Korea team: Using public enterprise to address super-aging population and declining birth rates
Problem: How can a government adapt to a super-aging population caused by declining birth rates?
Solution: Using public enterprise to fill gaps in government capability
During the December 2025 symposium, the Korea team focused on the urgent challenge of Korea’s rapid transition into a super-aged society, marked by declining fertility, a shrinking workforce, and mounting fiscal pressure to accommodate elderly individuals. As the proportion of aged individuals accelerates in growth, the country faces interconnected risks of economic stagnation, financial instability, rising healthcare costs, and regional extinction. A proposed solution was the usage of public enterprises in strategic, system-level roles to mitigate these risks, by strengthening community care, supporting elderly workers, and ensuring balanced regional populations.
Medical costs and overall spending have exploded in Korea, with long-term care accounting for nearly 50% of total health spending. With a declining workforce comes declining productivity and the rise of AI/automation taking over certain job sectors. Within a geographic context, more than half of Korea’s municipalities are at risk of extinction due to the combination of an aging population and the concentration of the workforce in the capital; elderly households in rural areas face isolation, poverty, and gradual regional collapse.
In the healthcare sector, AI-based health management services help fill gaps in chronic condition treatment for the elderly; senior community-care housing and senior-friendly employment programs help the elderly contribute to society in monitored, supported environments. These previous solutions prove that public enterprise is the best solution to addressing a super-aging society, filling the following roles: establishing a community-based care and welfare infrastructure, supporting employment and re-employment of older workers, providing smart healthcare services for the elderly, and ensuring regional-balanced development and fiscal stability.
As the fertility rates of highly-developed nations continue to decline, solutions dealing with the effects of a super-aged society will become increasingly relevant. Korea, along with other East Asian countries, are paving the way for discussions on international stages about maintaining productivity and containing expenditures with an aging population, and other nations will be looking to their policy models for guidance soon enough.
Read more below:
Comments