The number of newlyweds is unlikely to reach 1 million this year

A citizen walks in front of a wedding dress shop in Ahyeon-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, on Nov. 11, after statistics showed that the number of newlyweds in their first to fifth year of marriage has fallen to around 1 million couples. Yonhap

The number of newlyweds decreased by some 70,000 from a year earlier and barely exceeded 1 million last year. At this rate, the number of newlyweds is unlikely to reach 1 million this year.

According to Statistics Korea on December 11, their number was some 1.03 million in 2022, down 6.3 percent (69,000) from the previous year.

The number of newlyweds has been decreasing every year. Their number decreased from around 1.32 million in 2018 to 1.11 million in 2021, and it barely passed the one million mark last year.

As people are increasingly avoiding marriage, the number of newlyweds in their first year of marriage stood at 186,000 last year, which was decreased by 3.2 percent (192,000) from a year earlier.

In addition, fewer couples are having children. Among newly married couples, 46.4 percent (378,000) had no children, up 0.6 percentage point from the previous year (45.8 percent). This is the highest since records began in 2015. As a result, the proportion of married couples with children decreased by 0.6 percentage points to 53.6 percent and the average number of children was 0.65, down 0.01 from a year earlier.

The proportion of couples with children was varied by their economic status. Married couples who do not have their own house or both of whom have jobs were highly likely to have no kids. The proportion of dual-income couples with children was 49.8 percent, which was 9.6 percentage points lower than that of single-income couples (59.4 percent).

There is also an increasing number of newlyweds having dual incomes. The proportion of newlyweds working together was 57.2 percent, up 2.3 percentage points from the previous year. The average annual income was 67.9 million won, up 6.1 percent from a year earlier, and the average income of dual-income couples (84.33 million won) was about 1.7 times higher than that of single-income couples (49.94 million won).

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.