Korea's birthrate rises at fastest pace on record in Q1

Korea's birthrate rose at its fastest pace on record in the first quarter of 2026, with the number of babies born jumping nearly 15 percent from a year earlier, government data showed on Wednesday. 

The number of babies born between January and March this year reached 75,013, up 14.8 percent from the same period last year. It is the biggest quarterly increase on record since 1981, both in percentage terms and in absolute numbers, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics. 

The March figures were particularly striking. A total of 25,200 babies were born that month, up 19.4 percent from the previous year. The figure was also the highest for that month since 2019.

Korea's total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — rose to 0.93 in March, up 0.15 on year. The rate has now stayed above 0.9 for three consecutive months, following readings of 0.99 in January and 0.93 in February. For the first quarter as a whole, the fertility rate stood at 0.95, up 0.12 compared to a year earlier.

The increase in births was driven largely by women in their 30s. In the first quarter, the number of births per 1,000 women aged 30 to 34 rose by 11.3 to 88.5, and the rate for women aged 35 to 39 climbed 9 to 62.4. By contrast, women aged 25 to 29 and those 40 and older showed much smaller gains of 1.7 and 0.5, respectively.

Marriages continued to rise as well. A total of 21,112 couples married in March, up 10.1 percent from a year earlier, and first-quarter marriages reached 62,309, up 6.1 percent. Quarterly marriage figures have now risen on year for nine consecutive quarters since the first quarter of 2024.

Analysts attribute the trend partly to demographics. The so-called echo boom generation — the children of Korea's second baby boom, born between 1991 and 1995 — is now entering what experts consider peak marrying age, providing a natural boost to both marriage and birth figures.

“Policy efforts by central and local governments to eliminate marriage-related penalties appear to be influencing young people's attitudes toward marriage,” a ministry official said.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY NAM SOO-HYOUN [[email protected]]