Micah McCartney
The fast-shifting demographic landscape of East Asia's top economies is a slow-moving crisis, one analyst said at a talk hosted by U.S. think tank the Asia Society Policy Institute last week.
Others said the economic and social impact of the trends in South Korea and its developed neighbors, driven by plummeting birthrates and aging workforces, could be offset if governments tackle the root issues and embrace labor-saving solutions.
South Korea's fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.72 births expected per woman during her lifetime, despite over $200 billion in government funding in the past 16 years on initiatives to encourage child-rearing. Neighboring China (1.0), Japan (1.2) and Taiwan (0.85) also rank near the bottom of fertility rate tables.
A fertility rate of 2.1 is considered necessary to replace a population.
Dwindling workforce
Two decades from now, "you're going to see (South Korea's) population of the working age side drop by about 10 and a half million people," Troy Stangarone, director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at Wilson Center, said citing South Korean government statistics. "So that's roughly one-third of the workforce will leave the workforce over the next two decades."
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