Written by Jihoon Lee and Cynthia Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea's birth rate, already among the lowest in the world, will continue to rise dramatically in 2023 as women, concerned about career advancement and the economic costs of raising children, choose to delay or not have children. continued to decline.
The average number of children Korean women expect to have during their reproductive years has fallen to an all-time low of 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022, data from the Korea Statistics Bureau showed on Wednesday.
This is far below the ratio of 2.1 per woman needed to stabilize the population, and far below the ratio of 1.24 in 2015, when concerns about issues such as housing and education costs were low.
Since 2018, South Korea is the only Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with interest rates below 1, despite spending billions of dollars to try to reverse trends that have caused population decline. It will be the fourth consecutive year in 2023.
South Korea also has the worst gender wage gap in the OECD, with South Korean women taking home about two-thirds of their income compared to men.
“Women are typically unable to gain experience and advance in the workplace because they are often the only ones caring for children and are often required to return to work after a long break. ” said Professor Jeong Jae-hoon. At Seoul Women's University.
“Having a child is on my list, but there are opportunities for promotion and I don't want to pass up,'' said Gwak Tae-hee, 34, a junior manager at a Korean dairy product company who has been married for three years. . .
Last year, Kwak considered starting in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment to have a baby, but ultimately decided to volunteer on a work project to improve her career prospects.
“I don't know about other places, but you can't get a job at a Korean company just by working two or three days a week. I hope it's not too late to try next year or the year after,” Kwak said. Told.
South Korea's population crisis poses the biggest risk to economic growth and social welfare systems, with the country's population of 51 million expected to be halved by the end of the century.
South Korea previously predicted that the birth rate would likely fall further to 0.68 in 2024. The capital Seoul, which has the highest housing costs in the country, had the lowest birthrate last year at 0.55.
Ahead of April's general election, South Korea's major political parties pledged to expand public housing and ease loans to encourage childbirth, with the aim of allaying concerns that the nation will disappear due to a decline in the birth rate.
Marriage is considered a prerequisite for having children in South Korea, but the number of marriages in the country is also decreasing.
“Some people don't get married, but we're thinking about why married couples choose not to have children, and addressing that will be the focus of policy (to improve fertility). I understand,” he said. Officials from the Korea Statistics Bureau said at a press conference, without providing details.
Each party's focus on population in its election proposals means that spending more than 360 trillion won ($270 billion) on areas such as childcare subsidies since 2006 has failed to reverse record low birthrates. This reflects a heightened sense of caution after the incident.
South Korea is not the only country in the region struggling with a rapidly aging population. Neighboring Japan announced on Tuesday that the number of babies born in 2023 has fallen for the eighth consecutive year, hitting an all-time low.
Japan's birth rate hit an all-time low of 1.26 in 2022, and China also hit an all-time low of 1.09.
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(Reporting by Jihoon Lee and Cynthia Kim; Editing by Ed Davis, Jamie Freed and Raju Gopalakrishnan)