It's the rate that women are getting pregnant. Circumstances and societal conditions can certainly curtail and slow the willingness of otherwise capable women to have families.
Do you just refer to fertility as 'South Korea's Fertility' when referencing the ability to conceive?
I mean, it's not incredibly shocking that a country half the size of Florida, essentially an island nation with a population of 50M, are deciding not to have children.
When I plug in population densities and fertility values of various countries from Wikipedia, the Spearman's correlation coefficient of the two variables is roughly 0.26.
From that, I gather that population density is a contributing factor (perhaps due to its relationship with cost of living) but not enough to explain the whole story behind what's going on in South Korea.
South Korea is not half the size of Florida — it’s the other way around. FL is less than half the size of SK. Also it’s not an island nation — it’s on the Korean Peninsula. If you mean it’s an island nation in terms of connectivity then most nations in the world are islands too. Brazil for instance is culturally disconnected from its neighbors due to language.
I mean, it's not incredibly shocking that a country half the size of Florida, essentially an island nation with a population of 50M, are deciding not to have children.