South Korea’s birthrate, the world’s lowest, rises again amid signs of easing demographic crisis

SEOUL – South Korea’s birthrate rose for a second-straight year in 2025, government data showed on Feb 25, in a further sign that a country facing a demographic crisis for nearly a decade may be starting to turn a corner.

South Korea’s total fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life, stood at 0.8 in 2025, up from 0.75 in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics.

New births began rebounding in 2024 on a post-pandemic boost and government policies, after eight consecutive years of declines that saw South Korea register the world’s lowest birthrate at 0.72 in 2023, a period marked by skyrocketing house prices and higher economic participation by women.

There were 5 new births per 1,000 people in 2025, up from 4.7 in 2024. That compared with 5.6 in China (2025), 4.6 in Taiwan (2025) and 5.7 in Japan (2024), where the trend remains downwards.

The pace of the rebound is faster than the government’s optimistic-case projection of 0.75 in 2025 and 0.80 in 2026, which forecasts the total fertility rate to break above 1.0 per woman in 2031.

Marriages, a leading indicator of new births with a time lag of one to two years, rose 8.1 per cent in 2025, after a record jump of 14.8 per cent in 2024.

“The biggest part is that marriages are increasing a lot, accumulatively,” Ms Park Hyun-jung, a ministry official, told a briefing, noting a higher number of people in their 30s and shifts in social attitudes.

The sharpest rise in new births was in the capital, with Seoul’s fertility rate at 0.63, up 8.9 per cent from 0.58 in 2024, though still the lowest across the country.

Professor Shin Kyung-ah, who teaches sociology at Hallym University, said the data needed more scrutiny because of statistical effects such as population composition changes.

“Still, it is meaningful as an indicator suggesting positive changes, which will, at least indirectly, also help make people become more positive about having a baby,” she said.

In a biennial government survey in 2024, 52.5 per cent of South Koreans expressed positive views about marriage, up from 50.1 per cent in 2022. The average number of children people ideally wanted to have stood at 1.89.

In 2025, new births rose 6.8 per cent to 254,457, the biggest percentage rise since 2007, while deaths rose 1.3 per cent to 363,389, resulting in the population naturally shrinking for the sixth consecutive year.

Economic shock

President Lee Jae Myung’s administration plans a five-year policy roadmap in 2026 to respond to demographic changes, amid concern about an economic shock from a rapidly ageing population.

It also plans to further expand policy support rolled out in recent years for childbirth, and to introduce measures to attract skilled foreign workers in response to a shrinking workforce.

“The government will further strengthen support for young people in their 20s and early 30s, low-income earners and the unemployed,” the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy said in January, citing evidence policy efforts were bearing fruit.

South Korea’s potential economic growth rate, currently estimated at around an annual rate of 2 per cent, fell by six percentage points in the last three decades, more sharply than in most major economies, and is expected to fall to 0.6 per cent by 2045-2049, according to the central bank.

Credit ratings agencies warn that South Korea’s public finances are facing strains because of growing social welfare expenditure.

The country’s public pension fund, the world’s third-largest with US$1 trillion (S$1.27 trillion) in assets, is projected to run out by 2071.

President Lee has called for regional cooperation on demographic changes and proposed at the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit to hold the group’s first population policy forum in South Korea in 2026.

During his visits to China and Japan in January, Mr Lee also made separate agreements with President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to seek collaboration on ageing populations.

South Korea’s population of 51.8 million is expected to shrink by almost a third to 36.2 million by 2072, according to the latest government projection in 2022. REUTERS