SEOUL, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's births grew for the 13th straight month amid higher marriages, statistical office data showed Wednesday.
The number of newborn babies rose 5.9 percent from a year earlier to 21,803 in July, 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 0.04 to 0.80 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 expanded 8.4 percent to 20,394 in July on a yearly basis, but the number of divorces fell 1.4 percent to 7,826.
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 slipped 0.7 percent to 27,979 in July compared to the same month of last year.
Affected by the high deaths and the relatively low births, the natural population decline reached 6,175 in the cited month. ■
