South Korea Faces Record Making Low Birth Rate Due To Late Marriages & Family Planning

The figures released by Statistics Korea last week revealed that South Korea experienced a rapid fall in the number of the babies born in 2017. It has come down below 4,00,000 for the first time, which is an alarming situation for the entire state. The average number of children born recorded 1.05, the lowest-ever fertility since 2005.

South Korea is presently considered the world's fastest aging developed nation and it has a population of mainly elderly people than younger people. The government statistics show that only 357,000 babies were born in 2017.

Why the decline?

In 2005, South Korea confronted a crashing of fertility rate figure to 1.08 but due to the government's multiple measures to increase childbirths, the figure rebounded between 1.1 and 1.2, as reported by The Chosun Media. However, the survey shows that the rate has once again come down as people postpone marriage, concentrate more on family planning including career, and married couples prefer fewer kids.

More deaths than births

The research further suggests that a rapid decline in the number of ageing population and obviously childbearing women have created such problems. As already mentioned above the number of births took place last year, the nation also faced the maximum number of deaths in 2017. Or it can be said that South Korea had seen more deaths than births for the first time ever.

The demographers also believe that due to the present generation's women, they tend to get married and have children at a much older age, in turn, the number of deaths has surpassed the number of births. 31.6 is the average age for the South Korean women having their first child. The government has recently taken one step to increase the low birth rate by reducing weekly working hours from 68 to 52. The researchers believe that the workaholic culture is highly responsible for reducing the birth rate every year.

Japan and Taiwan's similar problem

Apart from South Korea, Japan is also confronting the same birth rate problem. Japan's birth rate has fallen to its lowest in December 2017 since the records maintenance commenced in 1899 with around 941,000 newborns. Even Taiwan witnessed only 0.133 percent growth, the lowest population growth since the government started maintaining the records, Quartz revealed.