Much of Seoul is a sea of high-rises. And not just Seoul: Busan and other cities in South Korea have lots of high rises. More than half of all South Korean households live in high rises, and well over 60 percent live in some kind of multifamily housing.
Seoul: High rises as far as the eye can see. Photo by Francesco Anzola.
South Korea also has the lowest birthrate of any country in the world. The latest numbers say the average woman has just 0.70 children in her lifetime. Birthrates need to be 2.1 per woman for a population to remain constant; at 0.70, South Korea will be almost totally depopulated in just three generations. Seoul’s birthrate is 0.64 and, due to an aging population, it will likely fall to 0.30 in the next ten years.
It is strange that a few decades ago we were worried about overpopulation and now we need to worry about population decline, at least in the developed world. A birthrate of 0.70 heralds an existential collapse for any country that doesn’t welcome immigrants — and I know of only two countries that welcome and assimilate immigrants, as opposed to isolating them as most European countries do.
South Korea’s high-rise housing and low birthrates are closely related. People don’t have children if they don’t have room for them. High rises are expensive to build so living space is at a premium. Birth rates are declining throughout the developed world, but they have declined the most in countries like South Korea, Russia, and China that have tried to house most of their people in high rises.
South Korea became a high rise country when it rapidly industrialized after the end of the Korean War. People moving from rural areas to the cities to get jobs created a housing crisis, and then-current urban planning theories held that high-rise housing was the best way to house people. Remember that, even though South Korea was the “good guys” in the Korean war, the country was still a dictatorship until about 1990, which meant the leadership could direct the country into one style of housing even if residents might have preferred otherwise.
Admittedly, South Korea has one of the highest population densities in the world with 1,340 people per square mile. But the country could have housed most of its population in low-rise apartments and single-family homes and still left well over 80 percent of its land for farming and other rural purposes. South Korea’s urban areas make up 17 percent of its land but, even with all of its high rises, have an average of less than 7,000 people per square mile. For comparison, 73 percent of the residents of Philadelphia live in single-family homes (mostly townhouses) yet the city’s population density is nearly 12,000 people per square mile.
The current urban planning fad is for mid-rise housing instead of high rises, but the result is the same: cramped quarters unsuited for raising children. In 1996, Portland planners set a target of reducing the share of the region’s households living in single-family homes from 65 percent (which is what it was in 1990) to 41 percent by 2040. Planners have had enough of an impact to date that Portland has a pretty low birthrate, though its suburbs are higher.
Because census data aren’t detailed enough to accurately calculate birthrates, I’m using a slightly simplified number: the ratio of children (0-17) to adults of child-bearing age (18-40). A ratio of at least 1.50 is needed to maintain a population; the ratio is currently 1.49 for the United States as a whole. However, in the city of Portland it is just 0.92 while the Portland urban area it is 1.26. The city of San Francisco’s is 0.79 (1.17 for the urban area) and Seattle’s is 0.62 (1.24 for the urban area). Meanwhile, Houston’s is 1.30 and the Houston urban area is 1.66, well above the national average.
Using 2010 population densities because 2020 numbers aren’t yet available, the correlation between density and this measure of fertility is about 0.4 for both the 50 largest cities and the 50 largest urban areas. That is pretty high considering that a lot of things influence birthrates. For example, Pittsburgh and other rust-belt cities bring the correlations down because they have moderate densities but low birthrates. The city of Boston, whose density is well over 12,000 people per square mile, improves the correlation for cities but the Census Bureau’s definition of the Boston urban area is so broad that its density is only about 2,200 per square mile, which brings down the correlation for urban areas.
There is some self-selection involved in the city correlations, as people who might want children but have jobs in really dense cities are more likely to live in the suburbs while those who would be happy not to have children anyway will live in the cities. However, self-selection doesn’t explain away the large variations among urban areas, as I doubt many people say, “We want to have children so we moved to Houston instead of San Francisco.”
The real problem here is that urban planners don’t understand how cities work, much less how the world works, so they focus on one or two things, such as getting people out of their cars or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This makes them miss important things like the impact of their policies on demographics. If the impact of urban planners on birthrates is combined with the impact of the growing populist movement on immigration, the United States could end up with the same sort of disaster that is facing South Korea.
There are major social and economic factors that need to be considered I think. Because of South Korea’s job market (eg one week holiday and crazy hours), intensely competitive education system relying on mum to manage children’s lives etc, I doubt it is valid to place too much weight on living arrangements. The US examples might benefit from thinking about stages of life. You start in a city apartment, have a child or even two, and then move to a suburb for more space and a lawn. The data used here don’t allow for that dynamic.
lets not forget about the extreme work culture that consumes people’s lives in both south korea and japan.
“Increasing population densities predict decreasing fertility rates over time: A 174-nation investigation.”
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-13889-008
Increasing prosperity (correlated with population densities) also predict decreasing fertility rates. The entirety of O’Toole’s argument is: “South Korea’s high-rise housing and low birthrates are closely related. People don’t have children if they don’t have room for them.” Not a shred of evidence other than his bald assertion that people in Korea have no room for kids.
I lived in south korea, admittedly 20-years ago. The families I stayed with (and visited) all lived in mid and high rise apartments. All of the apartments I visited were large by even American standards, 4-5 bedroom, 2-bath. New housing was also being built at this size. Do you have data supporting the claim that unit sizes are generally small? I could imagine it particularly in Seoul, but I also visited large homes there. High-rise construction can be more expensive. But with different code requirements, building ecosystems, and mass production the disparity may not be as large as in the US (see Singapore). High-rise next to elementary school was a pretty reasonable way to live with kids.
While there I was also witnessing the early days of the cultural fight that has been written about in South Korea. It was a country rapidly working its way through 1st and 2nd wave feminism with a lot of conflict between generations and men and women. Combined with rapid economic growth and a cut throat economy reliant on educational credentialism… this seems like a more plausible experience than physical planning.