China’s recently released population census confirms the persistence of the country’s alarming excess of males relative to the global norm. This numerical imbalance from birth onward has several significant economic implications – and not only for China. Because women live longer than men on average, most countries’ populations have more females than males. In the United States (US), for example, there were 96 males per 100 females in 2020.

With over seven billion humans inhabiting our crowded planet, forests have mostly disappeared, animal species have gone extinct and the Earth’s atmosphere keeps getting dangerously warmer by the day. The number of humans is expected to grow to nine billion people by 2050 and reach 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations (UN).

ASEAN countries have collectively achieved remarkable economic growth, however, when it comes to fertility rates, the region has been drifting. The total fertility rate (TFR) of Southeast Asia has dropped from 5.5 in 1970 down to 2.11 in 2017. At the Future of Work Conference in Singapore in April 2019, Singapore’s Minister for Manpower, Josephine Teo stated that more than half of the world’s population live in countries with a TFR that is below the replacement level of 2.1.

With 7.7 billion humans inhabiting our crowded planet, forests have mostly disappeared, animal species have gone extinct and the Earth’s atmosphere keeps getting dangerously warmer by the day. The number of humans is expected to grow to nine billion people by 2050 and reach 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nation’s (UN) 2019 World Population Prospect report.

ASEAN countries have collectively achieved remarkable economic growth, however, when it comes to fertility rates, the region has been drifting. The total fertility rate (TFR) of Southeast Asia has dropped from 5.5 in 1970 down to 2.11 in 2017. Half of the region is already facing a ‘baby bust’, where there are insufficient children to maintain the population size.