Tag: fertility rate

Tracking the Population Crisis

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/07/tracking-the-population-crisis.html

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South Korea only had 18,988 births in May, 2023 which is the lowest births since the agency started compiling the data in 1981. This was a drop of over 5% from May 2022. The number of deaths in the country moved up 0.2 percent over the period to 28,958, resulting in a natural decrease in population by 9,970. South Korea is losing about 120,000 people per year and the total birth is about 230,000 per year which is down from 705,000 from 1990 to 1994 and 669,000 from 1995 to 1999. However, after the 1997-98 Asian Economic Crisis, the number plummeted to an average of 500,000 in the early 2000s.

Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a new low of 0.78, the lowest among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and possibly the world.

Korea would need to triple its annual births to 700,000 per year to maintain and stabilize its population.

Statistics Korea expected people aged 65 and above will take up 20 percent of the population in 2025, marking a sharp rise from 18.4 percent estimated for this year.

The Korean government sees the next five years as critical to increasing fertility and salvaging the country.

Korea’s government is considering easing the burden of gift taxes exclusively for newlywed couples, by raising the minimum amount of cash they can receive from parents without being taxed to either 100 million won ($76,000) or 150 million won.

Several municipalities have also introduced similar programs. Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, held two couple matchmaking events in July for unmarried men and women who either live or work in the region. As a result, 39 couples found a match.

….

Japan is the world’s first “hyper-aged” country, where at least 21 percent of the population is older than 65, with projections predicting 40 percent of the population will be over retirement age by 2050.

Author(s): Brian Wang

Publication Date: 26 July 2023

Publication Site: Next Big Future

British marriage, zoomed out

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://blog.datawrapper.de/historical-marriage-age-britain/

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In the previous Weekly Chart, Elliot brought the data to confirm a commonsense impression: people these days are waiting later than their parents and grandparents did to get married and have children. The average age of a newlywed in the U.K. is 30.6 for women and 32.1 for men — about five years older than they would have been 1995, and nine years older than in 1964.

When we’re looking back in history, three generations is about as far as common sense can usually go. Those are the people whose lives we know firsthand. Many of us might have a general impression that women, especially, married young in the past, but we don’t actually have any 19th century friends or family to compare that impression against. Reading last week’s post, I was curious to see the older data that could fill in that gap.

Author(s): Rose Mintzer-Sweeney

Publication Date: 15 Jun 2023

Publication Site: Datawrapper

China’s population falls for first time since 1961

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64300190

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China’s population has fallen for the first time in 60 years, with the national birth rate hitting a record low – 6.77 births per 1,000 people.

The population in 2022 – 1.4118 billion – fell by 850,000 from 2021.

China’s birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.

But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an “era of negative population growth”.

The birth rate in 2022 was also down from 7.52 in 2021, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which released the figures on Tuesday.

In comparison, in 2021, the United States recorded 11.06 births per 1,000 people, and the United Kingdom, 10.08 births. The birth rate for the same year in India, which is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, was 16.42.

Deaths also outnumbered births for the first time last year in China. The country logged its highest death rate since 1976 – 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, up from 7.18 the previous year.

Author(s): Kelly Ng

Publication Date: 17 Jan 2023

Publication Site: BBC