South Korea February births rise 13.6% YoY, fastest pace on record

The number of babies born rose at a record high pace in February of this year, driven largely by an increase in childbirths by women in their 30s, government data showed Wednesday. A total of 22,898 babies were born during the month, up a solid 13.6 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to findings by the Ministry of Data and Statistics. The figure was the highest for the month since 2019, when 25,710 babies were born, and the growth pace was also the highest for any February since record keeping began in 1981, the ministry said. The number of newborns has been on an upward trend since July 2024. The country's total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, rose 0.1 from a year earlier to 0.93 in February. The ministry said the recent rise in births was mainly led by women in their 30s, with the number of births per 1,000 women in their early 30s rising by 9.1 to 86.1 and the corresponding tally for women in their late 30s increasing by 9.2 to 61.5. The number of births per 1,000 women in their late 20s only rose by 1.6 to 23.9. The number of marriages in February declined 4.2 percent on-year to 18,557, turning lower after 22 straight months of increase, on the fewer number of working days due to the extended Lunar New Year holiday. The number of divorces went down 15.6 percent on-year to 6,197 in the cited month, the data showed. Meanwhile, the number of deaths dropped by 3.5 percent from a year earlier to 29,172, resulting in a natural population decline of 6,275.