Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Embedded Files
Sources – Korea is Over
Sources – Korea is Over
We thank the following experts for their input and critical reading:
Jisoo Hwang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Economics, Seoul National University
Hannah Ritchie, Ph.D.
Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development, at the University of Oxford.
– To have a stable population you need a fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman. In the 1950s South Koreans used to have 6 children on average. In the 1980s the rate fell below 2. And in 2023 it was 0.72 kids per woman, the lowest ever recorded in history – In Seoul fertility is even lower, around 0.55. On average, about half of the women here won’t have any kids and the other half just one.
Here and in the whole script we are using UN data and projections from the 2024 revision.
All data and future scenarios can be accessed from here:
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
https://population.un.org/wpp/
OWID provides easier to use graphical interfaces to the UN fertility data which we also used in preparation for this video.
#OWID. Population & Demography Data Explorer. 2024.
Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS) is the official statistical database for the Republic of Korea. Seoul’s total fertility rate in 2023 was reported to be 0.552 in KOSIS:
#KOSIS. Total Fertility Rates and Age-Specific Fertility Rates for Provinces. 2024.
The measure we are using in this video is Total Fertility Rate (TFR). It basically assumes all women in the given year have the same fertility. It is the most commonly used measure since it is easy to use because it gives a single number. Though it undermines the age structure of the population since the fertility rate of 19 year old women would not be the same as the 30 year old women. The age-specific fertility rate (ASFR) is another measure which better accounts for the difference in fertility of women in different age groups. ASFR, (also similar is Cohort fertility rates), are more stable because they are affected only by changes in the total number of children women have and not by the timing of births within women’s lives. TFR meanwhile may rise or fall if women have children earlier or later in their lifetime for some reason.
#Sloggett A (2015). Measuring fertility. In Population Analysis for Policy and Programmes. Paris: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. Retrieved September 2024.
http://papp.iussp.org/sessions/papp101_s04/PAPP101_s04_080_140.html
Quote: “The following table lists the main contrasts between the period and cohort approach to measuring fertility. Both have their own uses and applications and give a different view of the quantum of fertility. Together they allow a more rounded view of what is happening to fertility. Period fertility is by far the more commonly reported because it is “instant” and better understood by those without demographic training – so it becomes the default. However cohort fertility analysis frequently allows a more comprehensive picture to emerge.”
Following chart from the same source above demonstrates how TFR and cohort fertility rates can compare over the example of France:
Quote: “Some pages back we saw a graph of the period TFR plotted over a long series for France. Here it is again: Figure 6. France: Total period fertility rate by year with Cohort TFR superimposed for appropriate period”
#WHO. The Global Health Observatory. Total fertility rate (per woman). Retrieved September 2024.
https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/123
Quote: “Definition:
The average number of children a hypothetical cohort of women would have at the end of their reproductive period if they were subject during their whole lives to the fertility rates of a given period and if they were not subject to mortality. It is expressed as children per woman.
Method of measurement:
Total fertility rate is directly calculated as the sum of age-specific fertility rates (usually referring to women aged 15 to 49 years), or five times the sum if data are given in five-year age groups. An age- or age-group-specific fertility rate is calculated as the ratio of annual births to women at a given age or age-group to the population of women at the same age or age-group, in the same year, for a given country, territory, or geographic area. Population data from the United Nations correspond to mid-year estimated values, obtained by linear interpolation from the corresponding United Nations fertility medium-variant quinquennial population projections.”
#UN. Total fertility Rate. Retrieved September 2024.
Quote: “(a) Name: Total fertility
(b) Brief Definition: The average number of live births a woman would have by age 50 if she were subject, throughout her life, to the age-specific fertility rates observed in a given year. Its calculation assumes that there is no mortality.”
In the following you can find further reading about the two different measures and how to interpret them in the context of long term projections.
#Office for National Statistics UK. Fertility Assumptions. 2017. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/compendium/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedprojections/fertilityassumptions
Quote: “The age-specific fertility rate (ASFR) is the average number of children per woman, born to a group of women of a particular age in a particular year, normally expressed per thousand women.
The total period fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of children per woman that would be born to a group of women if they experienced the current year's age-specific fertility rates for each year of their childbearing years. This measure is referred to as the total fertility rate, or TFR, in this article.
The numbers of births for the projections are obtained by applying the appropriate fertility rate to the number of women at each age during each year of the projection period. Because cohort fertility rates are more stable than period rates, the fertility rates used in the projections are derived from assumptions relating to the year in which women were born. Cohort fertility rates are more stable because they are affected only by changes in the total number of children women have and not by the timing of births within women’s lives. Period rates, the total fertility rate, in contrast, may rise or fall if births are brought forward or delayed for any reason.”
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “Displaying changes at the intensive margin, Figure 1 plots the ASFR (panel a) and the CCF (panel b) for each cohort group, from 1961–1965 to 1981–1985, from vital statistics. Significant differences are evident across cohorts in childbirth timing (tempo effect) and the number of children born per woman (quantum effect). Panel a shows that the ASFR was highest among women aged 26 in the 1961–1965 cohort but among women aged 31 in the 1981–1985 cohort. Panel b shows that the average number of children per woman declined from 2 to 1.2 across cohorts. Although the youngest cohort’s fertility can be observed only until age 39, the flattening CCF curve suggests that women’s fertility may be nearly complete.”
#Schoen R. Relating Period and Cohort Fertility. Demography. 2022 https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/59/3/877/299239/Relating-Period-and-Cohort-Fertility
Quote: “From a population perspective, the trajectories of both the total fertility at successive time periods and the total fertility of successive birth cohorts are derived from the same array of age-specific fertility rates. This analysis uses the assumption of constant age-specific fertility proportions to derive new explicit relationships between period and cohort fertility. In short, period total fertility is approximately equal to the total fertility of the cohort born a generation earlier, with a modest additive adjustment. A simple relationship also links both period and cohort total fertility to ACF, the average fertility of the childbearing cohorts in a given year. Assuming that fertility levels follow a cubic curve, cohort values from the derived relationships are then compared to observed cohort fertility values for the United States in 1917-2019. Despite substantial violations of the constant proportional fertility assumption, the calculated values deviate from the observed values by an average of only 7-8%. Short-term projections suggest that U.S. cohort fertility will continue to decline.”
– What do these numbers actually mean in the real world? If fertility stays as it is, then 100 South Koreans will have 36 kids. When they grow up, they will have 13 kids, who then will have 5. Within 4 generations 100 South Koreans will turn into 5.
