The South Korean fertility rate rose for the first time in nine years in 2024, supported by an increase in marriages, as preliminary data on Wednesday showed that the country’s demographic crisis may have made a corner.
The fertility rate of the country, the average number of babies that a woman will have during her reproductive life, was 0.75, according to Statistics Korea in 2024.
In 2023, the birth rate from 1.24 in 2015 fell to the eighth year in a row to 0.72, the lowest of the world, and brought concerns about the economic shock for society at such a fast pace.
Since 2018, South Korea has been the only member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at a speed of less than 1.
South Korea has taken various measures to encourage young people, to marry and have children after President Yoon Suk Yeol has now declared a “national demographic crisis” and a plan to create a new ministry to combat low birth rate.
“There was a change in the social value, with more positive views of marriage and birth,” said Park Hyun-Jung, civil servant at Statistic Korea, to a briefing that also had the effects of an increase in the number of people in early 30 and pandemic delays.
“It is difficult to measure how much every factor contributed to the increase in new births, but they also had an impact on each other,” said Park.
Marriages, a leading indicator of new births, rose by 14.9%in 2024, the greatest increase since the data was published in 1970. The marriages first appeared in 11 years in 2023, an increase of 1.0 % of a postal pandemic was thrust.
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In the Asian country there is a high correlation between marriages and births with a time delay of one or two years, since marriage is often regarded as a prerequisite for children.
All over the country, the birth rate last year was 0.58 the lowest in the capital Seoul.
The latest data showed that there were 120,000 people more who died last year than those who were born and shrank the fifth year in a natural way. The administrative city of Sejong was the only big center in which the population grew.
The South Korean population, which reached a maximum of 51.83 million in 2020, is expected to be shocked to 36.22 million by 2072, according to the latest projection by the statistical authority.
