Seoul, Aug 27 (IANS) South Korea’s birth rate continued to fall for the sixth straight month, a government report said Tuesday.
The number of babies born in June was 33,400, down 12.6 percent from a year earlier, reported Xinhua citing Statistics Korea.
For the first six months of this year, the childbirth dropped 8.1 percent from the same period last year.
The low birth rate came as young people with the marriageable age sought increasingly to delay marriages and put off having children amid growing costs for rearing a child and daily livelihood.
The chronically low birthrate boosted concerns over a fall in working age population and its consequent damage to the country’s growth potential as well as rising welfare expenses.