This is a simple calculation using the total fertility rate of 0.72 from 2023 and assuming it is going to stay the same for the next four generations:
Assuming half of our 100 people are women: 50 x 0.72 = 36
Half this 36 people being women: 18 x 0.72 = 13
Half this 14 people being women: 7 x 0.72 = 5
– If we look at today's South Korean population pyramid we see this is pretty real:
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/410
One can generate the same chart with 5 year age groups, which is what we have for this scene in the video. Unfortunately, the chart is not directly linkable from UN data portal. But we still add the screenshot and the link to it.
https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/46/locations/410/start/2022/end/2024/pyramid/pyramidagesexplotsingle?df=3c22ff30-b489-4301-b801-00b4fb3fc37e
– There is only one 1-year-old for four 50-year-olds.
In the following charts, one can compare the population of 1 year olds to 50 year olds in 2024.
Total number of 50 year olds = 432455 + 423216 = 855671
Total number of 1 year olds = 124914 + 118291 = 243205
855671/243205 = 3.5 which we rounded up to 4.
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
TFR in South Korea hit the replacement level of 2.1 in 1983 and didn’t move above that level since then:
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
– After 4 decades below the replacement level, the consequences were still largely invisible. Today South Korea's population is at an all-time high, as are its workforce and its GDP, which is still growing. But demographics hits you like a freight train, you hear it vaguely in the distance and then it runs you over. South Korea is about to be hit.
South Korea’s population peaked in 2020 so here we use “today” more meaning as "contemporary", not as specifically 2024.
#HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. Retrieved September 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1950..latest&country=~KOR
#OECD. Working age population. Retrieved September 2024.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/working-age-population.html?oecdcontrol-d6804ae080-var1=KOR
– When it comes to demographics, the most commonly used projections are those put together by the UN. They envisage 3 scenarios, low fertility, medium and high. But in the past, all medium UN projections for South Korea have consistently been too positive.
UN World Population Prospects has been the most commonly used projection. They publish revisions every other year and generate different scenarios. The most relevant and widely used projection is generally the Medium variant, and Low and High variants are simply o.5 lower and higher than the Medium one. Details of the methodology is beyond the scope of our video but it is explained in the following page:
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024. Definition of Projection Scenarios
https://population.un.org/wpp/DefinitionOfProjectionScenarios/
Quote: “Fertility scenarios: Eight of those scenarios differ only with respect to the level of fertility, that is, they share the same assumptions made with respect to sex ratio at birth, mortality and international migration. The eight fertility scenarios are: low, medium, high, constant-fertility, instant-replacement-fertility, no fertility below age 18 years, accelerated decline of adolescent birth rate (ABR), accelerated decline of ABR with recovery. A comparison of the results from these eight scenarios allows an assessment of the effects that different fertility assumptions have on other demographic parameters. The high, low, constant-fertility and instant-replacement scenarios differ from the medium scenario only in the projected level of total fertility. In the high scenario, total fertility is projected to reach a fertility level that is 0.5 births above the total fertility in the medium scenario. In the low scenario, total fertility is projected to remain 0.5 births below the total fertility in the medium scenario. In the constant-fertility scenario, total fertility remains constant at the level estimated for 2024. In the instant-replacement scenario, fertility for each country is set to the level necessary to ensure a net reproduction rate of 1.0 starting in 2024 (after taking into account the survival up to reproductive ages). Fertility varies slightly over the projection period in such a way that the net reproduction rate always remains equal to one, thus ensuring the replacement of the population over the long run. For the 2024 revision, three new scenarios were introduced to consider the potential impact of changes in fertility rates among adolescent women and girls: (1) The no fertility below age 18 years scenario assumes that fertility rates at ages below 18 years will immediately fall to zero in 2024 and remain at zero throughout the remainder of the century. (2) The accelerated decline of adolescent birth rate (ABR) scenario considers that fertility rates at ages below 20 decline by 20 per cent annually, beginning in 2024, until the adolescent birth rate falls below 10 births per thousand women aged 15 to 19 years. (3) The accelerated decline of ABR with recovery scenario assumes the same accelerated fertility decline as in the second scenario, but also that half of the reduction in fertility among women and girls younger than 20 years is recovered once those cohorts have aged 10 years (i.e., half of the reduced fertility among women aged 17 is recovered 10 years later among women aged 27)."
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024. Fertility Projections
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TFR/410
There are also other projections recently and brief comparison can be found in the following article:
#Ben Stallworthy. The World of Population Projections. 2024.
https://populationmatters.org/news/2024/04/the-world-of-population-projections/
Quote: “The UN Population Projections are generally considered to be the premier forecast for future population changes, with a pretty strong history of getting it right and the most widely cited. But there are others out there, and some would argue that these alternatives are based on stronger data and more robust modelling.”
– Between 2022 and 2023 alone, fertility in South Korea dropped by another 8%.
#OWID. Fertility rate: children per woman, 2022 to 2023. Retrieved September 2024.
– So we are going to use the latest LOW fertility scenario, which has been the most accurate in the last few years.
Data from the past revisions can be found in the following webpage:
#United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects.
https://population.un.org/wpp/publications?year=previous
We compiled the relevant information for South Korea.
Actual TFR for the time period 2015-2020 is 1.
TFR Projections for the time period 2015-2020:
Projections from 2012 Revision – Low Variant: 0.89 – Medium Variant: 1.39
Projections from 2015 Revision – Low Variant: 0.83 – Medium Variant: 1.33
Projections from 2017 Revision – Low Variant: 0.82 – Medium Variant: 1.32
Actual TFR for the time period 2020-2025 is 0.77 (until 2023).
TFR Projections for the time period 2020-2025:
Projections from 2012 Revision – Low Variant: 0.96 – Medium Variant: 1.46
Projections from 2015 Revision – Low Variant: 0.89 – Medium Variant: 1.39
Projections from 2017 Revision – Low Variant: 0.90 – Medium Variant: 1.40
Projections from 2019 Revision – Low Variant: 0.58 – Medium Variant: 1.08
Details of the methodology regarding the different projections can be found in the following document.
