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Korean population set to shrink by half in next 60 years, despite recent rebound

Published: 07 Mar. 2025, 16:48 Updated: 07 Mar. 2025, 17:30

SHIN HA-NEE
[email protected]

A nurse tends to newborn babies at a hospital in Incheon on Dec. 26, 2024. [NEWS1]

Korea’s population will shrink to half its current size over the next six decades as the country’s unequal gender norms, high housing costs and education expenditures weigh on its ultralow birthrate, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates.

The organization expects the population to drop to around 27.5 million by 2085, down from its current 51.7 million, according to a 110-page report titled “Korea’s Unborn Future: Understanding Low-Fertility Trends” published Wednesday, the first of its kind for the organization.

The study, conducted in collaboration with the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, also forecast that the old-age dependency ratio would surge to 155 percent from its current 28 percent by 2082 — indicating that there will be 100 working-age people for every 155 who are 65 and older.

Korea currently has one of the world's lowest birthrates due to its conservative gender norms and intense social competition, which has driven up education costs.

In a report published June last year, Statistics Korea predicted that the country’s population would fall 30 percent from 2022 to 36.22 million by 2072, and by 63 percent to 19.35 million by 2122, in a medium estimate with a fertility rate of 1.08 children per woman.

While Korea’s total fertility rate rebounded for the first time in nine years in 2024 from the previous year’s record low of 0.72 children per woman to 0.75, it still remains the only OECD member with a total fertility rate below one.

“Birth rates are falling across the world and nowhere more so than in Korea, where fertility has imploded to unprecedented lows,” the report said, identifying the rock-bottom fertility rate as “a symptom of structural traits of Korean society constraining people’s possibilities to combine career and family.”

“While expenditures for food, clothing and childcare have declined as a share of average family income, increases in housing expenditure have reduced fertility rates across the OECD, including Korea,” it noted. “In a reflection of Korea’s dual labour market, many parents allocate a sizeable portion of their income to private tutoring to help their children get ahead, making education expenditure another major hurdle.”

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]