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The country¡¯s birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The drop is the fastest in the world. If the trend continues, the population will drop some 8.69 million to 39.48 million by 2050, from 48.17 million as of 2005, the government forecast Monday.
The National Statistical Office said the number of newborns per woman of childbearing age (15-49) fell to 1.08 last year. A figure below 2.1 means the population is starting to decline.
The nation¡¯s birthrate experienced a dramatic fall from four or five in the 1970s to 1.59 in 1990 and set a new world record in 2001 with 1.3. ¡°If the rate continues to drop at this pace, Korea will become the lone nation in the world with a birthrate below 1 next year,¡± a Finance Ministry official said.
The government explained that more women wait longer to get married, mainly for economic reasons such as rising real estate prices and employment insecurity, and do not want to give birth. For the first time in the nation¡¯s history, the percentage of women in their 30s who gave birth was actually greater than that of women in their 20s, with 50.3 percent as against 47.7 percent.
A low birthrate is a serious social problem in many developed nations, but in most of them the rate has been slowly growing since 2001. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, rising minutely from 2.034 in 2001 to 2.048 in 2004, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74, France from 1.88 to 1.9 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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