Nearly half of recently married couples in South Korea had no children in 2021, data showed, amid the country’s chronic low birthrate and changing social norms.

Some 45.8 percent of the country’s 871,428 couples who were legally married in the five years up to November 2021 did not have children, rising from the 44.5 percent tallied in 2020, the data from Statistics Korea showed.

The statistics cover couples who tied the knot for the first time from November 2016 to October 2021.

The proportion of newly married couples with children has been on a steady decline from 63.7 percent in 2016 and 62.5 percent in 2017 to 54.2 percent in 2021, the data showed.

The number of babies born to newlyweds came to just 0.66 in 2021, down from 0.68 tallied a year earlier. (Yonhap)