SEOUL - South Korea's births grew for the 10th straight month in April due to higher marriages, statistical office data showed Wednesday.

The number of newborn babies increased by 8.7 percent from a year earlier to 20,717 in April, continuing to go up since July last year, according to Statistics Korea.

The total fertility rate, or the number of children a woman is expected to bear during life, added 0.06 to 0.79 in the cited month, but it stayed far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman to maintain a stable population.

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The number of marriages rose 4.9 percent to 18,921 in April on a yearly basis, while the number of divorces decreased by 5.2 percent to 7,299.

Concerns remained about the younger generation who delayed or gave up on having children owing to economic difficulties such as high housing prices and stubborn unemployment.

The still low birth rate fueled worry about a demographic cliff, which refers to a sharp fall in the heads of households eventually leading to a consumption cliff.

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The number of deaths added 0.8 percent to 28,785 in April compared to the same month of last year.

Affected by higher deaths and the still low births, the natural population decline reached 8,068 in the cited month.