The Sampo Generation in South Korea

South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world. The Sampo Generation. The word ‘sampo’ means to give up three things: relationships, marriage and children.

In South Korea there is a rapidly ageing population as well as a low marriage and birth rate that doesn’t adequately replace the dying generations.

The average South Korean woman has just 1.1 children, lower than any other country. (For contrast, the global average is around 2.5 children.) This rate has been declining steadily: between the early 1950s and today, the fertility rate in South Korea dropped from 5.6 to 1.1 children per woman. ‘replacement rate’: the point at which the total number of children born per woman in a population exactly balances out the number of elder generation deaths. Across the world, this number is 2.1 – which means that fertility rates in South Korea do not reach the replacement level.

In other words, women aren’t having enough children in South Korea to stabilise its population without immigration. An increasing number are choosing never to marry at all, turning their backs on legal partnerships – and even casual relationships – in favour of having independent lives and careers in what can still be a sexist society despite economic advances. Marriage rates among South Koreans of childrearing age – both men and women – have plummeted over the last four or five decades. In the 2015 census, fewer than a quarter (23%) of South Korean women aged 25 to 29 said they were married, down steeply from 90% in 1970.

Improvements in health care leads to extended longevity. That is exactly what is happening in South Korea, where life expectancy has increased rapidly in the second half of the 20th Century amid industrialisation.

In the first half of the 1950s, life expectancy was just shorter than 42 years on average (37 for men, 47 for women). Today, the numbers look radically different. South Korea now has one of the highest life expectancies in the world – ranked twelfth highest for 2015-2020, equal with Iceland. The average baby born in South Korea can expect to live to the age of 82 years (specifically 79 for men, and 85 for women).

In contrast, the global average is 72 years (nearly 70 for men, 74 for women).

And the UN projects life expectancy will continue to improve; by the end of this century, the average baby born in South Korea will live to the age of 92 (89 for men, and 95 for women). A separate study published in the Lancet showed that women in South Korea are projected to be the first in the world to have an average life expectancy above 90 – with the researchers predicting a 57% chance this will happen by 2030.

In 1950, less than 3% of the population were aged 65 and over. Today, that number is at 15%. By the mid-2060s, the UN forecasts the percentage of those older than 65s will peak at more than 40%. The numbers paint a picture of very aged society.

And with low birth rates, fewer marriages and longer lives, the trends combine to create a South Korean population that is actually ageing faster than any other developed country.

A population with longer lifespan means there are more older people around, and women having fewer children means there aren’t enough young people to replace them when they die. Eventually, this paradox means that South Korea’s population will begin to decline. The UN predicts South Korea’s population will peak in around 2024, and then start to fall.

By 2100, the UN forecasts South Korea’s population will be only around 29 million – the same as it was in 1966.

In 2018, for the first time in history, those aged 65 or older outnumbered children younger than five globally. And the number of people aged 80 years or older is projected to triple, from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050.

The population aged 65 and older is growing faster than all other age groups, especially as the global birth rate has been plummeting since the second half of the 20th Century. According to the World Health Organization, fertility rates in every region except Africa are near or below what’s considered the ‘replacement rate’ – the level needed to keep a population stable. In most high-income countries this hovers around 2.1 children per woman.

Global societal ageing has generally been considered detrimental to a country’s economic health, since it reduces the workforce and increases burdens on healthcare systems. A recent United Nations report also warned that global ageing would increase the “fiscal pressures that many countries will face in the coming decades as they seek to build and maintain public systems of health care, pensions and social protection for older persons”. This could be particularly impactful for the many countries around the world with growing numbers of retirees.