Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/SEOUL: South Korea’s fertility rate hit a record low last year, marking yet another depressing milestone for the nation with the lowest projected birth rate per woman in the world.
According to the official yearly reading from Statistics Korea, the average number of expected infants per South Korean woman throughout her reproductive years decreased to 0.78 in 2022 from 0.81 a year earlier.
Lowest fertility rate
The fertility rate is the lowest among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which in 2020 had an average rate of 1.59, and far below 1.64 in America and 1.33 in Japan the same year.
Being married is considered a prerequisite to having children in South Korea, but marriages are also plunging amid sky-high housing and education costs. The country’s capital Seoul logged the lowest birth rate of 0.59.