#United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024: Methodology of the United Nations population estimates and projections. UN DESA/POP/2024/DC/NO. 10, July 2024 [Advance unedited version].
https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2024_Methodology_Advance_Unedited.pdf
Quote: “Projections of future country-specific fertility levels are based in the demographic transition theory. Overall, there is a consensus that the historical evolution of fertility includes three broad phases: (i) a high fertility, pre-transition phase (phase I), (ii) a fertility transition phase (phase II), and, (iii) a low-fertility, post-transition phase (phase III). Figure II.1 illustrates the three phases of the fertility transition. For each country, the start of phase II was determined by examining the maximum total fertility during the estimation period from 1950 to 2023. Countries where this maximum was less than 5.5 births per woman were deemed to have entered phase II prior to 1950. All other countries were deemed to have entered phase II in the period of their local maximum. To find the end of phase II, and thus the beginning of phase III, first the TFR is averaged over 5-year time periods. Then for each country the time period is identified where the first two successive increases were observed, after the level of the averaged TFR had fallen below 2 births per woman. If no such increase was observed, a country was deemed to still be in phase II in 2023. If such increase was observed in the last time period, phase III was assumed to start in 2023. Otherwise, it is assumed that the country's phase III has started at the midpoint of such time period. Based on the most recent population and demographic data available, it was determined that all countries had begun or already completed their fertility transition, being in either phase II or phase III. Thus, fertility transition in these two phases were modelled separately, while phase I was not modelled in the 2024 revision. ”
Other studies with alternative projections criticized the methodology from UN WPP that allows fertility rebounds.
#Bhattacharjee, Natalia V et al. Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet, 2024. Volume 403, Issue 10440, 2057 - 2099
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00550-6/fulltext
Quote: “At present, an important source of fertility estimates and future forecasts for countries and areas throughout the world has been the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which most recently produced the 2022 Revision of World Population Prospects (WPP 2022).5 The UN Population Division estimates of past fertility are not compliant with the Guidelines on Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) statement in important respects; notably, they do not provide all code for statistical models or explicit details on criteria for exclusion or adjustment of primary data sources. Furthermore, the validity of UN Population Division projections has been questioned due to the assumptions applied in countries experiencing low post-transition fertility dropping below replacement level.9,10 Previous UN Population Division forecasts have assumed that, in such circumstances, fertility rates will increase towards replacement levels,11–13 and WPP 2022 assumes convergence to a rate that is a combination of country specific historical rates and the mean rate in low fertility countries that have experienced fertility increases.14 The WPP 2022 projects gradual increases in TFR even in countries that have shown no evidence of fertility rate increases, such as South Korea and Thailand.6,14–17 Additionally, UN Population Division models are based on TFR, which is a period measure and therefore does not account for change over time in fertility behaviours.”
You can find further reading for the accuracy of the UN projections.
#Hafiz T.A. Khan and Wolfgang Lutz. How well did past UN Population Projections anticipate
demographic trends in six Southeast Asian countries? 2007
https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/files/workingpaper_507.pdf
#Hannah Ritchie (2023) - “The UN has made population projections for more than 50 years – how accurate have they been?” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:
https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections
#Ron Duncan and Chris Wilson. Global Population Projections: Is the UN Getting it Wrong?*
2004. Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics No. 438
#Nico Keilman. How Accurate Are the United Nations World Population Projections? 1998
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2808049
#Nico Keilman. Data quality and accuracy of United Nations population projections, 1950-95. 2010.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00324720127686
– In 2060 South Korea’s population pyramid will look like this:
Population pyramids can be accessed from UN data portal. However, the site is not very userfriendly and the direct link crashes most of the time. so we tried another platform to link here.
#UN Data Portal Population Division.
https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/46/locations/410/start/2024/end/2060/pyramid/pyramidagesextimeplotssingle?df=8dd42275-6545-4863-afa8-1fa85499a07e
We computed the following population pyramid by entering the total fertility values from the Low Variant based on World Population Prospects 2024 Revision into the Free Simulation in the following platform.
#Institut national d'études démographiques
https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/population-games/tomorrow-population/
We assumed the Life Expectancy to be the same value across the simulation for simplicity. According to WPP it increases which would broaden the top part of the pyramid.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#explore-data-on-population-growth
Also, it might be partly the reason why the total population ends up being lower in our simulation than the Low Variant scenario.
– The population will have shrunk by 30%, 16 million South Koreans will have disappeared in just 35 years.
Current population is 51.68 million whereas 2060 population is projected to be 35.84 million which corresponds to a 15.84 million and 30% decrease.
It is easier to visualize using the following OWID chart based on UN, World Population Prospects 2024 data.
#OWID. Population & Demography Data Explorer. 2024.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#explore-data-on-population-growth
– And it will be the oldest country in human history. One in two South Koreans will be over the age of 65. Less than 1 in 10 will be under 25. And only 1 in 100 will be small children.
#Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldInData.org.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#explore-data-on-population-growth
– In 2023 a breathtaking 40% of South Koreans over 65 lived below the poverty line, but in 2060 this number may seem lovely in comparison.
#OECD (2023), Pensions at a Glance 2023: OECD and G20 Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris
https://doi.org/10.1787/678055dd-en
Quote: “Older people are more likely to fall below the relative income poverty threshold than other age groups. Across all OECD countries, 12.5% of people aged 66-75 and 16.6% of those aged 76+ are in relative income poverty, meaning that they have an equivalised disposable income below 50% of the median, compared to 11.4% of the total population (Figure 1.15). The relative income poverty rate is below 5% in eight countries in the 66-75 age group and in France, Hungary and Iceland in the age group above 75. In contrast, the Baltic states and Korea have relative income poverty rates around or above 25% in the age group 66-74 and even above 40% in the age group 76+ – with the notable exception of Lithuania. The Latin-American OECD members, Australia and the United States are also among the countries with elevated relative poverty levels among older people.”
– South Korea has one of the largest pension funds in the world, worth about $730 billion. But it is projected to stop growing in the 2040s and be completely depleted by the 2050s. So in 2060 pensions will have to be paid by the working population.
#Japan and South Korea are struggling with old-age poverty. The Economist. 2024.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/05/02/japan-and-south-korea-are-struggling-with-old-age-poverty
Quote: “This worsening ratio of workers to pensioners is putting strain on systems. South Korea’s pension fund grew to be the world’s third largest, worth over 1,000trn won ($730bn), because few qualified for a full pension until now. As the baby-boomers retire with a full working life’s worth of contributions, and too few workers pay in, that nest-egg will quickly vanish. The government estimates that the fund will stop growing by 2040. By 2055, it will be empty.
[...]
A South Korean on the OECD’s poverty line earns almost $22,000. That is still more than an average salary in Mexico. And this does not take into account asset wealth such as property. Still, in South Korea 63% of income-poor seniors have few assets. And Japan’s and South Korea’s pension systems are flawed.”
