Births in August increased 3.8% from the same month a year earlier. The number of births rose, but the pace of growth has slowed for two straight months.
According to the "August population trends" that the National Data Office released on the 29th, the number of births in August was 20,867, up 764 (3.8%) from a year earlier.
In June, the year-over-year increase was 9.4%, and in July it was 5.9%, but in August the figure fell back into the 3% range.
Births from January to August totaled 168,671, up 6.8% from the same period last year. The number of births itself has risen for 14 straight months since July last year.
The total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime, is 0.77. It is up 0.02 from a year earlier but down 0.03 from July, the previous month.
By city and province, births increased in 12 jurisdictions, including Seoul and Busan, and fell in five, including Daejeon and Sejong.
First births increased by 2.0 percentage points (p) from a year earlier, while second births and third or higher decreased by 0.9 p and 1.1 p, respectively.
There were 19,449 marriages in August, an increase of 1,922 (11.0%) from a year earlier. For August, it was the highest in eight years since 2017.
The number of deaths in August was 28,971, down 3,150 (9.8%) from a year earlier.
Divorces in the same month totaled 7,196, down 420 (5.5%) from the same month a year earlier.
With deaths outnumbering births, the population saw a natural decrease of 8,105 in August.
Meanwhile, according to the "September domestic population movement statistics" released the same day, the number of people who moved their residence last month was 494,000, up 6.5% (30,000) from a year earlier.
Cities with net inflows of population were Incheon (3,422), North Chungcheong (861), and South Chungcheong (823), while those with net outflows were Seoul (-3,382), Busan (-731), and North Gyeongsang (-620).