Shanghai in China has a fertility rate 0f 0.50
Some parts of South Korea like wards of Seoul and Busan are already in or below 0.30 children per woman
In 2023 Taiwan’s fertility rate was 0.865 and still going downside
The Hong kong one was 0.75 kids per woman
Singapore is 0.97 (and declining very fast)
Japan is the highest at 1.20 (with Tokyo being 0.99) and they’re declining also really fast
Why???
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Probably the same stuff that is causing it elsewhere in the developed world, with gender inequalities and demanding work cultures probably pushing the accelerator a bit more in East Asia than in Europe or elsewhere.
That said, there are also some significant differences in the trends among those countries.
For example, Japan fell below replacement level birthrates far earlier than any other country in the region (1975) but its decline has been way more gradual. Thus while its population peaked earlier and has been declining since 2010, it also has a higher birth rate today than its neighbors.
In Sourth Korea on the other hand (Singapore too) they fell below replacement levels later, but the rate of decline has been way faster and sharper than it has in Japan so its much more of an acute crisis in those countries, especially South Korea. There the birth rate last year was 0.68, which translates into a 2/3 reduction in population from one generation to the next. That is going to hit their society like a ton of bricks in a couple of decades and its really unclear how that society is going to handle it (especially given that it is a country with serious security problems that necessitates a large military due to the North).
In China the trend was started by the one child policy from 1979 onwards, but now that they’ve lifted it they’ve discovered that most people don’t want to have more than one child so it hasn’t made any difference. The thing that seperates China from Japan, South Korea and Singapore is that its the only one which is getting old before it gets rich. While China as a whole has a huge economy, and the coastal areas are fairly wealthy, the vast majority of its population still lives in conditions that are much much poorer. Japan, South Korea and Singapore at least have the wealth necessary to transition their societies, which is a luxury that China doesn’t have owing to its huge population. This is a similar problem for other poorer countries that will face similar demographics in the years to come.
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