Japan and South Korea released their 2023 births and deaths numbers.
Japan after experiencing a recovery on its fertility rates during after the mid-2000's, is once again falling and reached its all time low 1.26 child/per women. The previous low was back in 2005, at the same number. South Korea keeps plunging deeper and deeper. It reached 0.72 (!!!) child/per women in 2023, once again renewing the world record, for the fourth year straight. The impact of that down the road will certainly be massive.
A comparative table between both countries and how low TFR impacted their birth and death curves and how South Korea is transitioning much faster than Japan:
1960
Japan
Births: 1,606,041 Deaths: 706,599 Surplus: 899,442
South Korea
Births: 1,080,535 Deaths: 285,350 Surplus: 795,185
1970
Japan
Births: 1,934,239 Deaths: 712,962 Surplus: 1,221,277
South Korea
Births: 1,006,645 Deaths: 258,589 Surplus: 748,056
1980
Japan
Births: 1,576,889 Deaths: 722,801 Surplus: 854,088
South Korea
Births: 862,835 Deaths: 277,284 Surplus: 585,551
1990
Japan
Births: 1,221,585 Deaths: 820,305 Surplus: 401,280
South Korea
Births: 649,738 Deaths: 241,616 Surplus: 408,122
2000
Japan
Births: 1,190,547 Deaths: 961,653 Surplus: 228,894
South Korea
Births: 640,089 Deaths: 248,740 Surplus: 391,349
2010
Japan
Births: 1,071,305 Deaths: 1,197,014 Surplus: -125,709
South Korea
Births: 470,171 Deaths: 255,405 Surplus: 214,766
2020
Japan
Births: 840,832 Deaths: 1,372,648 Surplus: -531,816
South Korea
Births: 272,337 Deaths: 304,948 Surplus: −32,611
2023
Japan
Births: 758,631 Deaths: 1,590,503 Surplus: -831,872
South Korea
Births: 229,971 Deaths: 352,721 Surplus: -122,750
- Japan fell below replacement level (less than 2 children/per women) in 1973, one of the first countries in the world to get there (Germany was in 1970). South Korea fell in 1984, but it had a much higher fertility level than Japan before that (6 children per women vs 2 by 1960), giving it a much younger population structure.
- In 1983 births still outnumbered deaths by 2:1 in Japan; that only happened in South Korea in 2002, 19 years later.
- Deaths outnumbered births in Japan for the first time in 2005; in South Korea in 2020, 15 years later.
- The next milestone is deaths outnumbering births by 2:1. That happened in Japan in 2022; in South Korea, if the current trends are kept, that might happen in 2025 or 2026, merely 3-4 years after Japan. That shows how fast ultra-low fertility rates are eroding South Korean demographics.
- Another thing showing how South Korea is doing much poorer than Japan is the number of births. While Japan registered 1,190,547 births in 2000 and fell to 758,631 in 2023, the fall in South Korea was much sharper: from 640,089 to 229,971. Three times less births in merely 23 years whereas in Japan it fell by "only" 1/3.