Korea's recent birthrate rise: Long-term trend or post-Covid, generational pop?

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

When 34-year-old Kim Jeong-yun got married, she and her husband planned to save for three years before starting a family. Three years on, rising loan burdens, an expiring lease and an impending move have pushed those plans back.

“Children? Of course I want them. Just not right now,” she said. “But we still don't feel like we have a solid enough financial foundation. And even though workplace parental leave policies are getting better, I'm still not sure I'd be able to keep my job after giving birth.”

Kim’s hesitation contrasts with Korea’s official data, which point to a sharp rise in births.

In February, births reached 22,898 — up 13.6 percent on year, per the Ministry of Data and Statistics. That marks the highest February total since 2019, the third-largest monthly increase, or the absolute rise in births, and extends a run of on-year gains to 20 consecutive months since July 2024. The birth growth rate — the percentage increase in births — hit a record high for February since tracking began in 1981. The total fertility rate, which measures the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, rose to 0.93, continuing an upward trend for 14 straight months. 

Officials are cautiously optimistic, but experts say the recent birth uptick is temporary, driven by delayed marriages and a large cohort reaching peak childbearing age. Deeper issues like high housing costs, job insecurity, and career concerns remain unresolved, so the trend may not last.

“The real-life conditions young Koreans face, and the factors that shape their decision to have children, haven't fundamentally changed,” said  Lee Sang-lim, a senior researcher at Seoul National University's Population Policy Research Center. “The likelihood that the current upward trend will sustain itself over the medium to long term is not high. Now is the time for more aggressive pro-birth policies that actually make it easier for young people to have children.” 

What's actually driving the increase 

Experts point to two structural factors that largely explain the uptick — neither of which reflects a fundamental shift in how young Koreans feel about having children.

The first is generational. Women currently in the core childbearing age bracket of 31 to 35 — born between 1991 and 1995 — belong to a temporarily larger birth cohort. Each year within that range produced roughly 330,000 to 340,000 births, making this generation larger than the ones that followed. As these women have entered their early 30s, the total number of births has risen accordingly, by simple demographic weight.

The second factor is a catch-up effect from the Covid-19 pandemic. Marriages that were delayed during the pandemic years are now taking place in larger numbers: The annual marriage count, which fell as low as 190,000 during the pandemic, recovered to 250,000 last year — returning to pre-pandemic levels. Given that most couples who have children do so within two years of marriage, this surge in marriages is now flowing through into births.

Some within government, however, argue that suffered pro-natalist policy is playing a meaningful role. 

The Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy has pointed specifically to its special loan program, which offers preferential mortgage rates to families who have recently had a child, as a contributor to housing stability among young couples. 

Data shows that the total fertility rate among households in the top 30 percent income bracket rose from 0.84 in 2023 to 0.95 last year following the loan program's introduction.

Officials also cite parental leave data: Workers who took parental leave at their workplace were 11 to 12 percentage points more likely to have an additional child compared to colleagues at the same company who did not use the benefit.

“Couples who received meaningful practical support through child care policy were significantly more likely to start planning a second child,” said Kye Bong-oh, a sociology professor at Kookmin University who has researched the issue. “The recent rebound in the birthrate may represent more than a temporary post-Covid correction — it suggests that policy effects are providing meaningful reinforcement.”

The structural headwinds ahead

Despite the short-term uptick, the longer-term trajectory remains deeply concerning to most researchers.

The population of women aged 29 to 39 — the core childbearing demographic — did turn upward beginning in 2023, but is projected to start declining again after 2029. The share of married women among those aged 25 to 44 has fallen continuously since 2000. And among couples within seven years of registering their marriage, the proportion who remain childless rose from 31.5 percent in 2019 to 35.9 percent in 2023. More marriages are not automatically translating into more children.

Yoo Hye-jeong, the research center head of the Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future, was direct about the outlook. 

“The generation born in the early-to-mid 1990s is the last to represent a peak in birth numbers,” she said. “The window when their marriages and births will be concentrated will close in the early 2030s. After that, the population entering prime marriage and childbearing age will shrink — and even if fertility rates hold at current levels, total births will almost certainly fall.”

The experiences of women like Park Min-ji, aged 39, who gave birth to her first child in February after five years of marriage, also illustrate the ongoing barriers. 

“I changed jobs right after we got married, so we postponed having a child. Then financial pressures kept pushing it further back. In the end, I had to go through fertility treatments,” she said. “I still have many friends around me who are either delaying having children or giving up entirely because of housing and work pressures.”

A window that won't stay open

Researchers are calling on the government to treat the current moment as a critical window — one that could close before any lasting demographic shift takes hold.

“The fact that more young people are getting married suggests that those who had been delaying are beginning to move. But birth decisions are shaped by a complex web of factors — housing, employment, child care — and society needs to work on all of them together to ensure marriages lead to births,” said sociology professor Kim Cheong-seok of Dongguk University. 

Kim Yong-ha, a professor at Soonchunhyang University's Department of IT-Finance Management, argued for structural reform over short-term cash incentives. 

“To sustain this rebound, the government needs to go beyond one-off financial transfers and actively pursue reforms that address the root concerns of young people — housing insecurity and the persistent difficulty of balancing work and family life.”

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 HUR JUNG-YEON [[email protected]]