e Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations
Secretariat organized an Expert Group Meeting on “Fertility, Changing Population Trends and
Development: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future” at the United Nations Headquarters in New
York on 21 and 22 October 2013. The meeting was convened to inform substantive preparations for the
forty-seventh session of the Commission on Population and Development in April 2014. In light of the
twentieth anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the
Commission’s theme for 2014 is an “Assessment of the status of implementation of the Programme of
Action of the International Conference on Population and Development”.
The meeting brought together experts from different regions of the world to address key questions about
the future pace of fertility change, implications for age structure changes and other population trends and
effective policy responses. A selection of the papers prepared by experts participating in the meeting is
being issued under the Expert Paper Series published on the website of the Population Division
(www.unpopulation.org).
The paper reviews the trends toward low fertility in 18 Asian countries that reached a total fertility level
of 2.1 or fewer children per woman during the period 2005-2010. It discusses the different pathways by
which low levels of fertility have been achieved and the consequences of low fertility and policy
implications. Fertility decline in these countries is mostly due to delayed onset of childbearing, aided in
part by contraceptive use, an increasing age at marriage, advancement of education and the disapproval of
cohabitation and childbearing outside marriage. The rapid decline in fertility has enabled some countries
to reap benefits from the demographic dividend but it has not allowed enough time for them to prepare
adequately for the problems associated with population ageing. Countries have responded to low fertility
with various sets of pronatalist measures, many of which have met with limited success. Low-fertility
countries in Asia should learn from countries with experiences of implementing pronatalist policies for
several decades, including European countries with successful pronatalist policies. However, it is
recommended that every country should design its own policy taking into account its demographic, sociocultural,
economic and institutional structure.