South Korea has been the poster child for worldwide terminal fertility rates. Rates are going down, pretty fast, everywhere and they’ve been doing nothing but going down since the global financial crisis.
South Korea reached a low of 0.72 births per woman in 2023. It then climbed very modestly to 0.75 in 2024 and now is up to 0.80.
From Korea Biz News:
South Korea recorded its strongest March for births in seven years, offering fresh signs that the country’s long-running demographic decline may be easing, at least temporarily, as marriages rebound and more couples start families.
Data released Wednesday by the Statistics Korea showed that 25,200 babies were born in March, up 19.4 percent from a year earlier and the highest monthly total for March since 2019.
This is pretty astonishing, even if the effect is small. The lower fertility goes, the harder it is to get the population plane to nose upward. The 4-2-1 social model in China from the one child policy means that the current generation of people in their prime fertility years have no in-law siblings and almost no cousins to help them in their duties as parents. Age segregated institutions means that few fertile people have been dealing with babies as kids or adults in any way whatsoever, making the prospect of parenthood seem even more foreign and intimidating.
South Korea has to more than double its current fertility rate from here on our to assure some population stability; currently the country is on course for rapid aging and a population crash in the coming decades, but the sudden rise in marriage and fertility rates is a welcome sign in East Asia.