Korea's fertility rate hits 0.78, a new low and still lowest in OECD

[SHUTTERSTOCK]

Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a new low of 0.78, the lowest in the OECD, and possibly the world, Statistics Korea said on Wednesday.

The fertility rate is the average number of births projected for a woman during her reproductive years. A total fertility rate of above 2 is needed to sustain a country’s population if not accounting for migration.

Korea’s fertility rate dropped from 0.81 in 2021 to 0.78 last year, Statistics Korea said. Only Korean nationals living in Korea are counted for the purposes of the statistic.

The rate was once as high as 4.53 in the country in the 1970s, before it dropped below 2 in the early 1980s, and below 1 in 2018.

Since 2013, Korea's rate was consistently the lowest among OECD countries. The average for OECD nations was 1.59 as of 2020.

Korea's around 50 million population could be halved by 2100, according to researchers.

The country hit the so-called death cross, when the number of deaths exceed the number of births, in 2020.

It is still in that territory.

The number of total deaths in 2022 was 372,800, 17.4 percent higher than the year before. The number of newborns in 2022 was 249,000.

This was 4.4 percent lower than the year before, and less than half of the number of newborns in the nation 20 years earlier, according to Statistics Korea.

Other significant statistics were reported by the institute.

A newborn baby nursery at a hospital in Seoul. [YONHAP]

The average age of women giving birth also grew over the years, rising from 31.6 in 2012 to 33.5 in 2022.

In terms of women giving birth to their first child, the age increased from 30.5 in 2012 to 33 in 2022.

Comparing the figures with the latest OECD numbers available, Korea was already the highest, at 32.3, in 2020 among OECD countries, at 29.3 that year.

At least a third of the women who gave birth in Korea last year were above 35.

Of the 249,000 newborns in Korea last year, 62.7 percent were first children, which was 5.9 percentage points higher than in 2021. Second-born were 30.5 percent of total last year, and the third-born and beyond were 6.8 percent.

Of the total newborns in Korea last year, 127,400, or 51 percent, were baby boys, and 121,600 baby girls.

The low fertility rate, coupled with the rapidly aging society, has been a concern of the government for years.

A total of 17.5 percent of the population are aged above 65, and that is expected to rise above 20 percent by 2025, according to Statistics Korea.

Different administrations have pitched in at least 280 trillion won ($214.4 billion) from 2006 to 2021 on various policies to encourage more people to have children, according to the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy.

No apparent improvements have been detected, with even fewer people getting married yearly.

A total of 192,000 people got married in 2022, which was around 1,000 fewer than the year before, and the lowest ever since the records on newlyweds were first kept in 1970.

"The drop in the marriage rate likely contributed to the drop in the number of newborns," said Lim Young-il, a senior-ranking official of the population bureau of Statistics Korea, in a press briefing in Sejong on Wednesday.

"When we ran the numbers on the recent birth statistics, we could see the fertility rate dropping as far as 0.7 in 2024, before slowly rising again, accounting for all factors such as the years the couples usually seem to take before having their first child."

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]