{"id":76488,"date":"2026-02-25T12:52:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/25\/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers"},"modified":"2026-02-25T12:52:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:52:58","slug":"south-koreas-birthrate-rises-for-second-year-with-experts-saying-echo-boomers-behind-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76488","title":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s birthrate rises for second year with experts saying \u2018echo boomers\u2019 behind boost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rebound in the country \u2013 which has been having demographic crisis \u2013 said to be partly because of 3.6 million born between 1991 and 1995 having children<\/p>\n<p>South Korea recorded 254,500 births in 2025, the largest annual increase in 15 years, driven largely by a temporarily enlarged generation \u2013 known as \u201cecho boomers\u201d \u2013 now in their early thirties, alongside marriage rates recovering from Covid-era delays.<\/p>\n<p>The country\u2019s fertility rate \u2013 the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime \u2013 rose to 0.80 from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/feb\/26\/south-korea-birthrate-rises-marriages-surge\">0.75 last year<\/a>, returning to the 0.8 range for the first time since 2021, according to provisional figures released by South Korea\u2019s ministry of data and statistics on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/25\/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebound in the country \u2013 which has been having demographic crisis \u2013 said to be partly because of 3.6 million born between 1991 and 1995 having childrenSouth Korea recorded 254,500 births in 2025, the largest annual increase in 15 years, driven largely &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,706,222,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-population","category-south-korea","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76489,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76488\/revisions\/76489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}