Elderly people will make up half of South Korea’s population in nearly 50 years

Young people will account for just 6.6 percent of the population this year, Statistics Korea data showed on September 23, as the country continues to struggle with a low birthrate. The demographic crisis will put a greater burden on working-age youths to support the elderly.

Excluding immigration, countries need a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population – while its fertility rate fell to 0.72 in 2023, predicted to fall further to 0.68 in 2024.

By 2072, South Korea’s population will be 36 million, down 30.8 percent from this year’s estimated 52 million. The proportion of people aged 65 and over is expected to increase from 19.2 percent in 2024 to 47.7 percent.

“The data shows that nearly one in two South Koreans will be elderly in 50 years,” the statistics office said. “Another notable finding is that the proportion of elderly people in South Korea in 50 years will be twice as high as the global average.”

South Korea’s low birth rate is due to a competitive labor market and the widest gender pay gap among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

However, the wage gap is only a minor factor. South Korean women choose not to have children because of notoriously long working hours, the difficulty of finding affordable housing, especially in Seoul, and the falling marriage rate. Many industries in South Korea require employees to work overtime, creating barriers when balancing work and child-rearing.

Having children in South Korea also comes with some relatively unique constraints, says Jennifer Sciubba, president and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. For example, education is extremely expensive in the country, which sometimes makes families reluctant to have more children.

Although South Korea offers both parents paternity leave, few men and women take advantage of it because of employer expectations in a high-pressure work culture, according to Dr. Megan Huchko, an obstetrician-gynecologist and director of the Center for Global Reproductive Health at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Few children are born outside of marriage, she added, so the marriage rate has fallen, leading to a decline in birth rates.

Some commentators link South Korea’s birth trends to a radical feminist movement that began in 2019. Proponents of the 4B (4 No) movement reject four traditional norms: dating men, marrying, having sex with men, and having children. The movement has attracted about 3,400 members on Naver, South Korea’s most popular online forum.

Births are also trending down in other developed countries, like the United States. The country’s fertility rate is expected to be 1.62 children per woman in 2023, 2% lower than in 2022, a historic low, according to data released in April by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“However, South Korea still has the lowest birth rate in the world,” said Hugo Jales, associate professor of economics at Syracuse University in New York.

He published a report in December 2021 in the Asian Economic Journal on South Korea’s child-preference program. Examining the impact of the policy, Jales and his co-authors found that more than 74% of the program’s payments went to families who would have had children even without the financial incentive.

To encourage people to have children, the South Korean government plans to expand birth incentives, increase parental leave and housing benefits for families with infants. Officials hope to increase monthly subsidies to 1 million won ($770) for households with children under 1 year old, and 50,000 won for those with children 1 to 2 years old.

American Italy (Theo The Korea Times)