With the world’s lowest fertility rates, South Korea faces a severe demographic crunch. In 2024, however, the country got some good news: its birth rate posted modest gains, and the number of marriages rose faster than it has in more than three decades, a potential sign of babies on the way. Enhanced state incentives and a temporary abatement in South Korea’s housing crisis may help explain why so many couples decided to tie the knot that year. Since then, worsening economic conditions have cast doubt on the prospect of a sustained recovery.

The proportion of one-person households in South Korea stands at an all-time high, and large shares of young Koreans report that they’ve never been in a relationship. A revolt against patriarchal gender norms has played a role in the growth of singledom. South Korean men are more enthusiastic about marriage and parenthood than are women, who often resent the expectation that they give up their careers; as a result, it has become increasingly common for Korean men to marry women from nearby countries like Vietnam, China, and Thailand. Yet an overriding worry among both men and women is affordability. To buy a home, the average Seoul household needs to save all of its disposable income for about 14 years. The price of a wedding is also going up, and with cram-school bills on the rise, South Korea is now the world’s most expensive country in which to raise a child.

Under ousted president Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea declared a “national demographic emergency.” Yoon frequently blamed feminism for the crisis, but his policy response included surprisingly robust material support: in addition to augmenting the cash transfers and stipends South Korea has offered parents for decades, Yoon rolled out after-school care nationwide, expanded paid family leave, and created a system for new parents to get preferential access to Seoul apartments. The government spent more than $11 billion on these programs in 2024 — then boosted its fertility budget by 22% in 2025. Around the same time, Korea’s housing market was finally cooling after prices nearly doubled between 2017 and 2022, fueled by low interest rates and a boom in speculation. Price decreases in 2023 and 2024 may have provided some respite from a vicious cycle in which unaffordable housing puts married life out of reach while the proliferation of single-person households pushes up demand.