The number of births in South Korea rose last year for the first time in more than a decade on the back of a rise in marriages, officials said yesterday, bucking a trend for a country battling a demographic crisis.
South Korea has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest birthrates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge.
The South Korean government has poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.
Photo: AFP
The crude birthrate — the number of babies born per 1,000 people — was 4.7, interrupting a continuous downward trend since 2014, preliminary data from Statistics Korea showed.
The fertility rate, or the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, was 0.75, “up 0.03 from 0.72 in 2023,” the government agency said in a report.
“The number of births in 2024 was 238,300, an increase of 8,300 (3.6 percent) from the previous year,” the report said.
Statistics Korea official Park Hyun-jeong attributed the rise to an increase in marriages, as well as shifting demographics.
“The population has seen a significant increase in the number of people in their early 30s,” Park told a news conference. “This has had a major impact.”
“Additionally, many marriages that were delayed due to COVID-19 have now taken place, and this upward trend continues,” she added.
The number of marriages last year had been the most since 1996, “the highest on record,” Park said.
The average maternal age at childbirth last year was 33.7 years, the report said, one of the highest in the world.
However, the fertility rate remains far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain South Korea’s population of 51 million.
At current rates, the population will nearly halve to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
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