South Korea Has 4th Lowest Birth Rate
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
South Korea has the fourth lowest birth rate in the world, according to a United Nations report, Wednesday.
The State of the World Population 2007 report said that the average number of babies that a South Korean woman aged between 15 to 49 gives birth to during her life time, stood at 1.19 as of the end of 2006, which is much smaller than the average 2.56 for the U.N. member countries.
The number marked the fourth lowest on the list, following Hong Kong, Ukraine and Slovakia whose figures stood at 0.95, 1.14 and 1.14, respectively.
The report, annually filed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), demonstrates demographic statistics worldwide including life spans of populations and migratory movements.
North Korea marked the 51st lowest with a figure of 1.94, slightly down from 1.95 in the previous year. While other advanced countries with low birth rates showed some progress, South Korea’s birth rate did not show any improvement, according to the report.
Sultan Aziz, director of the Asia-Pacific Division at the UNFPA, advised that South Korean society should raise awareness on the importance of women in order to tackle the low birth rate problems.
``If you want to increase the fertility rate in your country, you have to recognize the value of women in Korean society as they are raising the next generation,’’ he said in a press conference in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday.
Noting that South Korea’s low fertility rate has been emerging as a social problem along with its increasingly aging population, the state-run Korea Development Institute said that it is expected to decrease the nation’s potential economic growth to about 2 percent in the 2020s.
The report also showed that South Korea has the lowest infant mortality in the world.
The country’s infant mortality rate stood at three per 1,000 births, which is the lowest along with Japan, Singapore, Norway and Sweden, according to the U.N. report.
However, such a figure indicates a significant improvement from 45 back in 1970, according to an official of the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Sierra Leone, Niger and Afghanistan were among the bottom of the standings with rates of 160, 146 and 143, respectively. The figure for North Korea was 42, placing it 93rd in the list.
While the average life span for South Korean women was 81.8 years, that of South Korean men was 74.4. The corresponding global average figures marked 68.6 and 64.2, respectively.
South Korea’s total population was recorded at 48.1 million, up 100,000 from the previous year, while that of North Korea stood at 22.7 million. The global population marked 6.6 billion, according to the report.