Fertility rate falls to historic low of 0.65 in Q4 2023
The total fertility rate in 2023 plummeted to a record low of 0.72 per woman, with the number of newborns recorded at 230,000. It is projected that this year’s annual total fertility rate will decline further below 0.7, Statistics Korea said Wednesday.
The 0.72 figure is down from the previous year’s 0.78.
The quarterly fertility rate fell below 0.7 for the first time, with the rate for the last quarter of 2023 recorded at 0.65. This represents a decrease of 0.05 from the fourth quarter of 2022.
The number of births also reached a historic low, tallying at 230,000, compared to the previous year’s 210,800.
The total rate initially dropped to the one-child range in 1984, registering 1.74 children per woman, and has been on a gradual decline since. The rate dipped below one child per woman for the first time in 2018, with 0.98 children per woman, and reached 0.72 children per woman last year.
This marks the lowest rate recorded since Statistics Korea started compiling census data.
Korea is the only OECD member with a total fertility rate below one. The recent figure is also less than half the OECD average of 1.58 children per woman, based on the organization’s 2021 data.
The average age at which women are having children is progressively increasing. The average age for a woman giving birth to her first child is 33 years, while it is 34.4 years for the second child, showing an increase of approximately 0.2 years from the year before. Mothers aged 35 and above now make up over 36 percent of all births.
Notably, Sejong, previously one of the cities or provinces with a relatively higher fertility rate in Korea, recorded a rate of 0.97 last year. This marked an unprecedented situation where all 17 cities or provinces across the country registered fertility rates below one for the first time.
During the same period, the country’s population experienced a natural decline of 122,800 as deaths surpassed births. The trend of population decline has persisted since 2020 when Korea saw its first population decline.
“The decline to a 0.72 total fertility rate in 2023 is attributed to the ongoing reduction in marriage rates since the COVID-19 pandemic. It is anticipated that this trend will impact the rate this year as well,” Lim Young-il, head of the Population Census Division at Statistics Korea, said. “Based on our future population forecast we made last year, the rate was predicted to be 0.68 for this year, and it is expected to approach this estimate.”