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By Yi Whan-woo
The centuries-old preference for sons over daughters has been diminishing in Korea amid growing awareness of gender equality as well as the rapid population decline witnessed in recent years. The latest data on the sex ratio at births shows such preferences are apparently no longer the case here.
Released by Statistics Korea, Wednesday, the data showed that 104.7 baby boys were born for every 100 baby girls in 2022.
The year 2022, according to the stats agency, falls within the balanced sex ratio of 103 to 107 boys for every 100 girls at birth.
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The 2022 findings continue on from the balanced ratio seen over the past decade: 105.1 boys for every 100 girls in 2021, 104.8 boys for every 100 girls in 2020 and 104.8 boys for every 100 girls in 2019.
In particular, the sex ratio of newly-born babies last year was the most balanced since the 1990s when the boy-to-girl ratio was 116.5 boys for every 100 girls ― on average.
Such an imbalance was caused due to the son-favoring mentality that prevailed in Korean society, and by parents choosing to abort female babies based on gender information from ultrasound scans.
The son-favoring fertility decision was widely witnessed due to the high number of male third children, as parents whose first two children were daughters, were more likely to carry through a pregnancy when the fetus was male.
Under the circumstances, the boy-to-girl ratio for the third child stood at a record low of just 105.4 for every 100 in 2022.
Such a ratio was so imbalanced in the 1990s that it rose as high as 209.7 for every 100 in 1993.
The ratio went down to 143.6 for every 100 in 2000. But it still remained above the normal range for more than 10 years afterward. It entered the normal range in 2014 when there were 106.7 boys for every 100 girls.
Korea has a birth rate of 0.78 ― the lowest among the OECD member nations. In other countries, the rate is much higher: 2.90 in Israel, 1.79 in France, 1.64 in the United States, 1.56 in the United Kingdom, 1.53 in Germany and 1.33 in Japan.
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