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South Korea's population is projected to drop by 27 percent from the current 52 million to 38 million in 2070 as people refrain from getting married, statistical office data showed on Tuesday.
There were 192,000 marriages in 2022, down sharply from 295,000 in 1970, according to Statistics Korea, a government office.
Residents had been increasingly reluctant to get married and have children for various reasons, such as the high cost of housing and raising children, as well as high youth unemployment.
In 2020, 52.9 percent of men and 67.1 percent of women aged between 25 and 49 had experienced marriage, compared to 64.7 percent for men and 77.4 percent for women in 2010.
The number of newborn babies in 2022 stood at 249,000, down 48.6 percent compared to 485,000 10 years earlier.
Meanwhile, the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to bear in her lifetime, reached a record low of 0.78 in 2022, down from 1.30 in 2012, far lower than the replacement level of 2.10 needed to maintain the current population.
(Xinhua)
