Blythe Terrell

So let's talk about that.

And I want to do that, Rose, by taking you to South Korea.

Okay.

Because South Korea is the country with the lowest total fertility rate in the world.

What is it?

It is 0.75.

Yeah, yeah.

So that is the 2024 number.

And actually, I talked to this economist about it.

That is Jisoo Hwang.

She is a professor studying economics at Seoul National University in South Korea.

So basically a 0.75 birth rate means that if nothing else happens, your next generation in terms of people born is going to be less than half the size of your current generation.

Right?

So, like, every couple is producing less than one kid.

Right.

And so I wanted to talk to Jisoo because she did a whole bunch of work to figure out, like, how South Korea got here, what's going on.

And there's a few things that contributed to this, but I'm going to zoom in on one of the biggies.

Okay.

So for Jisoo, her spidey sense on this started tingling about 10 years ago when she was a grad student.

And she noticed something kind of surprising going on.