SEOUL, March 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Moms in their 20s are becoming a rare sight as South Korean women are typically giving birth to children at an older age.
Statistics Korea reported that mothers in their 20s gave birth to 60,200 infants last year, accounting for 22.1 percent of the 272,400 babies born.
Among them, 50,600 mothers were between 24 and 28 years of age, easily surpassing those between the ages of 20 to 23 in number (9,600). In 1990, mothers in their 20s gave birth to 524,411 babies, accounting for 80.7 percent of all childbirths.
In contrast, last year’s record showed that mothers in their 30s gave birth to 197,300 babies, accounting for 72.4 percent of the total. In 1990, mothers in their 30s accounted for only 17.5 percent of all births (113,674 babies).
The average age of mothers giving birth to a child last year was 33.1 years old. The average age used to be as low as 27 to 28 years in the 1990s, before it crossed the 33-year-old hurdle for the first time in 2019.
“South Korean women are giving birth at an older age because they’re getting married later,” said Statistics Korea. “The average age of mothers getting married rose from 24.8 years in 1990 to 30.6 years in 2019.”
Image Credit: Korea Bizwire / Yonhap / photonews@koreabizwire.com
