack of good-paying jobs and the country's faltering education system as obstacles to starting larger families.
Experts also point to conservative cultural factors as responsible for the situation, including the difficulty of working mothers to juggle their work and the expectation that they will be the ones bearing most of the burden of housework and child care. South
Korea's major parties have unveiled policies to stem population shrinkage ahead of parliamentary elections in April, including increasing public housing and making loans easier, hoping to assuage growing concern that the country is facing "national extinction."
Marriage still are seen as a prerequisite for having children in South Korea, but their rate is also decreasing, one of the main reasons for this being the cost of living.
More in Walla!
Japan is aging: one in ten citizens - 80 years old or older
To the full article
Even in Japan, the situation is dire: "There is no time to waste"
South Korea is not the only country in the region struggling with a rapidly aging population and a shrinking number of children.
The number of babies born in Japan in 2023 fell for the eighth year in a row to a new low, according to government data released this week.
Just a year ago, the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, warned that the persistently low birth rate would soon threaten the country's ability to "continue to function as a society."
The problem, he added, "cannot wait and cannot be postponed."
The Ministry of Health and Welfare in Japan reported that 758,631 babies were born in the country last year - a decrease of 5.1% compared to the previous year.
This is the lowest number of births since the statistics were first collected in 1899. At the same time, the number of marriages fell by 5.9% to 489,281 new couples, for the first time in 90 years it fell below half a million - one of the main reasons for the decline in the birth rate.
Many young Japanese say they are in no rush to marry or start families because of low job prospects and rising prices that are rising faster than their salaries, along with a corporate culture that makes it difficult for both parents to work.
Japan's population of more than 125 million is expected to drop by about 30% to 87 million by 2070, with four out of ten people aged 65 and over.
Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the shrinking birth rate had reached a "critical situation".
According to him, "the time period of the next six years, roughly until 2030, when the young population will begin to shrink rapidly, will be the last opportunity we have to try to reverse the trend. There is no time to waste."
More on the same topic:
South Korea
Japan
birthrate