S’pore births fall below 30K in 2025 for the 1st time in national history

Singapore births fall by 11.4% to 29,864 in 2025, slight increase in deaths: ICA

The number of live births in Singapore last year fell to 29,864, but the number of deaths increased slightly, according to figures released by the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) on Monday (27 July).

This marks the first time the number of annual births has fallen below 30,000 since Singapore’s independence in 1965, according to The Straits Times.

Steady decrease in S’pore births over last 5 years

The sobering statistics were outlined in ICA’s Report on Registration of Births and Deaths 2025, which aims to provide an overview of the annual changes in the population, births, deaths, stillbirths and other vital statistics in Singapore.

Over the last five years, it noted a steady decrease in the number of births, with an 11.4% drop in 2025 compared with 33,703 in 2024.

This has caused the crude birth rate to slide to a 10-year low of 6.5 per 1,000 Singapore residents.

26,071 citizen births in 2025

Among the births in 2025, 27,393 were Singapore residents (i.e. at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident), while 2,471 were non-residents.

26,071 — or 87% — of the resident births had at least one Singaporean parent.

This is a decrease of 10.8% from the citizen births and 11.1% from the resident births in 2024.

Majority of births were Chinese, but Malays have highest birth rate

The majority of babies born in 2025 (56.6%) were Chinese, followed by Malay (22.5%) and Indian (11.5%).

But Malays had the highest birth rate, with 11.8 per 1,000 residents.

In contrast, the Chinese had the lowest birth rate of 5.3, while Indians had 7.3.

Women giving bitth at later age

Singapore’s women are also giving birth at a later age, with the median age for first-time mothers increasing to 32.1 in 2025, from 31.3 years in 2021.

This “reveals a clear trend of first-time mothers progressively delaying childbirth to later stages of their lives”, the report stated.

The median age of mothers giving birth to their second or subsequent child has also shown a gradual upward trend over the same period.

Among the ethnic groups, Chinese mothers have their first child at the age of 32.9, Malay mothers at 28.8, and Indian mothers at 30.9.

0.2% increase in deaths in 2025

As for the number of registered deaths, apart from an increase in 2022, it has remained steady, though there was a 0.2% increase in 2025.

But the dramatic fall in births has caused the natural population increase to plunge to 3,365, compared with 7,261 in 2024.

Out of the 26,499 deaths in 2025, 25,300 of them were residents, and among the residents were 24,470 citizens.

Majority of deaths were of the elderly & due to illness

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the deaths were of elderly people, with 87.4% aged 60 and above.

The main cause of death was illness, specifically malignant neoplasms (i.e. cancer) and heart and hypertensive diseases. Both conditions made up 52.1% of all deaths.

However, 2% of the deaths were attributed to “unnatural causes”, encompassing accidents, suicides, and other external causes.

Also read: S’pore’s fertility rate plunges to record low of 0.87 in 2025, ‘carefully managed immigration flow’ needed

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Featured image adapted from Luma Pimentel on Unsplash. Photo for illustration purposes only.