Korea’s total fertility rate drops to zero percent range last year

South Korea’s fertility rate fell to a fresh historic low in 2018 – zero percent range -, adding woes the country’s future coupled with thinning in working population.

According to data from Statistics Korea on Wednesday, 326,900 babies were born last year, down 8.6 percent from 357,800 tallied a year ago, falling to a record low level since the agency began compiling related data in 1970. The number of births per 1,000 women also fell to the lowest level of 6.4 in 2018.

An unnamed official from Statistics Korea said that the significant drop in the country’s total fertility rate comes amid a 5 percent decline in the population of women aged 30 to 34 last year from a year ago.

The number of marriages also fell for a seventh consecutive year to 257,700 in 2018, down 2.6 percent from a year earlier, data showed. The on-year decline in the number of marriages in Korea has narrowed from 7 percent in 2016 and 6.1 percent in 2017, which also led the decline in the number of newborn babies to narrow from 11.9 percent in 2017 to 8.6 percent last year.

The rate of unmarried women in the 30-34 age group jumped from 10.7 percent in 2000 to 37.5 percent in 2015, data showed.

Korea’s total fertility rate, which is the number of children that would be born per woman during her lifetime, fell to the lowest of 0.98 in 2018, down 7.1 percent from 1.05 a year earlier. The rate hovered below 1 for three consecutive months, hitting 0.88 in the fourth quarter of last year ended December. Korea is the only country among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members whose total fertility rate dropped to below 1. The OECD average was 1.68 in 2016.

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