Low births and fast population aging are a concern for the North’s regime, as a shrinking workforce could take a toll on the country’s labor-intensive industries.Īccording to DPRK Today, a North Korean propaganda website, the country has introduced multiple policies to encourage more births, focused on cash grants and affirmative action. The number of North Koreans aged 65 years and older accounted for 9.75 percent last year, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier, making the North an “aging society” where the share of the population aged over 65 is above 7 percent, US Central Intelligence Agency data showed. The hermit state saw a gradual decline in births after a catastrophic famine in the mid-and late 1990s during which around 2 million people reportedly died from hunger.ĭeclining fertility rates led to an aging population. The figure was higher than the South’s 0.78 estimated in the same year, but still remains below the replacement level of 2.1, which would keep its population stable at just under 26 million, the report said. The communist state’s total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, stood at 1.9 in 2022, according to a report titled “State of World Population 2022,” published by the United Nations Population Fund. The cause, however, is starkly different: famine and persistent economic hardships. Similar to South Korea, North Korea is grappling with tumbling childbirths.

Under a falling star by jae