South Korea’s total fertility rate to fall to 0.68 next year

The government has forecast that South Korea’s total fertility rate will fall to some 0.6 next year, a record low below the 0.7 mark that has long been considered the "bottom" of the fertility rate.

According to the population projections for 2022-2072 released by Statistics Korea on December 14, the total fertility rate is expected to decrease to 0.68 next year and to 0.65 in 2025.

Statistics Korea predicted that the fertility rate will bottom out at 0.65 in 2025 and rebound to around 0.7 in 2027 before reaching 1.05 in 2040 and 1.08 in 2050.

In its population forecasts released in 2021, the agency predicted the country will see the lowest total fertility rate of 0.70 in 2024.

The situation is much worse compared to its projections in 2019, which expected the country’s total fertility rate to rebound in 2022. It predicted that the rate will bottom out at 0.86 in 2021 and rebound from the record low to over 1 in 2025.

In its latest projections, Statistics Korea predicted that the proportion of the elderly population will make up half of the country’s total population in 50 years.

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