Koreans want far fewer children than 60 years ago

The number of children that Korean parents want in their lifetimes has more than halved in the past 60 years amid the country’s low birth trend, government data released on Monday revealed.

Married couples in the country said they want 2.07 kids on average in the 2010-2015 period, compared with 4.49 children tallied between 1950 and 1954, according to the data by Statistics Korea.

The figure has been on a steady decline since 1950, before making a modest turnaround. It hit a record low of 1.88 in the time between 2005 and 2009.

It is higher than the actual fertility rate, or the average number of babies that a woman is projected to have during her lifetime, which reached 1.17 in 2016. This is the lowest number since 2009.

The latest number is still lower than the replacement level of 2.1 that would keep Korea’s population of 51 million stable.

Some 8.2 percent of married people have no plans to have children at all, sharply up from the 2.3 percent of those surveyed in the 1950-1954 period. The percentage was 5.8 percent from 2005-2009 and 5 percent from 2000-2004. YONHAP