Birth rate in S. Korea drops to all-time low in 2023 leading to population decline

작년 합계출산율 '역대 최저' 0.72명 2072년까지 65세 이상 비중 인구 절반 전망

Good evening. Thank you for joining us. I'm Yoon Jung-min.
We begin with a new demographic report sounding the alarm on the nation's population.
It's forecast to drop to 36-million in less than half a century with people aged 65 and above accounting for almost half of that number.
Moon Hye-ryeon has more.

As the number of births in South Korea plummets, the country's population is also on a downward spiral.
That's according to the annual report on Korean society released by Statistics Korea on Tuesday, which showed that South Korea's population came to just over 51 million in 2023.
It’s forecast to drop to as low as 36 million by 2072, with some stark differences in the proportion of age groups in the population.
Last year, those aged 15 to 64 made up the majority of the population at just under 71 percent.
But less than 50 years from now, this age group is expected to be around 46 percent of the population with people aged 65 and above making up the majority at over 47 percent.

This bleak projection comes on the back of the lowest fertility rates the country has seen since data was first compiled in 1970.
In 2023, the fertility rate in Korea – the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – dipped to zero-point-7-2 births.
The total number of births recorded came to around 230 thousand, and this is less than a half of the total tallied in 2012.
This figure has seen a consistent decline since the 2000s – considering in 2000, around 640 thousand babies were born.
This fell to the 400 thousand range from 2002 to 2016, picking up pace and falling to the 300 thousand range between 2017 and 2019 and down to the 200 thousand range from 2020.

Data from the same report also showed that more and more people are choosing to live alone.
The percentage of single-person households in South Korea was 34-point-5 percent in 2022, compared to around 27 percent seven years before that.
The percentage of single-person or two-person households have seen an upward trend over the years, while those with three or more people have seen a consistent drop – showing the social trend where fewer people are choosing to get married or have children.
A survey conducted by Statistics Korea last year showed social issues that affect an aging population – with many of those aged over 60 years old saying that they felt lonely or that they felt nobody really knew or understood them.
While on average, the proportion of people across all age groups responding that they felt lonely dropped by point-seven percentage points compared to the year before a higher percentage of people in their fifties and sixties said they felt lonely compared to younger age groups..
Moon Hye-ryeon, Arirang News.

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2024-03-26, 18:00 (KST)