South Korea’s total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, plunged to the lowest level in seven years in 2016.
 
According to Statistics Korea on Wednesday, 406-thousand-200 babies were born last year, down seven-point-three percent from 2015.
 
The number of newborns fell for two consecutive years from 2013. It grew by three-thousand in 2015 but fell sharply again last year. As a result, the average number of newborns per one-thousand people shrank zero-point-seven to seven-point-nine.
 
The total fertility rate slipped zero-point-07 to one-point-17 last year. The figure is the lowest to be posted since 2009 when the rate stood at one-point-15. 

Meanwhile, the general fertility rate of countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stood at an average of one-point-68 or far higher than South Korea’s one-point-24. General fertility rate refers to the total number of live births per one-thousand women aged 15 to 49 in a population per year.