S.Korean newly married couples’ birth rate at record low

South Korea’s fertility rate among newly married couples, who account for most of the country’s newborns, hit a trough last year, adding to concerns over worsening labor shortages due to the low birthrate and aging in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

The fertility rate of couples in their first marriages for five years or less as of Nov. 1, 2022, fell to an all-time low of 0.65, Statistics Korea said on Monday. The rate has been declining since 2015 when the statistics office started compiling the data.

It is also taking longer for such couples to produce offspring. Newly married husbands and wives spent an average of 17.9 months to have their first baby, the longest of the years recorded, according to the data. It took 15 months in 2015 and 16.1 months in 2019.

Those couples without children accounted for a record high of 46.4% of the total, up 0.6 percentage point, while those couples with one child or more fell to 53.6%.

The number of newlyweds fell to an all-time low of 1.03 million with steady drops from 1.47 million in 2015.

“The decline of couples in their first marriages of five years or less, who account for more than 80% of newborns a year, directly affects the population,” said Lee Sang-Lim, a research fellow at the Center for Population Monitoring and Assessment of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

“We need to improve the working environment and reform the labor system for work-family balance to create an environment in which newlyweds can have children.”

DINK

Couples with two incomes in their first marriages of five years or less reached a record high amid an economic slowdown.

Dual-income families accounted for 57.2% of those couples last year, up 2.3 percentage points from 2021, according to the statistics office. The rate has been steadily growing from 42.9% in 2015, exceeding the 50% level in 2020.

Households with "double income, no kids" (DINK) made up 50.2% in 2022, staying above half for a second straight year with 50.4% the previous year. Couples with double incomes had only 0.54 child on average, lower than the 0.73 of households with single incomes.

Home ownership also had an impact on the birth rate. Among the total couples in their first marriages for five years or less who owned homes, only 49.5% had children, 10.1 percentage points lower than couples with children.

FURTHER DROP

South Korea’s total fertility rate also hit a trough of 0.7 in the third quarter of this year, matching the record in the previous three months. The rate is expected to fall below this record level in the fourth quarter.

Given such a low birth rate, the country’s population was forecast to drop 11.7% to 45.77 million in 2050 from 51.81 million in 2022, according to the United Nations.

The nation’s working-age population was predicted to drop 34.8% to 23.98 million during the period, slashing its gross domestic product by 28.4%, the intergovernmental organization said.

The government is trying to boost birth rates but additional measures such as those facilitating more immigration are necessary to change the trend, experts said.

South Korea is set to raise its visa quota for non-professional foreign workers to a record high and expand the sectors in which they can work.

Write to Se-Min Huh, Kyung-Min Kang and Sang-yong Park at semin@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.