Japan invariably looms as the central case study for the economic and societal effects of rapid fertility decline, population decline and ageing. Japan is, measured by median age, the oldest country on earth, excluding the greying millionaires of Monaco and the some-5,000 people on British St. Helena. At the end of 2021, Japan had a median age of 48.4, well ahead of the second major country on the list, Italy, with a median age of 46.8. Japan is about to get older still. According to preliminary estimates, the country’s fertility rate fell further last year, albeit marginally, while the gap between births and deaths remained wide as ever. The number of live births fell by 5.0%, to 770.774, while deaths rose by 9.0%, to 1.57 million. Japan’s rapidly ageing population is the result of a quicker and more sustained post-1945 fertility transition than in other developed economies.
Read MoreTo the extent that birth postponement is a key feature of the second demographic transition, South Korea is a poster child for the phenomenon. Recently, we learned that South Korea's total fertility rate fell to an astonishing 0.78 in 2022, from 0.81 in 2021, the lowest period fertility rate on the planet. The first two charts paint a clear picture. The first shows the sustained decline in fertility rates, which began in the 1960s. In 1960, South Korean women were having about six children per women, a number which had declined to just over four by 1970 and just over two by 1980. By the middle of the 1980s, fertility fell below the replacement level, and the decline has continued since, despite temporary rebounds at the start of the 1990s and again at the beginning of the 2000s. Period fertility resumed its decline around 2015, and the result to date is that South Korea has the lowest recorded total fertility rate on earth. The second chart plots crude birth rate across age and 20-year time periods, which is a good way to distinguish between quantum and tempo effects.
Read MoreI am currently writing the third chapter on fertility for my book on demographics—see here— which focuses on on the onset of sub-replacement fertility in one country after the other since the 1970s, what's driving this shift, and whether the decline—to a large extent driven by birth postponement or so-called tempo effects—is reversing or accelerating. It is a treatise on the notion of a second demographic transition, including empirical case studies, and a discussion about whether sub-replacement fertility is something to worry about, cherish, or perhaps to approach with indifference. This is an enquiry that is defined just as much by what it excludes as what it includes. Once we dip into the multidisciplinary academic work on demographics which has emerged in the last two-to-three decades, we go from a large literature to an almost unmanageable one. I will hopefully be able to present a first draft on the chapter soon. In the mean time, however, one thing that as struck me during my recent work is that global fertility will soon fall below the replacement level, defined as just over two children per women, despite what the latest UN projections would have you believe.
Read MoreLast week we learned that China’s population shrunk last year, for the first time in 60 years, by 850K, the net result of 9.6M live births, and 10.4M deaths. It is worth taking these numbers with a pinch of salt. Accurately accounting for some 1.4B people is difficult, especially down to a sub-1M difference between deaths and births. It’s possible that future revisions will show that China’s population has been shrinking since the beginning of the 2020s, or that it won’t start shrinking until 2025 or beyond. What is clear for anyone with even cursory knowledge of Chinese demographics, however, is that this headline was coming sooner rather than later. China’s fertility rate has long since declined below the replacement level, and all-age mortality is now rising as the population ages. But does it matter that China’s population is now shrinking?
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