South Korea now has a quarter of its 1971 births
Annual live births in South Korea, thousands, 1970–2025. 2025 is provisional.
- 1. The world has already passed peak child
- 2. Japan's median age is more than three times Niger's
- 3. South Korea now has a quarter of its 1971 births
- 4. China's population is projected to more than halve by 2100
- 5. Japan now has over 100,000 centenarians, up from 153
- 6. Japan has 9 million empty homes: one in seven
- 7. One in ten in Japan will be foreign by 2070
- 8. Japan's foreign residents have doubled since 2012, passing 4 million
- 9. Jakarta, not Tokyo, is the world's largest city
- 10. Two in three newly licensed UK doctors qualified abroad
- 11. Iran dropped from top refugee host to fifth in 2025
- 12. More Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else
- 13. Two in three people live where fertility is below replacement
- 14. Japan's births fell below half their 1899 level
- 15. DR Congo now has more children than Brazil
- 16. Brazil now has more people over 65 than Germany
- 17. Egypt has more asylum seekers than Germany, Spain and Italy
- 18. 34 countries and territories are past their population peak
- 19. Chile's fertility rate fell below Italy's and Japan's
- 20. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 21. Thailand's births have fallen below its deaths
- 22. Women hold at least half the seats in seven parliaments
- 23. Child marriage in South Asia has nearly halved since 2005
- 24. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
Births fell from 1,024,773 at the 1971 peak to 230,028 in 2023, the record low.
Births per woman rose from the 2023 low to 0.80 in 2025. Replacement is about 2.1.
Two years of rebound took births to 254,457 in 2025. Still a quarter of the peak.
the numbers & method
| Year | Live births (k) |
|---|---|
| 1970 | 1,007 |
| 1971 | 1,025 |
| 1975 | 874 |
| 1980 | 863 |
| 1981 | 867 |
| 1982 | 848 |
| 1983 | 769 |
| 1984 | 675 |
| 1985 | 656 |
| 1990 | 650 |
| 1995 | 715 |
| 2000 | 640 |
| 2005 | 439 |
| 2010 | 470 |
| 2015 | 438 |
| 2016 | 406 |
| 2017 | 358 |
| 2018 | 327 |
| 2019 | 303 |
| 2020 | 272 |
| 2021 | 261 |
| 2022 | 249 |
| 2023 | 230 |
| 2024 | 238 |
| 2025 | 255 |
Claim types Fact
1970–2022 from Statistics Korea as tabulated in Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics 2024;67(10) Table 1 (selected years only; no interpolation). 1971 peak (1,024,773) via CEIC citing Statistics Korea. 2023 (230,028) and 2024 final (238,317) and TFR 0.72/0.75 from Statistics Korea via The Korea Times (Aug 2025). 2025 provisional (254,457; TFR 0.80) from the Ministry of Data and Statistics via AP (Feb 2026). Corrected 3 Nov 2026: title shortened to 10 words or fewer; no change to the data.
Published 7 Oct 2026
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