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By Kang Jin-kyu SEOUL, Feb 28, 2024 (AFP) – South Korea’s birth rate fell to a record low last year, the government said Wednesday, despite having poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability. The country has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge. Neighbouring Japan is grappling with the same issue, and on […]
TOKYO, June 1, 2023 (AFP) – Japan’s prime minister unveiled a $25 billion plan on Thursday to expand support for young people and families in a bid to help raise the country’s plummeting birthrate. Larger direct subsidies for those with children and more financial help for education and prenatal care are on the cards, along with the promotion of flexible work styles and paternity leave. Fumio Kishida said he was proposing “policies to tackle the […]
RIYADH, May 31, 2023 (AFP) – Saudi Arabia’s population has grown by more than one third since 2010, and a majority of the kingdom’s nationals are aged under 30, according to a census published Wednesday. The 2022 Saudi census marks the “most comprehensive and precise population survey conducted in the Kingdom’s history,” the General Authority of Statistics said. It set the total population of the oil-rich country at 32.2 million. Of these, 58.4 per cent […]
by Natsuko FUKUE / Tomohiro OSAKI Agence France-Presse FUJISAWA, Japan (AFP) — “Excuse me, coming through,” a four-wheeled robot chirps as it dodges pedestrians on a street outside Tokyo, part of an experiment businesses hope will tackle labor shortages and rural isolation. From April, revised traffic laws will allow self-driving delivery robots to navigate streets across Japan. Proponents hope the machines could eventually help elderly people in depopulated rural areas get access to goods, while […]
Southwest China’s Sichuan province will lift its three-child birth limit and remove restrictions on single parents as the world’s most populous nation faces a looming demographic crisis. China’s population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data released this month showed, and the nation of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages. China ended its strict “one-child policy” — imposed in […]
by Ludovic EHRET Agence France-Presse BEIJING, China (AFP) — China’s population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data showed Tuesday, as the world’s most populous nation faces a looming demographic crisis. The nation of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages, in a rapid decline that analysts warn could stymie economic growth and pile pressure on strained public coffers. The population […]
United Nations, United States | AFP | by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS The United Nations estimates that the global human population will reach eight billion by mid-November, and will continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace and with regional disparities, in the decades to come. Here are some key takeaways from the UN analysis: – Population growth slowdown – The UN Population Division estimates that the number of humans on Earth will grow to eight […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China’s population will begin to shrink by 2025, officials have said, as family sizes grow smaller and citizens age. The world’s most-populous country has been grappling with a looming demographic crisis as it faces a rapidly ageing workforce, slowing economy and its weakest population growth in decades. And although officials relaxed the nation’s strict “one-child policy” in 2016 and last year allowed couples to have three children, the birth rate […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia’s population declined by more than one million people in 2021, the statistics agency Rosstat reported Friday, a historic drop not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ongoing demographic woes have been exacerbated by the pandemic with Rosstat figures showing more than 660,000 had died with coronavirus since health officials recorded the first case in the country. The new figures continue a downward trend from the previous year […]
by Amaury HAUCHARD PICTURES BY JOHN WESSELS Agence France-Presse TICHITT, Mauritania (AFP) — A few centuries ago, Tichitt was a citadel of trade where Saharan merchants bearing gold, salt and cloth would stop to water their camels and haggle. Today, red-and-white signs in the sand dunes point to where this once great hub of commerce and centre of Islamic culture lies. But visitors to Tichitt, a UNESCO world heritage site, are few now, and the great […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korea issued a raft of measures Friday to try to reverse one of the world’s lowest birth rates, offering potential parents increased benefits as it faces a looming population decline. The country’s fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — fell to 0.95 in the third quarter, the first time it has dropped below 1 and far short of […]
by Hui Min Neo Agence France Presse BERLIN, Germany — (AFP) Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday vowed to work with the Social Democrats for the “good of Germany”, after the centre-left party agreed to join her new coalition, but the veteran leader will go into her fourth term with weaker cards than before. Two in three of the SPD’s rank and file voting in a make or break referendum backed a new partnership with […]
