Korea’s total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — rose to 0.93 in March, up 0.15 on year. The rate has now stayed above 0.9 for three consecutive months, following readings of 0.99 in January and 0.93 in February. For the first quarter as a whole, the fertility rate stood at 0.95, up 0.12 compared to a year earlier.
The increase in births was driven largely by women in their 30s. In the first quarter, the number of births per 1,000 women aged 30 to 34 rose by 11.3 to 88.5, and the rate for women aged 35 to 39 climbed 9 to 62.4. By contrast, women aged 25 to 29 and those 40 and older showed much smaller gains of 1.7 and 0.5, respectively.
South Korea will soon have a fertility rate higher than many western countries. What will then be the new country that people obsessively make youtube videos about disappearing?
Ummm you know is still nowherenear enough, 0.9 is far far from the maintenance rate
This has been brought up before but many have noted the hypocrisy of the entire internet being obsessed with the fertility rate of South Korea when it isn’t that much different from the rest of the world.
Why is Korea touted as a country disappearing when most of the world is in the same situation?
Usually because the below countries have much lower immigration making the issue much more visible.
It’s not really the same is it? (From Our World in Data ).
It matters a lot if the rate is 1.2, over half what’s needed to replace both parents, or 0.7, which is less than a third. The numbers might seem close but the small differences matter a lot.
No? They are both too low? They are not very different.
No, they look not so different because the absolute numbers are not that far off. But if you try to realize what they mean and what it means if this is kept up over multiple generations you will understand that they are very different.
South Korea still cannot recover. The fertility rates across the globe are low, population will decline in the vast majority of countries within the century.
Always Japan