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| In this July 3, 2019, photo, a girl holding her mother's hand carries her lunch at the Dunsan Elementary School in Daejeon. A recent study says Korea's population will halve by 2100. Korea Times file |
By Jung Min-ho
Korea's population will halve in 80 years and by then two Asian countries ― Indonesia and the Philippines ― are expected to outgrow its GDP, according to a study in the medical journal Lancet.
The analysis, published Tuesday, shows that Korea's population, which was estimated at 52.67 million, including foreigners, in 2017, is projected to reach a peak of 54.29 million in 2031, before plunging to 26.78 million in 2100.
Meanwhile, the country's GDP ranking will fall six spots to 20th place behind Nigeria (9), Indonesia (12) and the Philippines (18), the report says.
The world population will reach a peak of 9.73 billion in 2064 before decreasing to 8.8 billion in 2100, about 2 billion short of the United Nations' projection.
Populations in 23 countries, including Korea and Japan, are forecast to decline by more than half, with 34 countries, including China, expecting a drop of more than 25 percent.
These population shifts have economic and fiscal consequences that will be challenging. The report says fewer people in the working age group could mean more much than slow GDP growth rates.
"For example, having fewer individuals in these age groups might reduce innovation in economies and fewer workers in general might reduce domestic markets for consumer goods, because many retirees are less likely to purchase consumer durables than middle-aged and young adults," the report says.
For high-income countries with fertility rates lower than the replacement level (2.1), such as Korea, the optimal strategy for economic growth, fiscal stability and geopolitical security is liberal immigration with effective assimilation into these societies, the report says.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine. For comparisons, they used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.
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