#Choi, J. H., & Kim, J. H. T. (2016). Designing an Alternative Public Pension Scheme: A Korean Case Study. Global Economic Review, 45(4), 380–404.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1226508X.2016.1166346
Quote: “Population ageing is a common phenomenon in OECD countries, but Korea is one of the fastest ageing counties in OECD due to its unprecedented low fertility rate and prolonged life expectancy (OECD, 2012). According to the Statistics Korea (2011), the ratio of the people who are over 65 to the total population has been consistently increasing from 7.6% in 2001 to 11% in 2010. This trend is ongoing as the ratio is expected to increase to 15.7% in 2020 and 24.3% in 2030. All these clearly indicate that the KNPS will face an extremely difficult problem of sustaining its public pension system for future generations. Figure 1 shows the forecast of KNPS fund. In the figure, the balance is about KRW 420 trillion (approx. USD 382 billion) as of 2013 and is projected that it will continue to increase until 2043 to |KRW 2561 trillion. However, it is expected to sharply reduce after 2043 and be completely depleted by 2060 (NPS Financial Projection Committee et al., 2013).”
– Estimates vary, but for a pension system to work, the minimum a society needs is between 2 to 3 workers per retiree paying for them with their taxes.
The ratio of retirees (>64 years old) to the working population (15-64 years old) is known as the old age dependency ratio. There is no single ideal number and it depends from country to country and also has changed in the last 50 years. But in most countries currently, it is less than 40%.
#Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
– But even if we assume that all South Koreans over 15 will be working in 2060, the country will have less than one worker per senior.
Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
– Workers will be unable to stem the incredible costs. So not only will poverty among the elderly be common, but a big chunk will be forced to work.
Retirement age has already been raised in South Korea and there are already more than half of elderly in the workforce.
#Dohun Kim. The Impact of Increase in Pension Age on Employment, Income and Consumption. KDI. 2022.
https://www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/reportView?pub_no=18064#
Quote: “Due to population aging and a relatively low contribution rate relative to high pension payments, a pension fund in Korea is financially unstable. To improve financial stability, the Korean government passed a law in 1998 that gradually increased the pension age from age 60 to 65 between 2013 and 2033. The purpose of the reform was to prolong the retirement age and delay the pension payment among the elderly. However, as the statutory retirement age has remained at age 60 since 2016, the gap between the statutory retirement age and pension age has widened. This widening gap has brought the need to explore whether and how people have been supplementing their income and consumption in the time of income crevasse.”
#Kim Ju-Yeon. Older Koreans flock to work as labor shortage solution. Korea JoongAng Daily. 2023.
Quote: “The economic activity participation rate among those aged 55 to 79 is 60.2 percent. It is the largest number to date since relevant statistics were first collected in 2005.
This can be explained as the combined result of the increase in physically healthier older people with higher life expectancy, and the increase in economic burdens such as living costs.
But most of the jobs for older adults are for work that require little or no experience or training, or consist of routine tasks. A total of 23.2 percent of the older workforce do unskilled work, and 13.9 percent work in the service industry.
This means that a large number of older workers are working in public sector jobs created and partially funded by the government, or in unskilled labor.”
–Today, South Korea has about 37 million people of working age, generating a GDP of about $1.7 trillion. But by 2060 its workforce will have shrunk to less than half, to about 17 million.
We took the values for 2023 ans assumed working Age population is the population 15-64 years old.
Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
#World Bank. GDP (current US$) - Korea, Rep. Retrieved 2024.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=KR
– Of course technological progress means that productivity will be higher and each individual will probably produce more than today. But even if productivity keeps growing at the same rate or more than we’ve seen in the last decades, South Korea’s GDP could peak in the 2040s. In other words South Korea will enter a permanent economic recession. There are more optimistic projections that see the recession begin as late as 2050, but they are based on the medium UN demographic scenario – and there are no signs that we are heading there.
#Christian Davies. Is South Korea’s economic miracle over? Financial Times. 2024
https://archive.vn/JDQeL#selection-2397.0-2411.271
Quote: “But economists worry that the government’s determination to double down on South Korea’s traditional growth drivers of manufacturing and large conglomerates betrays an unwillingness or inability to reform a model that is showing signs of running out of steam.
Having grown at an average of 6.4 per cent between 1970 and 2022, the Bank of Korea warned last year that annual growth is on course to slow to an average of 2.1 per cent in the 2020s, 0.6 per cent in the 2030s, and to start to shrink by 0.1 per cent a year by the 2040s.”
#Sam Kim. Bank of America Warns of ‘Super-Aging’ South Korea Losing Mojo. Bloomberg. 2024
Quote: “South Korea’s average economic growth rate will fall below 2% in the 2030s as aging demographics sap the nation’s vitality and strengthens headwinds for the economy, according to Bank of America projections.
The country has the world’s lowest fertility rate and that is sowing the seeds for a deterioration of its economic dynamism, fiscal health, innovation and monetary stability. In a report published Friday, BofA economist Benson Wu said South Korea’s demographics are “falling off the cliff” and may drive economic growth down to 1.8% in 2030-2039 and 1.1% in 2040-2049.
[...]
While lower growth would likely put downward pressure on interest rates, the need to ramp up fiscal spending would push them in the other direction, leaving the overall impact unclear, Wu said.
South Korea may also surpass Japan’s dependency ratio by 2055, Wu added. That’s faster than a 2060 projection by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The ratio refers to the number of dependents to the total working-age population.
South Korea’s National Pension Fund, the third biggest of its kind in the world, is expected to use up its funds by 2055.”
#OECD (2024), OECD Economic Surveys: Korea 2024, OECD Publishing, Paris
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-economic-surveys-korea-2024_c243e16a-en.html
Quote: “According to OECD simulations, if the employment rates for the 55-59, 60-64, and 65+ cohorts were to increase by one-third of the difference with the previous age group by 2040, total employment would be 8% higher in 2070 compared to the no-reform baseline scenario. This, in turn, would lead to a corresponding 8% higher level of GDP in 2070 (Figure 5.19, Panel A). Furthermore, if the pensionable age is increased beyond current plans and eventually linked to life expectancy, total employment in 2070 would be 14% higher compared to the scenario with higher elderly employment, resulting in a 12% higher level of GDP in 2070 (Panel A). The combined effect of higher elderly employment and longer working lives would significantly alleviate fiscal burdens, with the structural primary revenue required to stabilise debt decreasing by 7.8 percentage points of potential GDP by 2070 compared to the no-reform baseline scenario (Panel B).”
