Gov't launches task force to respond to population decline

People holding umbrellas cross the street in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, Friday. Yonhap

The government launched a task force to come up with policies efforts to tackle demographic challenges as the country is expected to suffer a serious fall in the working-age population in the coming years due to its chronically low birthrate, the finance ministry said Friday.

During the inaugural meeting of the task force, Deputy Finance Minister Bang Ki-seon stressed the government's utmost efforts to slow down the pace of Korea's population decline by offering more incentives for marriage, childbirth and childcare, according to the ministry.

South Korea became an aged society in 2017, in which the percentage of those aged 65 and older exceeded 14 percent of the total population, and it is widely expected to become a super-aged society in 2025, when the percentage of older adults will surpass 20 percent.

The government is also seeking to expand the participation of female and elderly citizens, as well as foreigners, in economic activities to boost manpower productivity.

Bang also vowed to reform the country's socioeconomic system in line with changing population structure by nurturing advanced technologies and increasing the effectiveness of personnel and facility management.

"We will seize demographic changes as a chance to develop through strengthening promising industries in aging societies, such as introducing robots," the official said.

Related ministries and civil experts will review current policy measures on demographic challenges and come up with new policies, which will start being announced in July, the ministry said.

According to Statistics Korea, the country's working-age population, or people aged 15 to 64, is expected to plunge 35 percent over the next 30 years to 24.19 million in 2050.

The estimate came as the country's total fertility rate ― the average number of children a woman could bear in her lifetime ― hit an all-time low of 0.81 last year, down from 0.84 a year earlier.

Experts say changing social norms and economic hardships, such as surging housing prices, have caused many young people to postpone or give up on getting married and having children. (Yonhap)

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