S Korea’s fertility rate hits 7-year low

[손명숙]

(World Today Thursday 31 August 2017)

S Korea’s fertility rate hits 7-year low

SEOUL — South Korea’s fertility rate plunged to a seven-year low last year, official statistics showed yesterday, with more women delaying marriage in the highly competitive, workaholic country.
The average number of babies a South Korean woman is expected to have in her lifetime dropped to 1.17 last year, down 5.4 per cent from 2015 and the lowest in the OECD group of advanced countries. The figures come as Asia’s fourth-largest economy faces a worrying demographic shift, with young, working-age South Koreans decreasing in numbers and the elderly population burgeoning.
About 6.5 million of the country’s 50 million population were 65 years or older in 2015, and in the next 10 years, one in five South Koreans will be retired, based on a Statistics Korea report last year.
But soaring property prices and narrowing job prospects have caused many young South Korean women to put off marriage and having babies.
The average age of first-time mothers was 31.4 last year, up from 31.2 in 2015, showed the latest official data.

The South Korean government has pumped more than 100 trillion won (S$121 billion) since 2006 into hundreds of programmes aimed at encouraging people to marry young and have larger families.
President Moon Jae-in has vowed to introduce more policies to accommodate working mothers, including opening more daycare centres and providing a monthly allowance of about 100,000 won. AFP