South Korea’s fertility rate sinks to record low despite $270bn in incentives

Average number of births per woman falls to 0.71 in country that already has the world’s lowest rate, and has spent billions since 2006 to reverse the trend

South Korea’s fertility rate, already the world’s lowest, dropped to a fresh record low in 2023, defying the billions of dollars spent by the country to try to reverse the trend as the population shrank for a fourth straight year.

The average number of expected babies for a South Korean woman during her reproductive life fell to 0.72, from 0.78 in 2022, data from Statistics Korea showed on Wednesday.