Why South Korean women aren’t having babies
Neither she, nor any of her friends, are planning on having children. They are part of a growing community of women choosing the child-free life.
South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, and it continues to plummet, beating its own staggeringly low record year after year.
Figures released on Wednesday show it fell by another 8% in 2023 to 0.72.
This refers to the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime. For a population to hold steady, that number should be 2.1.
If this trend continues, Korea’s population is estimated to halve by the year 2100.