Daisy Lai sends her five-year old son Wai-man off to school with a packed-lunch and a kiss. Her face beams as the boy waves goodbye, but her smile soon turns to a frown. "We'd love to have a little brother or sister for Wai-man ... but we just cannot afford it," says the Hong Kong mum, who gave up working to look after her son to leave her businessman husband as the sole breadwinner. "Education is very expensive and we can't afford a flat big enough for four. It would be impossible for us to have another."
Lai is not the only mother in this southern Chinese territory who feels her familial ambitions are being constrained by economics. The high cost of living and a shortage of time among the city's hard-working women are severely depressing its birth rate. Last year Hong Kong had the lowest in the world, just 0.9 babies for every woman of child-bearing age.
With a shrinking indigenous population - only immigration from China last year boosted the citizenry, to 6.9 million - Hong Kong is far from the two babies for every woman necessary to maintain its numbers.
In most developing countries in Asia, population growth is galloping along at a frightening pace. But Hong Kong is among a handful of developed economies whose sustainability is under threat from declining and ageing populations.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Singapore all notched up below-replenishable birth rates in the past year, raising the spectre of a demographic crisis as fewer working-age people support more and more elderlies.
As a result economists predict the region's economic powerhouses will soon face a productivity crunch and declining social services as welfare funds are used faster than they can be replenished by the shrinking workforce.
"Australia has a very favourable demographic structure (economically) - it's got a high proportion of the population in the 15-64 working age group," says Bob Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University in Melbourne. "However, over the next decade that will change as the baby-boomers enter retirement age."
To avert that day governments have been forced to act.
Hong Kong's leader Donald Tsang, while he was still deputy leader three months ago, urged the city's women to have at least three children, in stark contrast to the notorious one-child policy in neighbouring China.
But Wai-man's mum Lai says a lack of tax breaks or other financial incentives means this is an unrealistic hope. "It's just words, but money is what you need to raise kids," she says.
BABY BONUSES BRINGING MIXED RESULTS: While Tsang's suggestion was greeted with prudish derision in the supposedly freewheeling former British colony, in the once-considered strait-laced Singapore ministers managed to put together a package of cash incentives to encourage more baby-making.
Only 37,300 babies were born there last year, way below the 50,000 births needed to naturally replenish the population of 3.2 million. The Australian government introduced a similar scheme last year, offering 3,000 dollar (2,256 US dollars) "baby bonuses" to spur couples to boost the country's 20.3 million population.
Nine months later it appears to be working: Australia recorded its highest annual birth rate in nine years at 1.75 babies per woman. In Taiwan, where the birth rate is just 1.18 babies per woman, incentives have failed to increase the island's 22 million people.
In the capital city of Taipei, low-income families were given 2,500 Taiwan dollars (78.6 US) per month for every child aged below six but the rate still fell.
Authorities blame an increase in the age at which women are marrying for a decline that has seen the nation surpass the rate - 7 percent of the population above 65 years old - at which an economy is considered by the World Health Organisation to be ageing.
The problem is most pronounced in Japan where a fifth of the workforce of the world's second largest economy is over 65 and placing a strain on its already overburdened pensions schemes.
Demographers predict only two working adults will be supporting one retiree by 2021, worsening to a one-on-one situation by 2051.
Japan's population, currently at 127.69 million is expected to peak next year at 127.8 million, after the birth-rate hit a record low in 2004 of 1.29 children per woman.
In response, a recent study called for more jobs for the elderly, who usually begin to retire at 60 in Japan.
The government also provides tax incentives for childless couples to breed and has gone on a construction spree of nursery schools to ease the concerns of people who fear children would be a burden to their careers or lifestyles.
Japanese law allows both women and men to take a full year off until their children turn one.
South Korea is just getting to grips with its population decline. Estimated at 48.29 million last year, it is expected to begin falling after peaking at around 49.95 million in 2020.
The prospect of the nation's workforce dropping to just 64.7 percent of the population by 2030 has prompted the formation of a parliamentary body to look into ways of reversing the problem.
"We need a strong vessel to cross the oceans in high waves of polarised, low-birth-rate and ageing society," Health and Welfare Minister Kim Geun-Tae said last week, in reference to the panel.
"I will build a vessel like Noah's ark which can endure any challenges."
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