1분기 합계출산율 1.01명...전년 동기 대비 0.07명 감소<br /><br />Since December 2015, the number of births in Korea has been falling on-year every month, and that trend continued in March.<br />The fertility rate for March also fell again compared to the previous year.<br />Kim Hyesung reports. <br />The number of births in South Korea fell 9-point-7 percent on-year in March.<br />According to Statistics Korea on Wednesday, there were 27-thousand births recorded in March this year, down from 30-thousand tallied in the same month of 2018.<br />This is the lowest number of newborns in the month of March since Statistics Korea began compiling the data on a monthly basis in 1981. <br />As for the first quarter, the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime, was at 1-point-zero-1, down zero-point-07 from the first quarter of 2018.<br />The fertility rate has continued to slide in South Korea, with the rate hitting a record low of zero-point-98 last year. <br />That's much lower than the replacement level of 2-point-1 that would keep South Korea's population stable at around 50 million.<br /> Korea is also the only country in the OECD that has a total fertility rate below one much lower than the OECD average of 1-point-68.<br />Statistics Korea attributed the decline in childbirths to the falling number of marriages and the falling number of women aged between 30 and 34. <br />The number of marriages dropped near 11 percent on-year to 59-thousand in the first quarter, while the number of divorces jumped 5 percent to 27-thousand. <br />The number of deaths in the first quarter dropped 8 percent on-year to around 75-thousand.<br />Kim Hyesung, Arirang News. <br />
