There’s a quiet math problem playing out across parts of Asia and Europe right now, one that shows up in empty maternity wards before it ever shows up in headlines. Birth cohorts are shrinking year after year, and in a handful of countries the pace has become so steep that economists now talk about “demographic cliffs” rather than gradual aging. What follows is a look at the eight places where the youth population is thinning out the fastest, based on fertility data and workforce projections through 2026.
1. South Korea
No country on earth is losing young people faster than South Korea. Its total fertility rate sat at roughly 0.74 in 2024, still the lowest among OECD countries, with the replacement rate needed to sustain population levels at 2.1. That gap isn’t a rounding error, it’s a structural collapse in the number of future workers, students, and parents.
The scale of the shift is staggering when you look at raw numbers. Between 1990 and 2023, the number of South Korean children declined by 50 percent, while the number of over-65s increased by 340 percent. By 2030, roughly a quarter of the country will be over 65, and researchers have projected the population could shrink dramatically over the coming decades. Even a modest 2025 uptick in births hasn’t come close to changing the trajectory.
2. Taiwan
Taiwan’s slide is happening almost as quickly, and it’s hitting the labor market head on. Government data shows the working-age population is expected to shrink by 200,000 people annually, falling from 16.17 million people last year to 13.17 million in 2040, and to 10.6 million in 2050. That’s a loss of roughly five million workers in a single generation.
Fertility has been falling for decades, but the recent numbers are extreme. Taiwan’s birthrate fell below the sub-replacement threshold in 1984 and below 1.5 children per woman in 2001, then continued down to 0.87 in 2023 and 0.86 the following year. The island officially became a “super-aged society” in 2025, a status that took most European countries decades longer to reach.
3. China
China’s story stands out for its sheer size. The country’s fertility rate has fallen to roughly one child per woman, and its working-age cohort of people aged 16 to 59 has been shrinking since 2012, dropping to 858 million people last year, nearly 7 million fewer than in 2023. Longer term, some analysts project that figure collapsing from around 900 million toward a quarter of that size within decades.
What makes China’s case unusual is the speed relative to its stage of development. Its population decline is occurring years ahead of official projections, according to Beijing’s own National Bureau of Statistics. Marriage registrations, a strong predictor of future births in China, have also dropped sharply, with only 6.1 million couples registering in 2024 compared to 13.5 million a decade earlier.
4. Japan
Japan was the original cautionary tale, and it remains near the front of the pack. Its fertility rate now sits around 1.2, with births falling to record lows year after year. Japan still carries the title of the world’s oldest country by dependency ratio, with over half as many seniors as working-age adults.
What sets Japan apart from newer cases like South Korea or Taiwan is how long this has been building. The country has absorbed multi-year population contraction with annual drops exceeding 800,000 at points, and its labor shortages have already reshaped entire industries, from retail to elder care. Limited immigration has meant there’s been little cushion to soften the blow.
5. Italy
Italy carries the unfortunate distinction of leading Europe’s demographic decline. Its fertility rate has dropped to roughly 1.21 children per woman, well below the EU’s own already-low average, with mothers giving birth later and later. Births dipped below 400,000 annually for the first time in modern records during the 2024–2025 period.
The country’s median age tells the rest of the story. It now stands at 44.7 years across the EU, but as high as 48.7 in Italy, the highest in Europe. Regions in the south and rural interior are already seeing school closures and shrinking town populations as younger residents move north or abroad for work.
6. Spain
Spain has quietly become one of the most extreme cases among large economies. Its fertility rate of 1.10 is the lowest not only among the largest European economies but the second lowest overall, closely followed by Italy at 1.18. That places Spain in a category typically associated with East Asian countries rather than Western Europe.
Part of the pressure comes from economic conditions rather than pure biology. Lower fertility in Spain reflects a mix of economic pressures, including lower wages and the rising cost of raising children. Spain has partly offset this with immigration, absorbing a large share of the EU’s newcomers, but the underlying birth cohort keeps shrinking regardless.
7. Poland
Poland’s youth decline carries particular weight because of its geopolitical position. The country’s fertility rate has fallen to around 1.14, among the lowest in the European Union. OECD projections show Poland’s working-age population falling by over 35% over the coming four decades, placing it alongside Italy, Korea, Latvia, and Lithuania as one of the steepest declines in the developed world.
The timing is awkward for a country trying to expand its armed forces and industrial base. As one analysis put it, as Poland seeks to build a larger military, its shrinking population presents a strategic vulnerability. Rural depopulation and outward migration of younger workers toward Western Europe have compounded the fertility drop.
8. Latvia
Latvia rounds out the list, and in some respects it shows the sharpest short-term contraction of any country here. Along with Lithuania and Bulgaria, it is experiencing double-digit population declines even as countries like Luxembourg, Malta, and Ireland grow rapidly. Emigration of younger workers to wealthier EU states has made the drop steeper than fertility numbers alone would suggest.
The working-age squeeze is projected to be severe. OECD data places Latvia among the countries where the working-age population will fall by over 35% in the coming decades, a rate matched only by Italy, Korea, Lithuania, and Poland. Combined with lower life expectancy than much of Western Europe, the country faces a particularly tight window to adapt its pension and healthcare systems.
What This Means Going Forward
These eight countries span two very different regions and cultural contexts, yet they’re converging on the same outcome from different angles. East Asia’s decline has been compressed into just a few decades, while parts of Europe have had longer to see it coming and still haven’t found a fix. Policy interventions, from Korea’s baby bonuses to Hungary’s family subsidies, have so far failed to push any country back to replacement-level fertility.
What’s left is a set of hard choices around immigration, retirement age, and automation, each of which comes with its own political friction. None of these countries are disappearing overnight, but the workforce math over the next twenty years is already largely locked in by the birth cohorts of today. The countries that adapt their economies and social systems early are likely to weather this better than those waiting for a rebound that history suggests probably isn’t coming.