#In Do Hwang, Yunmi Nam, Won Sung, Seri Shim, Jiin Yeom, Byongju Lee, Harim Lee, Jongwoo Chung, Taehyoung Cho, Young Jun Choi and Seolwoong Hwang, Minkyu Son. Lowest-low Fertility and Super-aged Society: Causes and Impacts of the Extreme Population Structure, and Policy Options. 2023.
Quote: “17. Without appropriate policy responses to mitigate low fertility, South Korea’s trend rate of growth is likely to turn negative in the 2050s at 68% probability.
[...] Fertility variability from the present point onwards creates the uncertainty of the trend growth rate after 2045 (Figure 3.4). This delayed effect is due to the fact that it takes about 20 years for a newly-born cohort to join the labor force.115 The fertility rate variability is expected to exert a significant effect on the size of the Korean economy, causing a swing of ±2.5% in real GDP in the mid-2060s, as shown by the height of the dark-shaded area in Figure 3.3. The probability of below-zero trend growth was found to rise from 50.4% in 2050 to 79.0% in 2059, with the average for the decade (2050-59) standing at 68%. This probability is projected to exceed 80% in the subsequent decade, reaching 80.1% in 2060. It should however be noted that this analysis assumes that there will be no significant changes in factors affecting fertility in South Korea during the period studied, including policy responses and that the numbers reported are not official projections. Its results must therefore be interpreted with caution.”
– Today already about 20% of Koreans live alone. Also 20% report having no close friends or relatives.
Out of a population of 52 million people, 10 million roughly corresponds to 20%.
#The Korea Times. Single-person households hit all-time high of over 10 million. September 2024.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2025/02/113_372340.html
Quote: "The number of single-person households in the country peaked at an all-time high of over 10 million last month, a surge spurred by a rapidly aging population and a growing number of people opting to stay single, the interior ministry said Tuesday. The number of one-person households in the country stood at 10,021,413 in March, up from 9,981,702 in February, accounting for 41.8 percent of some 24 million households in total, according to resident registration data from the interior ministry."
#United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). Database on Household Size and Composition 2022. UN DESA/POP/2022/DC/NO. 8.
#OECD. Social Support. Retrieved September 2024.
Quote: “Social support is the share of people who report having friends or relatives whom they can count on in times of trouble.
Individuals who say they have family and friends they can count on to help them in times of trouble are consistently more likely to be satisfied with their personal health, and research has linked social isolation and loneliness to higher risks for a variety of physical and mental conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. Due to small sample sizes, country averages for horizontal inequalities (by age, gender and education) are pooled between 2010-20 to improve the accuracy of the estimates. The survey sample is ex ante designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 or over (including rural areas) This indicator is measured as a percentage of survey respondents.”
– By 2060, 50% of South Koreans aged 70 will have no siblings and 30% will have no children.
This is based on the assumption that half of the people who were born in the 1990s dont have siblings since TFR in the 90s was about 1.6. So we assumed half would have one sibling and the other half would not have any. We are aware that this is largely simplified, but please keep in mind that we are operating on a fictional scenario anyways.
#Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
A woman born in 1990 was 33 in 2023. In 2023, 33 years old was the mean childbearing age. And in 2023, TFR was about 0.7, meaning that on average 70% of women, and therefore couples, had 1 kid and the rest had none. We are aware that TFR and cohort rates might lead to differences in this calculation but we are going with a very simple estimation.
#KOSIS. Total Fertility Rates and Age-Specific Fertility Rates for Provinces. 2024
– Young adults between 25 and 35 will only make up 5% of the population and typically have no siblings at all.
Based on the Low-fertility variant, there will be about 2 million 25 to 35 year olds in 2060, which corresponds to about 5.5% of the 36 million of total population in 2060. Since they would be born between 2025 and 2035, when the fertility rate is less than 1, it is likely that most will not have siblings.
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
#Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#explore-data-on-population-growth
– In 2000 there were 17.5 million South Koreans between 25-45, and they made up 37% of the population.
Sum of all the numbers (in thousands) on the last column for all ages from 25 to 45 adds up to 17.5 million.
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/47/locations/410/start/2000/end/2000/table/pivotbylocation?df=70ca1e14-f374-4c17-b0e8-d007cea08715
#Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org.
– In 2060 there will be just 5.6 million people in that age group, and they will only be 16% of the population.
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
https://population.un.org/dataportal/data/indicators/47/locations/410/start/2024/end/2060/table/pivotbyage?df=8dd42275-6545-4863-afa8-1fa85499a07e
– we are already seeing this in Japan, which has almost 10 million abandoned houses in rural areas.
#Gavin Blair. Akiya houses: why Japan has nine million empty homes. The Guardian. 2024.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/akyia-houses-why-japan-has-nine-million-empty-homes
Quote: “As the declining population continues to impact Japan’s society and economy, the number of vacant houses has topped nine million – enough to accommodate the entire population of Australia at three people per dwelling.”
– Last but not least, South and North Korea are technically at war. And they could very well still be in 2060. Will South Korea still be able to afford to have its young men do 18 months of mandatory military service? Today 5% of men of combat age are enrolled in the military – in 2060 it would have to be 15% just to match today's numbers.
We estimated a half a million active personnel based on the various numbers reported through news outlets. There are 10 million men between ages 18 to 45 in South Korea. There will be 3.3 million in 2060 in the same age range by the Low Fertility projection.
#DW. Julian Ryall. South Korea party urges mandatory military service for women. 2024
https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-party-urges-mandatory-military-service-for-women/a-68204041
Quote: “At present, all able-bodied Korean men are required to serve at least 18 months in one of the branches of the nation's armed forces, but all female members of the military are volunteers.
[...]
At present, approximately 360,000 men and women serve in the South Korean ground forces, facing the 1.1-million-strong North Korean army across the heavily fortified border.
As the South's birthrate continues to decline, however, it is anticipated that its army will have a pool of 290,000 service personnel to call on in a decade and just 190,000 in 20 years from now. North Korea, however, will still have a standing army of more than 1 million men and women.”
#The Korea Times. Lee Hyo-jin. Can Korea tackle shrinking military manpower? 2023
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/08/113_361970.html
Quote: “As of 2022, the number of South Korea’s military personnel stood at 480,000, falling below the 500,000 benchmark for the first time, according to a report published in July by Cho Kwan-ho, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. The figure is about 40 percent of the size of North Korean troops, which is estimated at around 1.14 million.
In his report, Cho predicted that the size of the South Korean military will remain at an average of 470,000 troops over the next 10 years. But he projected the figure to decrease to 396,000 by 2038.
