For the first time in almost a decade, South Koreans are having more babies.
The 3.6 percent rise recorded in births last year — the first since 2015 — offered a sliver of hope to government officials who have been rolling out greater parental leave and other benefits to try to increase the world’s lowest birthrate.
The jump follows an increased number of marriages in the past few years, partly because many weddings were postponed during the Covid-19 pandemic. In South Korea, people almost always marry before having a child.
The turnaround in the birthrate indicates a “change in social value, with more positive attitudes toward marriage and having children,” Park Hyun-jung, an official from the government’s statistic agency, said in a briefing.
Some 238,300 babies were born last year, an increase of 8,300 from 2023, according to a preliminary report released on Wednesday by the agency. Whether the rise is a blip or the beginning of a trend remains to be seen.
“This is welcome news,” said Seulki Choi, a professor of demographics and sociology from the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Sejong City. The birthrate had been slipping so drastically that “it was hard to imagine just how far it would drop.”
Reversing the country’s declining population altogether will be a far more difficult feat to achieve, population experts say, as the elderly in South Korea outnumber the youth. The number of deaths last year was 358,400, an increase of 5,800 (or 1.7 percent) compared with the previous year.
Population experts have predicted that a continued downward trajectory in births would halve the nation’s census of 51 million by the year 2100.
The nation has struggled with its aging population for the better part of a decade. The fertility rate — the average number of children born to a woman during her reproductive years — nose-dived from 1.24 in 2015 to 0.72 in 2023. Generally speaking, a total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to ensure a broadly stable population
Young people have been anxious about their futures, both in their careers and financially, said Professor Choi, adding that the struggle to find a stable job has made the prospect of having a child more daunting, especially in major cities. The fertility rate in the capital, Seoul, was 0.552 in 2023, according to government statistics.
The government has invested billions of dollars to implement measures to promote childbirth in attempts to counteract the aging population. In June, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared the declining population a “demographic national emergency.” His administration unveiled policies it would implement to ease the burden of child rearing, some of which have taken effect in recent months.
The new policies include allowing expectant mothers to work reduced hours and increasing child care leave for fathers. New fathers would be able to take 20 days off, an increase from the existing 10. The plan also promised new parents an increased monthly stipend of between 1.5 million won and 2.5 million won (around $1,000 and $1,700) for the first few months of parental leave.
Some previous proposals have faced criticism for being poorly thought out. In 2023, lawmakers considered exempting men from serving in the military if they had three children before the age of 30.
“This didn’t address the core issue of child rearing being way too difficult and expensive,” said Lee Yi-eun, a 31-year-old office worker in Seoul.
The nation’s fertility rate remained the world’s lowest last year at 0.75, according to the report.
While populations in many other developed countries have also begun to grow older and smaller, South Korea’s case has been particularly drastic, experts say. They cite the high costs of child bearing, unaffordable housing prices, and the competitive education system as some of the causes.
Last year, South Korea started increasing the number of foreign nannies allowed in to help working parents take care of their children. In a pilot program, 100 nannies arrived in the country from the Philippines in August.
