Culture
Why Did South Koreans Stop Having Babies?
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South Korea has the lowest birth rate of any country: 0.72 children per woman in 2023, down from 4.53 in 1970. More than 200 primary schools had no new first-graders this year. Why would a rich country stop having babies? From family-planning campaigns and the cost of raising a child to long work hours, the pay gap and fewer weddings, told alongside Ji-woo, a 32-year-old office worker in Seoul, and what Cambodian families can learn.
Key takeaways
- South Korea's fertility rate fell from 4.53 children per woman in 1970 to 0.72 in 2023, the lowest of any country; it rose slightly to 0.80 in 2025 (preliminary), still far below the 2.1 needed to keep the population stable.
- Births fell from about 1 million a year in 1970 to about 230,000 in 2023, and since 2020 more people die in Korea each year than are born.
- Raising a child to 18 in Korea costs about 7.79 times GDP per person, the highest in the world (YuWa Population Research, 2023), and in 2024 about 80% of pupils went to private cram schools (hagwon).
- Koreans work longer hours than the OECD average and Korea has the OECD's widest gender pay gap, about 29% in 2024; many women leave work after marriage or a baby.
- Since 2006 the government has spent more than 280 trillion won on raising the birth rate; experts say cash alone cannot fix the deeper causes: work culture, housing, school pressure and who looks after the child.
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Full video
38 min100coins≈ $1.00
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Sources
Original from: Cypher original
Photo: nsq, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
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