Women to Outnumber Men by 2030

In less than 10 years, women in Korea will outnumber men for the first time since the government began tallying such data in 1960.

There will be 99.8 men for every 100 women in 2030, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said on Sunday.

Some 49.9 percent or 25.9 million of the total population in Korea are women this year, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. There are 100.4 men for every 100 women.

The number of women living by themselves also increased more than two-fold to 3.3 million last year from 20 years ago, while the number of couples getting married for the first time has decreased by almost 40 percent to 167,000.

The average woman's healthy lifespan -- the number of years of life without illness -- increased by five years to 74.9 in 2019 since the turn of the century, and remains consistently above that of men.