A survey in South Korea: South Koreans' willingness to get married has rebounded, but their willingness to have children remains relatively low

Data released by the South Korean authorities show that over the past three years, the number of newborns has continued to decline, but the public's willingness to get married has increased, indicating subtle changes in the South Korean society's view on marriage and childbirths.

Yonhap News Agency reported that the Institute of Health and Social Research released the "Family and Fertility in 2024" report on Sunday (May 11th). The survey covered a total of 14,372 adult people aged 19 to 49 (including unmarried individuals and their spouses). The results show that the average number of children born to women is 0.85, a decrease of 0.18 compared with three years ago, showing a significant downward trend.

Among the respondents who have spouses, only 18% indicated that they have plans to have children, with an average expected number of 1.25 children. Among the respondents without a spouse, 63.2% indicated that they had the intention to have children in the future, with an average expected number of children of 1.54, slightly higher than that of those with a spouse.

Although the willingness to have children is relatively low, the intention to get married has rebounded. In this survey, 62.2% of the respondents indicated that they "intended to get married", an increase of 11.4 percentage points compared with 2021. The proportion of those indicating "not yet decided whether to get married" dropped from 23.9% to 19.4%.

Meanwhile, the proportion of respondents who clearly stated that "they have no intention of getting married before or now" dropped from 11.9% to 6.7%, hitting a new low in recent years. As for the reasons for not wanting to get married, 58.4% answered "feeling satisfied with the current life", followed by "Lack of economic conditions" (11.4%) and "not having met a suitable partner" (10.2%) in sequence.