Bad Time to Be Born; Gloom is driving down birthrates among the Asian tigers.(Cover Story)

Byline: George Wehfritz (With Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop in Singapore and B. J. Lee in Seoul)

Pessimism is a potent contraceptive. How else to explain the recent sharp drop in fertility among Asia's newly industrial tigers? Birthrates that had been declining slowly for decades due to rapid urbanization suddenly fell off a cliff around the millennium--suggesting to demographers a new variable at play. "The notion of global security has become primary for everyone," says Paulin Straughhan, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore.

Call it the fear factor. Beginning with the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, external developments have weighed heavier on childbearing decisions, experts now theorize. Events like 9/11, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and this month's terrorist bombing in Jakarta give people economic jitters and a sense of hopelessness about the future. "How can [young people] even think about having families if they can't guarantee a bright future?" says James Hsien, a demographer with the Taipei government. "Uncertainty is central to their psychology."

The impact on childbearing has been dramatic. South Korea's total fertility rate (the number of children a woman has in her lifetime) fell from 1.47 in 2000 to 1.17 in 2002, the largest two-year decline on record. In Singapore, the TFR has dropped from 1.6 to under 1.3 ...