The anticipated decline in military personnel poses serious concerns to South Korea's national security, a country that remains technically at war with North Korea.”
#Terrence Matsuo. Korea Economic Institute of America. South Korean Conscription and the Challenges of a Declining Population. 2023
Quote: “Although many advanced states face demographic challenges, it is especially acute for the Korea and its military. Korea’s working age population began to decline in 2017 and the overall population in 2020. According to Korean government statistics from 2022, the total fertility rate of a Korean woman declined to 0.78 and was the lowest among states in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. These broader trends in Korean society are expected to lower the pool of men eligible for conscription. Based on current defense policies and demographic trends, Korea will have only 220,000 men eligible for conscription by 2025, despite the official target to have at least 260,000 enter the military every year. Since it is unlikely Korea’s security situation will improve, policymakers must use its human resources as effectively as possible.”
#Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. Official Salutes South Korea’s ‘Very Strong’ Military. Jim Garamone. Retrieved September 2024.
Quote: ”South Korea has a formidable force of its own with about 625,000 service members on active duty and about 3 million in reserve, he said. South Korea has military conscription.
The South Koreans also have an economy to buy and maintain modern military equipment, the official said.”
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
– Let’s say fertility in South Korea magically triples to the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman and stays there. In 2060 it will be an inverted pyramid on top of a barrel. And there would still only be 1.5 people of working age per senior over 65.
According to the Instant replacement level fertility scenario, there would be about 27 million people in the age group 15-64 years old, whereas there would be 17.4 million 65+ people in 2060 - which gives a ratio of 1.5
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024.
Quote: “5. Instant-replacement assumption
Under the instant-replacement variant, for each country, fertility is set to the level necessary to ensure a net reproduction rate of 1.0 starting in 2020-2025. Fertility varies over the remainder of the projection period in such a way that the net reproduction rate always remains equal to one ensuring, over the long run, the replacement of the population21 . Mortality and migration assumptions are the same as those in the medium fertility variant.”
We can simply translate the net reproduction rate of 1.0 to a total fertility rate of 2.1 assuming a balanced distribution of sex.
#UN, World Population Prospects 2024. Glossary of Demographic Terms. Retrieved September 2024.
https://population.un.org/wpp/GlossaryOfDemographicTerms/
Quote: “Net reproduction rate: The average number of daughters that female members of a birth cohort would bear during their reproductive life span if they were subject throughout their lives to the observed age-specific fertility and mortality rates of the given time period. It is expressed as the number of daughters per woman.”
– In 2024 births rose for the first time in 9 years – 3% more than in 2023.
#Jihoon Lee. South Korea birthrate rises for first time in 9 years, marriages surge. Reuters. February 26, 2025.
Quote: "SEOUL, Feb 26 (Reuters) - South Korea's fertility rate rose in 2024 for the first time in nine years, supported by an increase in marriages, preliminary data showed on Wednesday, in a sign that the country's demographic crisis might have turned a corner.
The country's fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life, stood at 0.75 in 2024, according to Statistics Korea."
#Julian Ryall. South Korea records birth rate rise. DW. March 4, 2025.
https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-records-birth-rate-rise/a-71812274
Quote: "After nearly a decade of birth rates in steady decline, South Korea reversed that trend to report a significant uptick in newborns in 2024.
Announced by the government-run Statistics Korea agency on February 26, a total of 238,300 babies were born last year, up 3.6% from a record low of just 230,000 in 2023.
And while the increase is certainly grounds for celebration in a nation that is recognized as one of the most rapidly contracting and aging in the world, analysts caution that the rebound is the result of a series of unique factors and that the longer-term outlook remains bleak.
"South Korea's population crisis is just beginning," said Hyobin Lee, a professor at Sogang University in Seoul.
"With a total fertility rate that is still below 1.0, the situation is becoming increasingly severe and I believe that fewer people will choose to have children in the future," she told DW. "Gender conflicts are also intensifying and economic inequality is worsening."
According to Statistics Korea, the nation's total fertility rate, or the average number of children that a woman will give birth to during her lifetime, rose from 0.72 in 2023 to 0.75 in 2024. Yet that figure is still short of the rate of 2.1 children per woman that is generally considered necessary to maintain a stable population."
– In general, as societies get richer, more educated, and child mortality plummets, people decide to have fewer kids.
There are a multitude of factors affecting fertility rates, however the most pronounced ones, also the ones that are used in projection scenarios, are women’s educational attainment and child mortality.
#Max Roser (2014) - “Fertility Rate” Published online at OurWorldInData.org.
Quote: “As societies have modernized, fertility rates have declined very substantially. In the pre-modern era, fertility rates of 4.5 to 7 children per woman were common. At that time, the very high levels of infant and child mortality kept population growth low.
As health has improved and the mortality in the population has declined, we’ve typically seen accelerated population growth. But the global average fertility rate has halved from around 5 in the 1960s to around 2.4 in 2021. Rapid population growth then comes to an end as the fertility rate declines.1
On this page, we present global data on fertility rates, followed by research summarizing answers to questions such as why this decline has occurred.
Some particularly important factors have been 1) the empowerment of women in society and relationships — through education, labor force participation, and strengthening women's rights — and 2) the increased well-being and status of children.”
– South Korea lifted itself out of poverty in record time, but in doing so it developed a unique kind of workaholism and extreme competitiveness.
#Republic of Korea: Four Decades of Equitable Growth. A case study from Reducing Poverty, Sustaining Growth – What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why. A Global Exchange for Scaling Up Success. Scaling Up Poverty Reduction: A Global Learning Process and Conference Shanghai, May 25-27, 2004
Quote: “Korea’s success in combining rapid economic growth with significant reductions in poverty is paralleled by few other countries. At the beginning of its development drive, Korea’s poverty problem was as great as that of most other developing countries. What is remarkable is the speed by which, and the degree to which, Korea succeeded in bringing the problem down to an extremely manageable size. The effort had been successful by the end of the 1980s; after a hiatus in 1997ñ98 resulting from the East Asian financial crisis, the poverty rate again declined. The countryís achievement is even more impressive considering that less than 25 percent of the country is usable for agriculture or other economic activity and that Korea possesses very few natural resources. The country also experienced a devastating civil war in which the major part of its infrastructure was destroyed. Korea’s success was brought about almost entirely by adopting good economic policies, taking advantage of opportunities that presented themselves, and insisting on a disciplined work effort. That strategy has been maintained since the early 1960s. The primary lessons to be learned from Koreaís experience are that properly designed and efficiently implemented policies are vital to economic success; that such actions can overcome even a severe shortage of natural endowments; and that the dramatic transformation of per capita incomes on the scale witnessed by Korea does not happen overnight, but demands a sustained commitment.”
