How to Overcome Depopulation
Image from Macrotrends showing the population pyramid of South Korea, 2020
With the global population currently at around 8 billion people and it being expected to be around 10 billion by 2050, many might think that many countries would be dealing with overpopulation from the rapid population growth. However, that is not the case for all countries. In many developed countries with a post-industrial economy, where manufacturing plants have been moved abroad to produce goods more cheaply, the growth rate of the population is actually decreasing. This is due to the increase in service jobs, which require a person to have more knowledge, skills and experience in order to be qualified for a position. Service jobs require less people than manufacturing jobs but significantly increase the resources that need to be invested in a person’s education. As a result, due to the costs that come with it, people tend to have fewer children in developed countries which, over time, leads to an ageing population and eventually a stagnation in the growth of the population. What steps can countries with a post-industrial economy take to ensure that the population continues to grow?
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) can be a useful tool to predict the growth of a country’s population. It is a value which measures the average number of children a woman in a specific country has in a lifetime. In order for the population to be sustained, the TFR needs to be at 2.1, since the two children would replace the parents in the population. However, according to the United Nations, in many developed countries, such as South Korea and Japan, the TFR was at 0.81 and 1.3 respectively. Additionally, Yonhap News Agency reported that since 2020, South Korea has reported more deaths than childbirths and in 2021, the country recorded its lowest number of newborns of 265,500 which was down 4.3 percent from the year prior. By 2070, Korea's working population, people between the ages of 15 and 64, is expected to decrease from 37.4 million in 2020 to 17.4 million in 2070, a 53.5 percent decrease. With the population continuing to age, with the older population, who are retired, far outnumbering the working population, Korea would have to drastically increase its social welfare spending, or else, the working population would have to support far more older people than what the working population supports now.
What Japan has implemented can possibly provide solutions that Korea could look to implement. In Japan, programs to support families with children are encouraging younger people to get married and start a family. For example, according to The Economist, from April 2022, eighteen year olds will be able to get married without approval from their parents, which had previously not been possible. In addition to reducing the marriage age, the government has started to include fertility treatment in public health insurance. These new policies, along with the reduction of welfare spending on the older population, show the government’s shift from focusing on the older to the younger population with a goal of slowing the population decline.
It is crucial that people are aware of the possible implications on the future that a declining population can have. However, in a time where the COVID - 19 pandemic has caused economic decline and raised people’s fears of losing their jobs, implementing changes to combat population decline may prove to be very difficult.