SEOUL, July 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's births grew for the 11th straight month due to higher marriages, statistical office data showed Wednesday.
The number of newborn babies climbed 3.8 percent from a year earlier to 20,309 in May, continuing to go up since July last year, according to Statistics Korea.
The total fertility rate, or the number of children a woman is expected to bear during life, added 0.02 to 0.75 in the cited month, but it stayed far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman to maintain a stable population.
The number of marriages rose 4.0 percent to 21,761 in May on a yearly basis, but the number of divorces decreased 6.4 percent to 7,413.
Concerns remained about the younger generation who delayed or gave up on having children owing to economic difficulties such as high housing prices and stubborn unemployment.
The still low birth rate fueled worry about a demographic cliff, which refers to a sharp fall in the heads of households, eventually leading to a consumption cliff.
The number of deaths was almost unchanged at 28,510 in May compared to the same month of last year.
Affected by the still high deaths and relatively low births, the natural population decline reached 8,202 in the cited month. ■
