Fertility Decline in East Asia

With the fall of fertility in China to near or below replacement levels in the early 1990s, the whole of East Asia may now be said to have completed a demographic transition. Its experience lies between that of the West and the many developing countries in which demographic transition is now under way. The main features and possible underlying causes of the fertility declines in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China during this century are discussed. Fertility decline in East Asia is interesting both in its own right, as a chapter in the history of human reproduction, and for the light it may shed on fertility decline in the rest of the world.