Women in South Korea are faced with having a job or having children

Becky Hunter-Kelm is grateful for the Flexible Working Bill, passed earlier this month, which will help working mothers in the UK hugely. She takes a look at how without flexible working conditions, women in South Korea are choosing not to have babies.

South Korea currently has the lowest birth rate in the world. For a population to maintain stability, every woman must have 2.1 children. But women in South Korea are increasingly choosing a child-free life, bringing the country’s already plummeting birth rates to a new low at 0.72%.

Women’s choice to not have children is having such an impact on South Korea’s future that the government has declared a ‘national emergency’. If this trend continues, 50 years later the workforce will be halved, and the nation’s financial state will be in serious decline.