Can you apply this to South Korea? I read lately of a 0.52 TFR. Could this just be couples choosing over the last X years to delay their first child by Y years? What are some Xs and Ys that would make this true?
I am the opposite of an expert on South Korea and demographics, but I think nonetheless that at most a small part of its extremely low current TFR can be explained by this. At 'Our World in Data' they have graphs which try to adjust for that and according to it South Korea's 'Tempo-adjusted total fertility rate', was still around 1 in 2022 down from 1.69 in 2001; though both numbers were still considerably higher than the TFR in those years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-fertility-rate-vs-cohort-fertility-rate-vs-tempo-adjusted-tfr?country=~KOR
Great take.
Can you apply this to South Korea? I read lately of a 0.52 TFR. Could this just be couples choosing over the last X years to delay their first child by Y years? What are some Xs and Ys that would make this true?
I am the opposite of an expert on South Korea and demographics, but I think nonetheless that at most a small part of its extremely low current TFR can be explained by this. At 'Our World in Data' they have graphs which try to adjust for that and according to it South Korea's 'Tempo-adjusted total fertility rate', was still around 1 in 2022 down from 1.69 in 2001; though both numbers were still considerably higher than the TFR in those years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-fertility-rate-vs-cohort-fertility-rate-vs-tempo-adjusted-tfr?country=~KOR
I found that unsurprising, I had once in my spare time, thanks to an earlier discussion on the internet, compared the TFRs and completed cohort fertility of different European countries on 'Our World in Data', and had the impression that the greater the decline in TFR the more it was explained by 'real' fertility declines instead of merely delaying childbirths. For example, Austria had a greater TFR decline than Belgium after 1972 (the last time both were above 2) and also a greater part of that decline was caused by a drop in 'completed cohort fertility' instead of births being delayed. (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-fertility-rate-vs-cohort-fertility-rate-vs-tempo-adjusted-tfr?country=~BEL & https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-fertility-rate-vs-cohort-fertility-rate-vs-tempo-adjusted-tfr?country=~AUT)
Though, I admit that is clearly not a high-quality and thorough methodology.