South Korea sets new record for world’s lowest fertility rate despite spending billions to stem population slide
- Data showed the average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive life fell to 0.72 in 2023 from 0.78 in 2022
- Experts say there are multiple causes for the low birth rate, from high child-rearing costs to property prices
South Korea’s fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, dropped to a fresh record low in 2023, defying the billions of dollars spent by the country to try to reverse the trend as the population shrank for a fourth straight year.
The average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive life fell to 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022, data from Statistics Korea showed on Wednesday.
This is far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population of 51 million.
“The number of newborns in 2023 was 230,000, which was 19,200 fewer than the year before, representing a 7.7 per cent decrease,” Lim Young-il, head of the Population Census Division at Statistics Korea, told reporters.
The 2023 crude birth rate – the number of newborns per 1,000 people – was 4.5, down from 4.9 in 2022.