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One of 2 people in rural areas aged 60 or older

Posted April. 18, 2015 07:23,   

한국어

One out of two people living in rural areas in Korea are 60 years or older, a survey found. Amid the aging of rural population, there is growing concern over falling agricultural productivity.

According to the results of the "2014 agricultural, forestry and fisheries industry survey" released on Friday by Statistics Korea, the number of people aged 60 or older at farms came to 1,369,000 as of December 1 last year, accounting for 49.8 percent of the total population in rural regions (2,752,000). The number of people aged 60 or older at farms was up 8,000 from the figure tallied in the survey conducted a year earlier (1,361,000).

The ratio of aged people, or the portion of population aged 65 or older among the population in rural regions, came to 39.1 percent, up 1.8 percentage points from 2013. This ratio of aged population in rural regions is about 3.1 times the ratio of aged population (12.7 percent) in the entire population. And the average age of farm owners who decide which crops to plant and by how much each year stood at 66.5 years, up 1.1 years from 2013.

While the number of aged people is surging at farms, that of young population is plummeting. The number of people aged 20 to 29 in rural regions declined to 155,000 year-on-year from 168,000 of December 2013. “The structure of population in rural regions is the shape of a typical triangle, with the portion of people at advanced ages shown to be high, and that of those in their 20s and 30s low," Statistics Korea said.



legman@donga.com