South Korea's total fertility rate of 0.74 in 2023 — the lowest ever recorded for a sovereign state — has shown a tentative uptick. The recovery, if sustained, will not prevent the demographic trajectory already locked in. The signal is in what an extreme case reveals about the mechanisms affecting all OECD societies.
Fertility rates in OECD countries have declined below replacement in ways that natalist policy has consistently failed to reverse — the mechanism is a structural shift in educated women's aspirational models.
Multi-generational household formation is at a multi-decade high, driven not by cultural preference but by housing economics and elder care costs — with second-order effects that reshape markets and planning.
The realignment of American political coalitions along educational and geographic lines is not a prediction — it is a documented shift that is now structurally locked in, with implications that neither party's leadership has fully absorbed.
Americans are not rejecting marriage. They are deferring it, reconsidering it, and, in growing numbers, simply not getting around to it. The causes are economic. The consequences are cultural and demographic.
The continent's population is set to double by 2050. Whether that becomes a dividend or a catastrophe depends on decisions being made right now.
Every wealthy country is having fewer children than needed to sustain its population. The policy responses have largely failed. Understanding why reveals something important about what people actually want.