South Korea is breaking all records with a fertility rate at the lowest and below 1%, at 0.98%. In question, the education of children deemed too expensive with the massive use of private lessons. Ditto in Germany, working women are reluctant to have children, for fear of being misjudged.
More babies in South Korea. The country now has less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the world.
It's sad but South Korea is becoming a childless country without a baby. Less than one child per woman means that the population will eventually be halved.
What is the explanation?
There are many but one of them stands out in particular, the cost of living to raise a child in a country where there is a cult of performance. In South Korea, a child must be followed 24 hours a day for his studies, with systematic home support classes. There is too much pressure and too much for the Koreans who give up.
We have a similar phenomenon in Germany, which has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, at less than 1.4 children per woman. The explanation is that in Germany, it is bad to have children and to work. We are judged to be a bad mother who cares badly for her children. There is even an expression for that, we say we are a "RabenMutter", a "raven mother".
And in France ? We do not have this phenomenon of "Mother Crow"!
Absolutely not ! In terms of births, unlike Germany, France is rather a model.
We are at 1.86 children per woman. Admittedly, this is not enough to renew a generation (it takes 2.1), but France is the fifth-largest country in the OECD for births. Moreover, from 2055, France will be more populated than Germany.
At home, on the contrary, it is rather good for a woman to have children and to work. We are an active woman in the wind, although it is not always easy to reconcile the two.
From this point of view, we can mention the Scandinavian countries as an example. Men are more present at home and take care of children more, with more babies. Sweden is one of the leading countries in the OECD, just after France.