With South Korean society quickly aging and the country’s birth rate dropping to record lows, the national population is expected to peak at 52,958,000 by 2031. (image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – May 5 was South Korea’s first Children’s Day celebrated by a greater number of seniors than children, once again highlighting the country’s rapidly shifting demographics towards an aging society.
Using the OECD’s standard of working age population (from 15 to 64) to separate “children” from “elderly,” there were 6,873,722 South Korean children (0 to 14) as of March this year, 239,956 fewer than the number of elderly (65 and above) at 7,103,678, data from the Ministry of the Interior shows.
In May of last year, the numbers were 6,986,589 and 6,871,390, respectively, with the number of children higher by 115,199. The reversal took place in October.
Other records from Statistics Korea also indicate that the number of children (from 5 to 14) has been setting record lows for years.
In 1980, there were over 8.91 million children in South Korea, accounting for 23.4 percent of the country’s population. The number fell below 8 million by 1989 at 7.98 million, then dropped further to 6.99 million in 1995. By 2009, there were 5.95 million children representing 12.1 percent of the population.
The number of South Korean children continued decline, to 5.7 million in 2010, 5.54 million in 2011, 5.24 million in 2012, 5.08 million in 2013, and 4.91 million in 2014. Officials estimate the number at 4.58 million this year, accounting for 8.9 percent of the total population.
With South Korean society quickly aging and the country’s birth rate dropping to record lows, the national population is expected to peak at 52,958,000 by 2031. The government has invested near 100 trillion won ($88.2 billion) over the past decade (from 2006 to 2015) to remedy the situation, but with minimal impact.
South Korea recorded 1.17 births per woman in 2016.
By Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
