Has been falling each year for the past few years.
According to this it is pretty much flatlining at the moment: South Korea Population | Historical Data | Chart | 1950-2025
Anyway, it it is far from a demographic collapse.
Changing the present wage/pension structures is the nettle that has to be grasped. Automation and AI are the issue, not low fertility rates.
Populations fall in villages and towns because young people leave.
Traditions evolve, thankfully, as do dialects: In GraubĆ¼nden entstehen gerade neue Dialekte - Radio SRF 1 - SRF
One of the big criticisms of AI driven data is that, whilst there are advantages, it is leading at best to a dumbing down and at worst to creation of much more fake or misleading information.
Have you never noticed that the Swiss like to travel and find significant others around the world? Many guys fly to Thailand and ladies seem to like Africa.
And itās great. Now we have a champion in steeplechase and a decent national football team. Since football players from the first generation of Kosovo refugees are slowly retiring and secondos are not very interested in football, itās great to have motivated young players of Swiss-African descent.
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If you look at total population, you donāt see what is happening. Hereās the chart for age group 0-14. Which has more than halved since the peak in the 80s.
Even if growth rates stabilize from now on, youāre looking at the population halving in 50 years.
This split into age groups shows the problem. Population of under 24 is declining. Working age population already peaked and is declining. The only population group rising is the over 65 group ageing out and this is expected to peak in 25 years time.
Check out more data here: World Population Prospects
I think we agree that an ageing population is a problem. The disagreement is about whether or not increasing fertility rates is going to help or not.
Anecdotally the Koreans that I have spoken to leave Korea because the opportunities are better abroad. Ironically a similar number of foreigners think the same and enter Korea at the moment. Opportunity and poverty are relative and Korea would be typical of many countries.
I am a bit out of my depth trying to look critically at population projections, but one thing seems clear - the number of seniors is going to increase in the next 30 years whatever the birth rate. A bigger world population is not positive.
I think that the population is not declining per-se.
Hear me out.
At the end of the second world war the survivors celebrated by boning the heck out of each other. Hence the baby boomers and now as we shuffle off this mortal plane the population growth is getting back to normal levels. Governments saw this coming and wanted to keep the levels high and imported forriners by the oodle.
Thing is now, the way we have created our very expensive society are we are being outboned by these immigrants.
so what if theres less births. who gives a shit!
thatās precisely the issue, no one cares hahaha
Yes, āflatliningā, pun intended.
they are too much on their handy to be bothered with sex.
What ever the reason the FDA has the solution
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5639883/fda-testosterone-treatment-martin-makary
thatās soooo funnyā¦and scary at the same time.
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I would say it has a lot to do with affordability. Can a family of 4 in Switzerland survive below 10k a month. When both work and you pay 3000 a mojth to globegarden it is insane.
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That was my first reaction, same here in the fatherland; it is simply too expensive to have kids.
It is not just affordability. Kids used to be an integral part of the pension scheme. Now too many of them survive, they are liable to fight each other and then farm you off to a old persons home. A small, well knit family seems a much better bet.
Among the Millennials in my family, only one niece has two children. The others have limited their families to one child. The Gen Zāers are holding off having children for now. The number one reason is uncertain economic future.
My nieces and nephews are highly educated. Medicine, law, engineering, tech, academia. All have good jobs - for now. But they are aware that AI (and the follow-on effects) will radically change their professions. Who knows if their good jobs will exist in the near future?
Itās almost impossible to re-skill and re-invent oneās self to take on a brave new world while caring for infants or toddlers, so the youngāuns seem to be caught in a holding pattern. They work around the clock, while the earning potential is still there, saving for a future with less opportunity. They are hoping they can squirrel away enough in the remaining good years so that if (when?) their professions disappear they can use that jobless time to start their families, living on investments if it comes down to that.
My heart breaks for this younger generation.
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In my seventies it was the end of idealism with punk and āno futureā. Times change, it is certainly more complicated but for much of the world life has got better. Long-term planning is certainly more difficult. This younger generation will adapt.
Greatā¦so only the dumb are breeding. Hey Darwin, didnāt expect that did ya?
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