SEOUL: Almost four out of 10 South Korean newlyweds had no child as of 2017, a government data showed Tuesday.
Among 1.1 million newlywed couples who have been legally married for less than five years as of Nov.1 last year, 414,000 couples, or 37.5 per cent of the total, were childless, according to Statistics Korea.
It was up 1.2 percentage points from the previous year.
In the case of the newlyweds both of whom work for a living, 43.3 per cent had no child, while the reading stood at 32 per cent for the couples with a single breadwinner.
It raised concerns about the country's chronically low birthrate.
The total fertility rate, which gauges the number of children a woman can bear during her lifetime, came in at 1.05 in 2017, down from 1.19 in 2008.
South Korea is required to keep the total fertility rate at 2.1 to maintain the country's population at 51 million.
A social trend has spread among the younger generation to delay marriage or give up on tying the knot and having babies altogether amid the high youth unemployment and the higher home price.