Trend Trend H: Transition to a decline-adaptive society

Summary

All of Korea's social institutions, from health care and welfare to education and military service, are being reorganised around population decline, ageing and the outflow of people from the provinces. New phenomena of a shrinking society are increasing, including policy fragmentation between generations and between urban and rural areas and changing family forms. Issues under this trend cover weakening health and welfare service foundations, changes to the education system, a shrinking pool of military recruits, growth in single-person and multicultural households and weakening local administration. Cross-impact analysis identified it as a candidate driver because it strongly shapes other trends while depending little on them. Yet because Korea's fertility rate has stayed at or below 1.0 since 2018, population decline was judged a low-uncertainty change and was built into every scenario through official projections instead of serving as a scenario driver.