South Korea birthrate rises for the first time in nine years

The rise reflects an increase in marriages after the COVID pandemic as well as government policies taking effect.

South Korea’s birthrate, the lowest in the world, rose in 2024 for the first time in nine years, as policy efforts to incentivise companies and Koreans to embrace parenthood started to pay off.

Over the past decade, the country had seen its birthrate plummet as women prioritised career advancement over marriage or parenthood due to the rising cost of housing and raising a child, putting the country’s population of 51 million on track to halve by the end of this century.

In 2024, South Korea’s fertility rate rose to 0.75 children per woman from 0.72 in 2023, after eight consecutive years of decline from 1.24 in 2015. The crude birthrate – the number of babies born per 1,000 people – was 4.7, interrupting a continuous downward trend since 2014, according to Statistics Korea.

The rise reflected an increase in marriages after more couples tied the knot following pandemic delays, as well as government policies in work-family balance, childcare and housing.

“There was a change in social value, with more positive views about marriage and childbirth,” Park Hyun-jung, an official at Statistics Korea, told a news briefing, also citing the effect of a rise in the number of people in their early 30s and pandemic delays.

“It is difficult to measure how much each factor contributed to the rise in new births, but they themselves had an impact on each other too,” Park said.

Last year, now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol proposed a new ministry devoted to tackling the “national demographic crisis”, aiming for a broader approach from earlier years of less effective cash-focused support.

Policy changes include employees being paid 100 percent of their salary for a maximum of six months, if both parents take parental leave, compared with a maximum of three months earlier.

Additionally, the maximum period was extended to one and a half years, from one year, if both parents take leave.

Starting this year, the government is making it mandatory for listed companies to include their childcare-related statistics in regulatory filings, with incentives for government projects and financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The government also plans to spend 19.7 trillion won ($13.76bn) in the three focus areas this year, up 22 percent from 2024.