East Asia contains the clearest cases of fertility falling far below replacement and remaining there. Its countries differ in politics and prosperity, yet several have converged on exceptionally few births.
Japan reached this terrain first. Its population has declined for more than a decade; Japan’s Statistics Bureau recorded a 550,000 decrease in 2024. Long life and sustained low fertility have produced an age structure with fewer potential mothers and more deaths even before fertility changes again.
South Korea has moved further. Its total fertility rate rose slightly to 0.75 in 2024 after reaching 0.72 in 2023, while births rose for the first time in nine years. The change is welcome but small beside the accumulated decline. Cohorts entering adulthood are already much smaller than the cohorts that preceded them.
China’s scale makes its turn globally consequential. The one-child policy accelerated fertility reduction and imposed grave costs, but fertility remained low after the policy was relaxed and then ended. In 2024, China’s official statistics recorded 9.54 million births and 10.93 million deaths. Population fell for another year, while more than one fifth was age sixty or older.
Taiwan and Singapore reinforce the regional pattern. All are dense, highly educated, urban societies where marriage is late and births remain closely tied to marriage. Singapore’s resident TFR was 0.97 in 2024 despite decades of active family policy.
A regional pattern
It is tempting to reduce the region to work hours or housing prices. Each belongs in the account, and later chapters will examine them. Together they remain insufficient to explain why the pattern spans such different economies and governments.
The shared structure is more useful here. Education and work consume more of early adulthood. Urban housing is expensive. Parents invest heavily in a small number of children. Women’s opportunities outside the home have expanded faster than men’s contribution within it. Marriage is postponed, and where childbearing outside marriage remains uncommon, fewer marriages mean fewer births.
East Asia also shows why reversal becomes harder with delay. Policies may improve the conditions for each potential family, but they cannot quickly recreate adults who were never born. Low fertility changes behavior first and cohort size later. The range of near-term possibilities then narrows.
Citations
- Statistics Bureau of Japan, Current Population Estimates as of October 1, 2024.
- Statistics Korea, Birth Statistics in 2024.
- National Bureau of Statistics of China, Statistical Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China on the 2024 National Economic and Social Development.
- Singapore Department of Statistics, “Births and Fertility—Latest Data”.