What today’s youth slang reveals about Asia’s fertility crisis

WHEN communities invent new words to describe how young people feel, policymakers should pay attention. And when different societies adopt remarkably similar words, they should become worried.

Today’s youth slang for unhappiness is a case in point.

In South Korea, young people talk about “Hell Joseon”, a bitter phrase comparing modern Korea to a rigid, feudal hierarchy. In China, “tang ping”, or “lying flat”, became shorthand for refusing to overwork in a race that no longer seems worth winning.

In Japan, the “satori generation” describes young people seen as detached from older ambitions such as cars, luxury goods, aggressive careers and conventional family formation. In the US and elsewhere, “quiet quitting” captures a similar refusal to give employers unpaid emotional and psychological overtime.

What politicians may see as laziness, employers view as disengagement and parents dismiss as attitude are not simply random Internet slang. They are warning lights, telling us that a growing number of young people no longer believe the old social bargain works.

Mounting pressures

The bargain was simple: study hard, work hard, endure the early years, buy a home, start a family and eventually move into stable adulthood. And while it was not exactly fair nor perfect, it was credible when growth was strong, house ownership was more attainable and careers felt more linear.

However, that implicit contract now looks increasingly strained.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) puts numbers behind what the slang already suggests. Total fertility rate across Asia-Pacific countries has more than halved from 5.2 children per woman in 1970 to 2.1 – otherwise known as “replacement level” – in 2022.

The OECD’s 2025 report points to familiar pressures such as insecure work, expensive housing, later family formation and the difficulty of combining career and family. In short, adulthood has become more expensive just as its rewards have become less certain.

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Nowhere is this starker than in South Korea. “Hell Joseon” did not emerge because young Koreans suddenly became dramatic. It emerged from a society where years of exam pressure, rising housing costs, rigid corporate hierarchy and intense social comparison became suffocating.

The demographic says the quiet part out loud. South Korea’s fertility rate fell from above 4.0 in 1970 to 0.72 in 2023, the lowest in the world, before recovering slightly to 0.80 in 2025.

The rebound is a welcome respite, but it does not detract from the deeper point that the country has become a place where many young people are reluctant to form a family.

The mean age at which mothers in South Korea have their first child is the highest among OECD countries at 33 years old, and this is despite the entitlement of 52-weeks paid parental leave for each parent.

China’s “lying flat” carries a different tone. It is less explosive than “Hell Joseon”, yet perhaps more unsettling. It does not rail against the system like “Hell Joseon”, it simply withdraws from it.

After years of “996 work culture” (working from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week), property pressure, youth unemployment concerns and involution, lying flat has become a form of quiet refusal for China’s young.

The message is not “we do not want anything” but rather “we no longer believe endless striving will deliver what we were promised”.

Here too, the demographic matters. China’s birth rate has broadly declined for consecutive years, and in particular, a total of 7.9 million births was recorded in 2025 – a 17 per cent decline from 9.5 million the previous year – reportedly hitting a new low since 1949.

This cannot be explained only by memes or attitudes. Fertility decisions are made inside real economic constraints: housing, jobs, education costs, eldercare and confidence in the future.

Japan shows how quiet that giving up can look. The “satori generation” sounds almost gentle, with “satori” suggesting enlightenment, but may ultimately reflect a sense of resignation.

Referring to young people born in Japan between the 1980s and early 2000s, this generation is described as less attached to consumerist markers of success such as luxury goods or corporate status.

While older Japanese may read this as a lack of drive, the young see it as realism. Japan’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.15 in 2024, while births dropped below 700,000 for the first time.

Are young Singaporeans grappling with a similar sentiment? Earlier generations had the 5Cs: condominium, cash, car, country club and credit card. It was materialistic, but it was also aspirational. The ladder was real, and success had visible markers. Today, commentators observe that the Singaporean dream has shifted.

Singapore’s young speak of “quiet quitting” and “job hugging”. The numbers are also telling. Singapore’s resident total fertility rate fell to 0.87 in 2025, a historic low. The government has set up a Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup to look at marriage, parenthood, workplaces, family support and broader social attitudes.

The old 5Cs were about acquisition. The new anxiety is whether acquisition still leads to a life people actually want. The policy mistake would be to treat fertility as a bedroom problem.

Such life decisions are not merely based on baby bonuses, childcare subsidies or subsidised matchmaking. Those may help at the margin, but they do not repair belief.

When young people lack confidence about the future, postponement becomes rational. So does having fewer children, staying single and lying flat.

A darkening outlook

Also concerning is the fact that the language of disillusionment is becoming darker as generations pass.

In earlier decades, economic exclusion was expressed in words such as “Neet” (young people who are not in education, employment, or training) in Japan; “Ant tribe” (a term for low-income university graduates living in impoverished conditions in the cities) in China; and “IMF generation” (those who entered adulthood around the 1997 Asian financial crisis) in South Korea.

Today’s newer terms describe psychological withdrawal. “Hell Joseon” says the system is brutal, “lying flat” says the effort is no longer rational, and “satori” says old aspirations have lost emotional power.

The vocabulary has moved from hardship to disbelief and jadedness.

This shift should worry governments and businesses more than it does. When young people are merely unhappy, they may still be persuaded to try harder. However, when they stop believing, national productivity strategies become just aspirational targets.

Different societies may express this differently, but beneath the different expressions lies the same wound. The cost of adulthood has risen, while the emotional return on striving has fallen.

The young may still want stability, family and purpose. Many probably do. What they seem less willing to do is pretend the old bargain still works at a reasonable price.

This is the part policymakers should listen to before another new phrase appears, worse than the previous.

The writer, a seasoned economist, adviser and entrepreneur, is an affiliate lecturer at Nanyang Business School and Singapore Management University