South Korea’s population is set to shrink 74% by 2100, from 51.7 million to just 13.5 million. With a fertility rate of 0.75, the lowest in the world, the country faces a population collapse in future.
South Korea, world’s 13th largest economy, has seen rapid increase in income levels over past many decades. However, the future is uncertain.
As population declines, there will high fewer workers and aging population (with higher cost for healthcare, social security).
Despite govt incentives like cash bonuses, parental leave, birth rates haven’t risen much (there was a slight jump from 0.73 to 0.75 in 2024). High living costs, long work hours and traditional attitudes towards family/childcare are some of the reasons why people are avoiding having children.
The graph compares three demographics in range of ~15 years, to a group spanning across 40 years, it would be much better if the 25-64 would be split into 25-40/40-65.
More than 50% retirement age would be wild.
Someone’s been watching kurzgesagt. But yeah it’s looking bleak for them
I’m genuinely curious here: wouldn’t the short term economic gains from reducing productivity losses related to parenthood outweight the long term consequences of not having enough workers? Especially when we consider how fast automation is advancing, along with the big shifts happening in the labor market and in consumer behavior?
It seems like there are two almost contradictory narratives. On one hand, we hear warnings about population decline and labor shortages, and on the other, concerns about automation leading to a surplus of unneccesary both skilled and unskilled workers. So, what’s the real picture here?
im of course only talking about economics here and not oyher deeps social aspects
When can we expect a government to birth children from artificial wombs and raise them in state operated communes?
Kurzgesagt did a video on this.
Basically the country is fucked no matter what they do.
Perhaps I missed it, but I can imagine another force at work: young women want to have careers, at least for a while, so they defer either marriage or having a baby. South Korea is sexist, but their young women can make decisions within whatever scope they have.
There are tens of millions of Korean descendants living across the world. many who would absolutely move back to the motherland if given some incentives to do so.
Oh no! We have no idea how to stop growing out of our problems! What to do…what to doooo…
One of these countries with a demographic crunch has the opportunity of a lifetime to attract Americans.
South Korea might not be ideal, but countries like Italy and Poland could do every well in scooping up fleeing educated qualified Americans.
I think these graphs are missing the biggest point, which is that this population decline is temporary. Just as people in the 1700’s were on the precipice of major population change and didn’t realize it, we are also on the edge of the next revolution.
Sometime this century, probably around ~2070 we’ll have solved aging. We’ll have developed a way for humans to stay eternally young, and likely a way for people to de-age back to their 20’s if they’re already older than that. This will both drastically increase our lifespans and render graphs like this irrelevant. The elderly population that’s a “burden” on society will cease to exist. Having a low birth rate once this happens is a **good** thing. Because otherwise the population will skyrocket again to unsustainable levels. So really I don’t think South Korea or any other country has as much to worry about as this graph suggests.
I’ll never understand people extrapolating to the rest of the century, as though Korea or Japan or Poland or whoever are just going to watch their population dwindle away and their economy wither without intervention. They’ll figure something out in 75 years; don’t worry.
Imagine what these projections would have looked like if made in 1925.
A lot can happen in 75 years. The most likely outcome is that people with genetic or cultural biases for extra children will be the only young people in 2060. Birthrates will increase dramatically sometime in the 21st century as evolution does its thing.
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South Korea’s population is set to shrink 74% by 2100, from 51.7 million to just 13.5 million. With a fertility rate of 0.75, the lowest in the world, the country faces a population collapse in future.
South Korea, world’s 13th largest economy, has seen rapid increase in income levels over past many decades. However, the future is uncertain.
As population declines, there will high fewer workers and aging population (with higher cost for healthcare, social security).
Despite govt incentives like cash bonuses, parental leave, birth rates haven’t risen much (there was a slight jump from 0.73 to 0.75 in 2024). High living costs, long work hours and traditional attitudes towards family/childcare are some of the reasons why people are avoiding having children.
[Graph Source](https://www.trendlinehq.com/p/south-korea-s-population-collapse?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=comment)
The graph compares three demographics in range of ~15 years, to a group spanning across 40 years, it would be much better if the 25-64 would be split into 25-40/40-65.
More than 50% retirement age would be wild.
Someone’s been watching kurzgesagt. But yeah it’s looking bleak for them
I’m genuinely curious here: wouldn’t the short term economic gains from reducing productivity losses related to parenthood outweight the long term consequences of not having enough workers? Especially when we consider how fast automation is advancing, along with the big shifts happening in the labor market and in consumer behavior?
It seems like there are two almost contradictory narratives. On one hand, we hear warnings about population decline and labor shortages, and on the other, concerns about automation leading to a surplus of unneccesary both skilled and unskilled workers. So, what’s the real picture here?
im of course only talking about economics here and not oyher deeps social aspects
When can we expect a government to birth children from artificial wombs and raise them in state operated communes?
Kurzgesagt did a video on this.
Basically the country is fucked no matter what they do.
Perhaps I missed it, but I can imagine another force at work: young women want to have careers, at least for a while, so they defer either marriage or having a baby. South Korea is sexist, but their young women can make decisions within whatever scope they have.
There are tens of millions of Korean descendants living across the world. many who would absolutely move back to the motherland if given some incentives to do so.
Oh no! We have no idea how to stop growing out of our problems! What to do…what to doooo…
One of these countries with a demographic crunch has the opportunity of a lifetime to attract Americans.
South Korea might not be ideal, but countries like Italy and Poland could do every well in scooping up fleeing educated qualified Americans.
I think these graphs are missing the biggest point, which is that this population decline is temporary. Just as people in the 1700’s were on the precipice of major population change and didn’t realize it, we are also on the edge of the next revolution.
Sometime this century, probably around ~2070 we’ll have solved aging. We’ll have developed a way for humans to stay eternally young, and likely a way for people to de-age back to their 20’s if they’re already older than that. This will both drastically increase our lifespans and render graphs like this irrelevant. The elderly population that’s a “burden” on society will cease to exist. Having a low birth rate once this happens is a **good** thing. Because otherwise the population will skyrocket again to unsustainable levels. So really I don’t think South Korea or any other country has as much to worry about as this graph suggests.
I’ll never understand people extrapolating to the rest of the century, as though Korea or Japan or Poland or whoever are just going to watch their population dwindle away and their economy wither without intervention. They’ll figure something out in 75 years; don’t worry.
Imagine what these projections would have looked like if made in 1925.
A lot can happen in 75 years. The most likely outcome is that people with genetic or cultural biases for extra children will be the only young people in 2060. Birthrates will increase dramatically sometime in the 21st century as evolution does its thing.
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