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “As a legacy of the labor-intensive high-growth era, Korea has an intense work culture. Korea has the fourth-longest working hours among OECD countries. Overtime work is frequent, and employers highly value workers’ loyalty and commitment (Brinton and Oh 2019; OECD 2021b). Hence, workers find it difficult to use policies such as parental leave without concerns about discrimination in the workplace (Moon and Shin 2018).”
– Although the work week is 40 hours and the legal maximum is 52 per week, unpaid overtime is normal for many and the government even proposed to raise legal work time to 69 hours per week.
#Raphael Rashid. Death from overwork: young Koreans rebel against culture of long hours. The Guardian. 2023.
Quote: “The last straw for some came in March with the government’s proposal to revise the working hours system, permitting up to 69 hours a week. The current law allows the basic 40-hour working-week principle to be applied to companies, with overtime limited to a maximum of 12 hours, though exceptions do exist.”
– Despite this, South Korea has relatively low wages and a high cost of living.
#Jung Suk-yee. Bank of Korea Highlights South Korea's Cost of Living at 55% Above OECD Average. BusinessKorea. 2024.
https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=219361
Quote: “The Bank of Korea (BOK) has released a comprehensive report on June 18, highlighting the significant rise in the cost of living in South Korea, which now stands at 55% higher than the OECD average. The report, titled "Characteristics and Implications of Our Country's Price Levels," underscores the growing disparity in price levels for essential goods and services, including food, clothing, and housing, compared to other OECD countries.
According to the BOK, food prices in South Korea have surged to 55% above the OECD average, while clothing and footwear are now 61% more expensive. Housing costs have also seen a notable increase, being over 20% higher than the OECD average. In contrast, public utility rates, including electricity and water, remain 27% cheaper than the OECD average.”
#OECD. Average annual wages. Retrieved September 2024.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/average-annual-wages.html
Quote: “Average annual wages are the annual rates paid per employee in full-time equivalent unit in the total economy. Average annual wages are calculated by dividing the national-accounts-based total wage bill by the average number of employees in the total economy, which is then converted in full-time equivalent unit by applying the ratio of average usual weekly hours per full-time employee to that of all employees.”
#OECD (2024), OECD Economic Surveys: Korea 2024, OECD Publishing, Paris https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-economic-surveys-korea-2024_c243e16a-en.html
Quote: “Among unmarried individuals aged 19 to 34, 41% of men and 26% of women identify financial constraints as their primary deterrent to getting married. As discussed above, childcare is largely free, but subpar quality, limited accessibility, and short opening hours lead many working parents to spend extra money on babysitting. Furthermore, housing, education and tutoring are expensive despite various types of financial transfers to families with young children (Box 5.3). More than half of young people (51.2%) think that they have to own a house to get married, especially in big cities (KRIHS, 2023). However, the housing price-toincome ratio in Metropolitan areas increased from 6.7 in 2012 to 10.1 in 2021 (KOSIS, 2023), making home ownership challenging to achieve for young people.
[...]
Enhancing the labour market outcomes of young people would improve their ability to afford housing, but the role of housing policies should not be overlooked. An empirical study showed that the doubling of housing prices between 2013 and 2019 reduced the likelihood of people getting married by between 4 and 5.7% (Kang, 2022). An empirical study in OECD countries also found that increases in household expenditure on housing had a significant and negative effect on fertility rates (Fluchtmann et al., 2023).”
– Real estate in big cities is out of reach for most people.
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “Moreover, housing prices increased substantially. During the past decade, the housing price-to-income ratio rose from 3.9 to 5.1 times in cities and from 8.6 to 12.9 times in the capital city, Seoul (Korea Real Estate Board 2022).7 The market is also rigid because the common type of lease in Korea is not a monthly rent but rather a large lump-sum deposit (jeonse), typically more than half the market value.8”
#OECD (2024), OECD Economic Surveys: Korea 2024, OECD Publishing, Paris https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-economic-surveys-korea-2024_c243e16a-en.html
Quote: “Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the OECD (OECD, 2021b). In particular, many parents flock to popular areas such as Gangnam and Seocho, where good schools and high-quality private education providers are concentrated (Jones, 2020). This, along with the increase in single-person households over the past 20 years, has increased demand for housing in Seoul. However, supply has not followed suit, resulting in rising prices (BOK, 2021). The housing supply rate in Seoul (the ratio of the total number of housing units to the total number of households) has decreased since 2016, and stood at 93.7% in 2022 (Statistics Korea, 2023). According to Statistics Korea, the total number of households nationwide is expected to increase until 2039 despite the population decline, due to increasing numbers of single person households. This means that the supply of housing to meet new demand must steadily increase at least for the next 15 years to improve the balance between supply and demand.
The government's strategy to boost the supply of housing includes providing 2.7 million homes nationwide and 1.58 million homes in the Seoul metropolitan area from 2023 to 2027, a 32% increase compared to the addition to housing supply from 2018 to 2022. In contrast to the prior administration, the plan aims to invigorate private housing supply by simplifying regulations and procedures. Notably, the government lifted presale price caps in most areas of Seoul, a longstanding practice in Korea aimed at stabilising housing prices for privately-built new apartments. Additionally, some reconstruction regulations were eased. However, due to the recent real estate downturn (Chapter 2) and escalating construction costs, housing starts decreased by 37% nationwide and 56% in Seoul in 2023 compared to the previous year. Given the two to three-year construction timeline, this implies a 37% reduction in new units available for occupancy in 2025, potentially exerting upward pressure on market prices going forward.”
– The cost of education is extremely high, since families have to pay for private lessons if they want to send their kids to a high tier college.
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “The economic slowdown and greater labor market uncertainty intensified competition for elite university admission and stable jobs, increasing the educational cost of raising children (Anderson and Kohler 2013; Kim et al. 2021). For instance, 75% of students in elementary, middle, and high school received private out-of-school education (e.g., cram school, private tutoring) in 2021, and the average monthly expenditure per student increased from $230 in 2007 to $292 in 2021 (Ministry of Education 2010, 2022).5 Among married households with the oldest child aged 6–17 in 2019, the share of household expenditure on education was 14.1% in Korea compared with 3.3% in the United States (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013–2020).6 The proportion of spending on tertiary education funded by households is also one of the highest among OECD countries, at 41.4% in 2018; this rate is similar to that in the United States (44.6%; OECD 2020b).”
