S Korea birth rate rose last year, first time in a decade

South Korea's birth rate rose last year for the first time in a decade, official data showed on Wednesday, bucking a trend for a country battling a demographic crisis.

- Agence France-Presse

SEOUL:

The country has one of the world's longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge.

Seoul has poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability. The crude birth rate—the number of babies born per 1,000 people—was 4.7, interrupting a continuous downward trend since 2014, according to preliminary data from Statistics Korea.

And the fertility rate, or the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, was 0.75, "up 0.03 from 0.72 in 2023," it said.