Childbirths in S. Korea dip in April

Childbirths in South Korea dipped in April despite the government's ongoing efforts to encourage couples to have more children, a report showed Monday.

According to the report by Statistics Korea, the number of babies born in the cited month reached 40,200, a contraction of 0.2 percent, or 100, from the same month a year earlier.

The decline comes after birthrates grew for two months in a row in February and March, when the number of newborns reached 40,600 and 43,300, respectively. In 2011, 471,400 babies were born in the country, up 0.3 percent from the previous year. 

The slight decrease comes as Seoul is offering various incentives to encourage people to have more kids to counteract the country's rapid population aging, which could hurt economic growth and raise welfare spending in the future. South Korea has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.

For the first four months of this year, the number of newborns gained 0.1 percent from an year earlier to 169,500.

The latest report showed marriages increasing 8.2 percent in April compared to the year before, with about 27,800 couples tying the knot, the report showed. For the January-April period, marriages rose 6.6 percent to 110,700.

The statistical office added the number of divorces remained unchanged at 8,500, while deaths rose 3.8 percent on-year to 22,100. 

In a separate report, meanwhile, the agency said that 625,000 people changed their residences in May, a 7 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier.

(Yonhap News)