On the 19th of local time, President Yoon Seok-yul officially declared that Korea has entered a “national emergency state of population” while presiding over a meeting of the Committee on Low Birth Rate and High-age Society, and that the country will launch an all-out response system until the problem of low birth rate is solved.
Ultra-low birth rate triggers demographic crisis
South Korea declared a “population national emergency”
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of late marriages and non-marriages in Korean society, which has led to problems such as a serious aging population and a low fertility rate. According to a report on the outlook of the population situation released by Statistics Korea in December 2023, the population of Korea will peak at about 51.84 million in 2020, after which the number of deaths will exceed the number of births every year, and according to this law, it is estimated that the total population of Korea will fall to about 36.2 million in 50 years, of which nearly half will be elderly people aged 65 years and above, and that the country will enter a super-aging society at that time.
South Korea has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest fertility rates, a combination that presents the country with pressing demographic challenges. Official data show that the number of births in South Korea fell to a record low last year, even though the country has invested billions of dollars to encourage women to have more children and keep the population stable.
The data show that Korea’s total fertility rate, the average number of children per woman, will be 0.72 in 2023, the lowest level in history. This value is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population stability in the absence of inward migration.
With a declining birth rate and an aging population, Korea’s population will decline by 1 per cent per year in 30 years’ time, and the total population will fall below 20 million in about 100 years’ time.
Nearly a quarter of Korea’s elementary schools
Less than 60 students in school
On January 22 this year, the Korea Educational Development Institute (KEDI) released data showing that nearly a quarter of South Korea’s elementary schools have fewer than 60 students, and about one-tenth of elementary schools even have fewer than 30 students, due to a low birth rate.
Of the 6,175 elementary schools in South Korea, 1,424 had fewer than 60 students last year, accounting for about 23 percent of the total, about double the percentage in 2003, the Korea Times reported, citing related data.
In 2003, 610 out of 5,463 elementary schools in Korea, or about 11%, had less than 60 students.
According to the Ministry of Education’s assessment, the impact of the low birth rate will gradually spread from elementary schools to middle schools. There are currently 5.13 million elementary and secondary school students in Korea, and by 2026 the number will drop to 4.84 million, and by 2029 it will fall further to 4.27 million.
Raising childcare allowance, increasing public housing
South Korea’s measures to encourage “childbearing”
President Yoon Seok-yeol has proposed three key tasks to improve the fertility rate, namely, realizing work-family balance, reducing the pressure of childcare, and solving the housing problem. To this end, Yoon has put forward a number of policy ideas, such as improving the childcare leave system, increasing the use of childcare leave for men, and increasing the amount of childcare subsidies; the government will actively share the pressure of childcare on families, and will provide free education and childcare services for children between the ages of 3 and 5 within its term of office; and provide more preferential treatment for families who have given birth to children in terms of applying for a house and taking out a loan to purchase a house.
South Korea is reportedly planning to significantly raise the cap on parental leave allowances in the country’s latest move to encourage births. The maximum monthly allowance will be raised to 2.5 million won ($1,809) from 1.5 million won if one parent temporarily leaves work to care for a child, South Korea’s Finance Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. The program is in addition to measures already taken by South Korea to cope with the world’s lowest fertility rate, such as easing home loans and cheaper early education.
In recent years, the Korean government has spent nearly $300 billion on policies to encourage childcare, including cash subsidies and childcare services. However, the effect has not been obvious, and South Korea’s birth rate is still way down. Young people are reluctant to have children for a variety of reasons, including high housing costs and a competitive educational environment.
The South Korean government noted Wednesday that increasing housing is a priority among its policy steps. The South Korean government will also crack down on business practices that make weddings unaffordable and reform the visa system to encourage more immigration to the country.
According to South Korean media reports on June 12, recently, the city of Seoul, South Korea, introduced a new rule to deal with the low fertility rate, plans to provide 4,396 sets of public rental housing to newlyweds in the next three years from this year, and 4,000 sets per year after 2026, according to South Korean media reports. There are 36,000 newlyweds in Seoul every year, which means that 1/10 of them will be able to live in government public rental housing.
According to the report, the new regulations indicate that the more children a newlywed couple has after moving in as full rentals, the longer they will be able to live in the house, and they can also buy the house at 80 percent of the market price after 20 years. The new rules are aimed at alleviating the housing burden, which is the biggest obstacle that makes it difficult for newlyweds to have children.
One in four people own a pet
The pet market is bigger than the baby market
Compared to the declining birth rate, as of 2022, more than 5.5 million households and more than 12 million people in South Korea are keeping pets. The number of pet owners is close to a quarter of the total population of South Korea.
The size of the pet market in South Korea is rapidly overtaking the baby market in terms of food, strollers, medical and other products and services.
In the first five months of this year, 69 percent of sales of pet food and human infant formula came from pet goods, The Korea Times reported, citing data from e-commerce platform Gmarket.
Of the strollers sold by e-commerce platform Gmarket in the first three quarters of 2023, 43 percent were baby strollers and 57 percent were pet strollers designed mainly for dogs and cats. This is the first time that pet stroller sales have exceeded stroller sales in Korea.
Industry insiders expect the trend of the Korean pet care market overtaking the baby care market to become more pronounced in the coming years, with the size of the Korean pet market growing to 6 trillion won ($4.68 billion) in 2027.