Jinju City Sees Positive Signal for Birth Rate Rebound ... Total Fertility Rate Reaches 1.01

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On March 5, Jinju City in South Gyeongsang Province announced that its total fertility rate for 2025 reached 1.01, marking a two-year consecutive increase.

According to the "Population Trend Survey" from the National Statistical Portal (KOSIS), Jinju City's provisional total fertility rate for 2025 increased compared to 0.912 in 2024, recovering to the 1.0 level. This marks a two-year consecutive rise, following 0.887 in 2023 and 0.912 in 2024, and is significantly higher than the national average of 0.80 and the Gyeongnam provincial average of 0.88.

The total fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman aged 15 to 49 is expected to have in her lifetime, serving as a key indicator for assessing the population structure and future population size of a region.

Jinju City Shows Positive Signs in Total Fertility Rate for the First Time in Six Years.

The number of marriages also showed an upward trend. The provisional number of marriages in 2025 was 1,384, a clear increase of approximately 19.5% compared to 1,158 in 2023, which is evaluated as a positive sign for improving the population structure. Furthermore, the number of births in 2025 provisionally reached 1,900, a 14% increase from 1,666 in 2023, signaling a positive outlook for the birth rate.

The city has been implementing 315 population policy projects across six areas, including 44 initiatives in the fields of marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth such as marriage and childbirth celebration grants, financial support for infertility treatment, pre-pregnancy health care support, and the "Happiness Package for Newborns." These policy efforts are analyzed to have made a tangible contribution to the rebound in the fertility rate.

In particular, the "Full Coverage of Out-of-Pocket Costs for Infertility Treatment" policy, the first of its kind nationwide, has eased the financial burden on couples experiencing infertility, improved access to treatment, and increased the possibility of successful pregnancies. In 2025, approximately 15% of total newborns were born through infertility treatments, which translates to about one in every seven babies. This indicates that the full coverage of out-of-pocket infertility treatment costs is playing an important role in boosting the population amid low birth rates.

Moreover, despite the ongoing decline in the youth population and an aging society, Jinju City's youth population ratio in 2025 stood at 24.86%, maintaining the top position among cities and counties in the province since 2023. According to the latest population statistics analysis by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the city's youth population decline rate, which was -3.61% in 2022, improved to -1.70% in 2025, more than halving and showing signs of stabilization.

This outcome is attributed to various youth support policies, including welfare grants for young employees at small and medium-sized enterprises, support for youth certification exam fees, administrative internships for university students, and the operation of a startup support center, which have provided a strong foundation for youth to settle in the region.

Jinju City has focused on improving indicators of "youth vitality, marriage, and childbirth" that reflect the city’s fundamental self-sufficiency, rather than relying on simple population movement figures, which are highly volatile due to external factors such as housing supply or university semester starts.

Going forward, the city plans to further enhance its population policy projects to create a better environment for raising children. By linking these efforts to the opening of the national aerospace agency and the activation of the national aviation industrial complex, the city aims to continuously generate quality jobs and strengthen support to ensure stable settlement for young people.

A Jinju City official stated, "We will expand policies supporting marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth to increase the number of marriages and raise the total fertility rate," adding, "We will continue our efforts to make Jinju a city where young people want to stay and where it is easy to have and raise children."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.