Publication rate DURING your PhD is highly variable from field to field...I don't know what field you are in but generally speaking across my 3 fields students are required to have at least 1 from the entire PhD to graduate. Some even have none published by time of graduation.
It is wildly different, true. In some areas, it is not uncommon to see PhD "thesis" that is essentially an intro stapled to 3-4 papers.
It's also true that publication rates post PhD vary wildly as well, e.g. expectations for a tenure packet.
However, it's also fair to say that expected publication rate has significantly grown universally. A generation or two ago, a solid career could be built on a handful of high impact papers. That's hard to imagine now.
That thesis format is the norm in Finland in sciency fields and also in some arts.
You can write a monograph (essentially a book) instead but that's frowned upon. Especially by admin because the papers bring the univerisity more money than monographs.
Nowadays piles of inconsequential papers where you contributed little but your name is almost a requirement for a solid career. It's horrible.
This does vary across countries, and fields. In UK I was a bit surprised that you're not expected to publish at all before post-doc.
In Finland usually at least 3 peer reviewed (first author) papers are required for a PhD in my field (cognitive science). In some fields (e.g. many engineering fields) even more. And PhD grants are typically for three to four years.
It is ridiculous and the paper quality is what you'd expect.
1 per year is a ridiculous standard.