Korea Baby Bust Pushes World's Lowest Birth Rate Even Lower
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South Korean leaders have spent several billion dollars a year recently to encourage people to have more babies, given the country’s bleak demographic outlook. Their efforts are bearing little fruit, new data show.
South Korea’s fertility rate -- the number of expected babies per woman -- fell to 0.98 in 2018, according to data released by the statistics office Wednesday. At 1.05 in 2017, it was already the lowest among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, far below Japan’s 1.43, France’s 1.86, and Israel’s 3.11.