Family Patterns and Fertility Decline in Eastern Asia

No demographic theory could predict such changes as emergence of lowest-low fertility in Southern-Eastern Europe and is expansion to Eastern Asia. While the TFR of Japan hit the bottom at 1.26 in 2005, Korea recorded 1.08 in 2005 and Taiwan 0.895 in 2010. An ad-hoc interpretation is that such extremely low fertility was caused by the Confucian family pattern. While Europe and Japan are classified into the offspring of feudal family, the Confucian family pattern is very different from Northern-Western European family pattern. While below replacement fertility is natural response to socio-economic changes in post-modern era, the impact on fertility differs by family patterns. It could be said that the more distant the family pattern is from Northern-Western Europe, the lower the TFR goes down. A cultural deterministic view is presented referring to comparative studies on history, civilization and value changes.