Why South Korea Has the Lowest Birth Rate in the World (Despite Spending Billions)

South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, despite spending over $200 billion on pro-natalist policies.
This video explains why South Korea’s fertility rate collapsed to just 0.72 children per woman, the lowest ever recorded, even after massive government spending on subsidies, childcare, and parental leave.

Since 2006, South Korea has deployed nearly every policy tool available—cash transfers, housing support, subsidized childcare, and extended parental leave. Yet the birth rate continues to fall. The reason isn’t a lack of money, but structural economic costs that subsidies fail to address.

Raising children in South Korea involves intense education competition, years of private tutoring, unaffordable housing, and workplace cultures that penalize caregiving. These are opportunity costs, not direct expenses—and they compound over decades.

This case reveals a broader economic lesson about population decline and policy failure: when having children becomes economically irrational, financial incentives alone cannot reverse the trend. South Korea’s experience offers a warning for other countries facing declining fertility rates.
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