Wanted to do a quick post on South Asian TFR trends. Sri Lanka (headed to sub 1.5) & Nepal (~1.9?) are now sub replacement. India obviously is as well. Bangladesh is just above (~2.2) while Pakistan is comfortably above replacement. Bhutan is below replacement (~1.7? guess).

Worth noting that if Taiwan, South Korea, & Singapore maintain their sub 1.0 fertility rates for decades (as many models show they will) their societies will obviously face existential issues. Can you imagine a society where only ~10% are under 18 while 40% are above 65?

By the 2030s Taiwan could see births fall below 100,000,South Korea below 200,000,& Singapore below 30,000 (with citizen births below 25K). In that same decade annual increases to the pensioner population would be near 400,000 in Taiwan, 1,000,000 in South Korea & Singapore 55K+.

Sejong City, long the TFR leader in South Korea due to its plethora of pronatalist
policies and family friendly infrastructure, fell to just 0.97 in 2023. The consumerist, individualist, materialist, work worshiping culture is to blame for all of it.

https://amp.kedglobal.com/newsAmp/ked202402280010

Putting people in dense mid to high rise tower blocks to be closer to their places of work does not help TFR either.South Korea may see the slide in births pause somewhat or reverse from March 2024-February 2025 but it won’t be anything more than a small breather. Bleak outlook.

Why bleak? Because all the government of South Korea seems prepared to do is throw lots of money at the problem without addressing the underlying cultural causes. As long as the culture is anti natalism don’t expect pronatalist programs, financial or otherwise, to help much…

Mass immigration should never be put forward as a solution to demographic decline. Embracing AI,boosting births as much as possible by changing the culture to be more natalist, & providing the right incentives for middle class parents of 2-3 kids to have 1-2 more is the answer.

Mass migration causes social & political problems as well as exacerbates housing shortages. Any immigration should be tightly controlled and regulated in line with the wishes of each nation’s citizenry. It’s really quite simple even though it goes against the wishes of elites.

🇭🇺👶Births in Hungary decreased by ~8% from January-April 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. TFR fell to just 1.37 on an annual basis compared to 1.48 a year earlier.

Hungary gave pro-natalism the biggest government backing it could. But due to a lack of buy in from many young couples it ultimately only raised births modestly for around a decade instead of a lot. Still Orban was elected when TFR was ~1.2 and by 2021 it was 1.6.

At least a few thousand additional Hungarian births during the 2010s are likely to be a direct result of the Orban governments policies. It was not enough and TFR may have risen to as high as 1.4-1.5 without it but it was something.

Well Taiwan and South Korea really are done in the short and medium term. Almost impossible to fix a culture that ranks family and children as third (& with only ~15% of the population agreeing with family and children being mentionable at all) for meaning in one’s life.

However, there is hope in the long term. It is possible that (after a generation or two) most of those having children are those who put child bearing and rearing as the center of their life and how they find meaning. This could lead to a significantly higher fertility rate.

Brunei has now been below replacement for citizens as well as residents for several years now. Citizen fertility around the same level as that of ethnic Malays in Malaysia (~1.8). Permanent and temporary residents far below replacement(similar to trend of Canadian immigrants).

Labor market collapses are already in the midst of happening in South Korea, Italy, Taiwan, Germany, Japan and many other developed economies. They are just around the corner for Poland, Brazil, Thailand, Romania, Chile & many developing countries.

Azerbaijan and Russia may end up with the same TFR in 2024 (~1.4) if current trends hold. Looking at how much higher Azerbaijani TFR was than Russian TFR in 1990, 2000, 2010 and even 2020 this is remarkable.

Costs of cars, housing, & other consumer items are getting cheaper for average Chinese. This combats the notion that things have gotten too expensive in China to afford a family. The problem is that the culture has changed & most young Chinese no longer value kids as most important.

China has a window for targeted natalism & cultural change. Could easily see CCP in the near future having campaigns to reject 996 work culture and cram schools as “negative and western”. They could make this argument by associating them with individualism/materialist chasing.

Obviously workism is a modern problem across all of East Asia that did not come from the West but rather the effort to become part of (& exceed within) the Western dominated global economy from 1975-2015. But CCP may use propaganda to make such concepts seem foreign\undesirable.

If the CCP went culturally “all in” to achieve a transformation in fertility they would still not be able to get TFR back to 1.8. But it could still stop TFR from getting to South Korean or Taiwanese levels and possibly get TFR back to 1.3 or higher.

This could be the 1st year in Thailand since records began that less than 500,000 annual births are recorded. The country is also on track for sub 1.0 TFR for 2024. This combined with potentially declining immigration from Burma by the 2030s spells disaster in the decades ahead.

However, averting immediate demographic problems for Thailand by importing Burmese means trouble for Myanmar. Burma simply cannot have 200,000 young people move to Thailand annually in 2030s without dramatic long term consequences for their own country (which is already approaching replacement TFR).

The future is almost foretold for Eastern Europe. That fatal mixture of mass emigration and below replacement fertility is the absolute cause. But expect to see this pattern repeat across much of Latin America, developing Asia, & even places like Tunisia and Morocco.

🇦🇺👶Australia is now at ~1.50 TFR. The Lucky Country, which saw a substantial fertility clawback from 2006 to 2015 (when TFR stayed above 1.8 partly as the result of natalist benefits), is now facing the worst TFR ever recorded in its history. Around the same level as the UK.

Australia's births declined by 4.5% year on year in 2023.
The TFR in Australia declined to ~1.50 in 2023 compared to 1.63 in 2022 (and 1.70 in 2021).

🇪🇬👶Egypt on track to have a TFR of less than 2.5 for the 1st time in history. TFR was 3.5 as recently as 2014 & 3.0 in 2018. Egypt is likely to fall below replacement TFR before 2030 as urban and secular couples see TFR plummet just as religious couples also have smaller families.