South Korea has become the global face of demographic collapse.
But on one important measure, it isn’t even the most extreme society in East Asia.
Childlessness.
Among Japanese women born in 1975, 28% never had a child.
In Singapore, the figure is also 28% for women born between 1975 and 1980.
In Hong Kong, it reached 35% among women born in 1971 and remained around 30% for those born in 1979.
South Korea’s comparable figure?
About 13%.
Yet all four now have extraordinarily low fertility rates: 1.15 in Japan (2024), 0.87 in Singapore (2025), 0.73 in Hong Kong (2025) and 0.75 in South Korea (2024).
This reveals something fertility rates alone can’t explain.
There are different ways to become a low-fertility society.
In Japan, an unusually large share of women never become mothers at all.
In South Korea, historically, more women became mothers but fewer went on to have larger families.
In 2022, third and higher-order births accounted for only 8% of births in South Korea, compared with 17% in Japan.
So East Asia doesn’t have one fertility crisis.
It has several.
South Korea has extraordinarily low annual fertility.
Japan and Singapore have exceptionally high permanent childlessness.
Hong Kong has gone even further.
We obsess over the total fertility rate. But permanent childlessness asks a simpler question:
What percentage of a generation goes through life without ever having a child?
For some recent completed cohorts in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, the answer is roughly three in ten.
That is not a projection.
It has already happened.