– All of this while South Korea spends less on family benefits than most other rich countries.
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “From an international standpoint, however, Korea’s public family spending still remains low relative to that in other developed countries. In 2017, this spending was 1.1% of GDP compared with the OECD average of 2.1% (OECD 2019). Short primary school hours relative to parents’ long working hours result in gaps in childcare. ”
#Randall S. Jones. Korean Policies to Reverse the Decline in the Fertility Rate Part 1: Balancing Work and Family. KEI. 2023
– Old fashioned cultural norms make matters even worse. Marriage is all but mandatory if a couple wants to start a family – in 2023 only 4.7% of babies were born to unmarried women.
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “Lastly, the decoupling of marriage and childbirth in Korea occurred because of childless marriages, not nonmartial childbearing. In the United States and Europe, this link became weaker through a change in the temporal ordering of marriage and pregnancy or because cohabitation overtook marriage as a form of partnership: 40% of births in the United States and above 50% of births in France and Sweden occur outside of marriage (OECD 2020a). In Korea, extramarital births remain rare, at approximately 2%. Although childbirth need not follow marriage, the temporal ordering remains intact, distinct from the second demographic transition (Lesthaeghe 2010).”
#Julian Ryall. South Korea: How babies out of wedlock break tradition. DW. September 18, 2024
https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-how-babies-out-of-wedlock-break-tradition/a-70248284
Quote: "The fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman will have during her lifetime, also fell to a new low of 0.72, down from 0.78 in 2022. To ensure that South Korea's population remains stable, the fertility rate needs to be at 2.10.
However, some 10,900 babies were born to women who were not married or in a civil partnership, accounting for 4.7% of the total and the highest number since statistics were initially collected in 1981. And while that figure may be relatively small in comparison with other nations, it has continued a recent rise from 7,700 out-of-wedlock births in 2021 and 9,800 in 2022."
– Out of all developed countries, South Korean men do just about the least share of housework and childcare within their families. This leaves women with a disproportionate amount of work if they want to keep their jobs after a pregnancy. While many men are overwhelmed by the societal expectation to be the main breadwinner and have successful careers.
#Hwang J. Later, Fewer, None? Recent Trends in Cohort Fertility in South Korea. Demography. 2023
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720261.pdf
Quote: “Meanwhile, as a legacy of Confucianism, Korea has patriarchal, traditional gender norms: men are assumed to be the main breadwinner, and women are assumed to be the main caretaker. According to the 2017–2018 World Value Survey, more than half of Koreans agree with the statements “Men should have more right to a job than women” and “[A] pre-school child suffers with working mother” (53% and 65%, respectively). By contrast, in the United States, only 5% and 21%, respectively, agree with these statements. Time-use data also depict traditional gender roles (Hwang et al. 2019). Among dual-earner couples with a young child, mothers spend an average of 3.6 hours more per day on housework and childcare than fathers in Korea (Choi 2018) compared with 1.2 hours more in the United States (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020).10
These cultural features and the previously noted economic and policy factors can make balancing work and family very difficult in Korea. Many women work to make a living or to pursue a career. However, the workplace is not family-friendly, and the household is not work-friendly for mothers.11 Public support for families has expanded, but it remains insufficient to address these dual responsibilities of work and childcare. In Korea’s 2020 Local Area Labour Force Survey, 43% of married women who quit work reported childcare as the reason. The female labor force participation rate continues to dip around women’s childbearing age (Figure A3).”
– Demographic collapse is not an abstract thing in the future, it is happening right now. And it is not just South Korea. In 2023 China had a fertility rate of 1.0, Italy and Spain 1.2, the UK 1.6, Germany 1.4 and the US 1.6 – which sounds so much better doesn’t it? Well, after four generations, a fertility rate of 1.6 means 60% fewer new people. A fertility of 1.2 means 87% fewer people. And fertility rates are still falling, with no sign of stabilization or recovery.
Falling fertility rates are not isolated to South Korea. Most countries are expected to fall below replacement level by the end of the century. This will have fundamental global implications in every aspect from social to economic.
Following study is an alternative projection to WPPs by the UN. Even though they have different methodology, they also predict falling fertility rates, generally speaking lower than the values WPP 2022 reported.
#Bhattacharjee, Natalia V et al. Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet, 2024. Volume 403, Issue 10440, 2057 - 2099
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00550-6/fulltext
Quote: “The aforementioned changes in fertility over the coming century will have profound effects on populations, economies, geopolitics, food security, health, and the environment, with a clear demographic divide between the impacts on many middle-to-high-income locations versus many low-income locations. For nearly all countries and territories outside of sub-Saharan Africa, sustained low fertility will produce a contracting population with fewer young people relative to older people before the end of the 21st century. These changes in age structure are likely to present considerable economic challenges caused by a growing dependency ratio of older to working-age population and a shrinking labour force.41,42 Unless governments identify unforeseen innovations or funding sources that address the challenges of population ageing, this demographic shift will put increasing pressure on national health insurance, social security programmes, and health-care infrastructure. These same programmes will receive less funding as working-age, tax-paying populations decline, further exacerbating the problem.43,44”
Choice of having children depends on a multitude of factors and therefore there is no single policy solution. Increasing support with childcare can help for example people to have children when they want to, but it would not help with other barriers like cost of housing or long working hours. Also every country has its own needs, some pro-natal policies can help to increase fertility rates in some countries, but in countries where the same policies are already in place there might be other reasons.
OECD (2024), Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/918d8db3-en.
Quote: “The prevailing balance of these family policy objectives varies across countries, and while pro-natalist notions fuelled by low fertility rates may be an important driver of policy development in, for example, Japan, Hungary and Korea, they play no discernible role in, for example, British or Dutch policy development, notwithstanding concerns about demographic trends (Staatscommissie Demografische Ontwikkelingen 2025, 2024[163]). Increasingly families need two adults in paid work to sustain household income. Countries like Denmark, France, Norway and Sweden have comprehensive policies supporting the reconciliation of work and family life through the provision of a continuum of support including paid parental leave provisions and investment in ECEC, and these countries spend more than 3% of GDP on family supports. Until recently these countries were relatively successful in sustaining fertility rates at a level just below replacement level. However, by 2022/23, in many of these countries the TFR had fallen to around the OECD average. By contrast, Hungary increased spending on family benefits to over 3% of GDP and raised the TFR to the OECD average over the past 10 years. Clearly, work and family policies on their own are not enough to explain the cross-national variation in fertility rates.”
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#explore-data-on-population-growth
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