South Korea has once again shattered its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate [1] as it faces the prospect of its population of 51 million people more than halving by the end of this century.
Korean women were estimated, based on 2021 data, to have an average of just 0.81 children over their lifetimes, down from 0.84 a year earlier, the statistics office said Wednesday. Replacement fertility is 2.1 children per couple. The number of newborns declined last year to 260,600, which equates to about 0.5% of the population.
In the decades following the 1950-53 Korean War, the population at least doubled and in an effort to curb the baby boom in the early years of economic development, the government encouraged couples to have only one child.
That policy was scrapped around the turn of the century as births started to sharply fall, prompting the government to spend tens of billion of dollars each year to encourage more children, but with little success so far.