[chasebank]

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.

[bitshiftfaced]

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.

[wenc]

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.

[chasebank]

A quick google says SK is 38k sq/mi and FL is 65k sq/mi. Maybe I missed something?

SK is essentially an island nation. It's not like you can drive your car or train up north through the DMZ and wander up to China.

[wenc]

I see what you mean. I was referring the half the size in terms of population — SK is 50m vs FL with 21m.

SK has great transportation connectivity so I’m not sure how being topographically disconnected has an effect in modern times.

[s1artibartfast]

Yes, When talking about country fertility it is almost always a discussion of behavior + biology.

Big swings on the country level are all driven by behavior, and the influence biology is essentially negligible as it doesn't change much at all.