South Korea’s birth rate just crashed to another alarming low
Nothing that the South Korea government is trying to do to stem the country’s plunging number of births is working.
The latest data released today (Feb. 27) show that the fertility rate—the number of babies a woman is expected to have during her childbearing years—fell below 1 to 0.98,
a new low for the demographically challenged country.
That means that only 326,900 babies were born last year in the country of just over 51 million,
down 8.6% from the previous year.
The number of marriages recorded in 2017 fell 6.1% from the previous year to 264,500, the lowest level since record keeping began in 1970.
The 2018 number, which will be out later this year, looks set to be even lower than 2017, with just 230,800 marriages recorded in the first 11 months of the year.
Quartz
https://qz.com/1556910/south-koreas-birth-rate-just-crashed-to-another-alarming-low/