ASIAN AFFAIRS Entire nations going out without a baby’s whimper

East Asia is dying. All East Asian societies have birthrates below the replacement rate and, as a result, their populations will shrink. The accepted replacement rate is 2.1 babies per woman. Australia, for ins­tance, has a birth rate of 1.8 babies per woman, but we can gather immigrants from all over the world to make up the difference. South Korea is the fastest ageing developed country in the world. Its birth rate is 0.98 – less than one child per woman. The total number of babies born in South Korea last year was 400,000 – not enough to replace those…