South Korea has the lowest fertility rate, with lessons for us all

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1163341684/south-korea-fertility-rate

by oldschoolib • 3 years ago

67 108 3 years ago

908B64B197• 3 years ago

Interestingly, the gender ratio of immigrants to America from South Korea isn't 50-50 as one would expect but closer to 60% women. For Japan, another state struggling with fertility, this ratio is about 75%.

golemiprague• 3 years ago

Could be something to do with chances for mating, Asian women got much higher chance to find a western husband compared to Asian guys finding a western female to marry them. In south east Asia people immigrate because of financial struggle so they don't care about this too much but in first world Japan and Korea, where people immigrate because of other reasons, it might be a factor.

thrwaway2348• 3 years ago

This is not particularly surprising in the light of the fact that Japan and South Korea are two of the most misogynistic societies in the developed world.

It's essentially impossible to be both a wife and mother as well as have a thriving career in both those countries. Can anyone blame them for opting out?

andrewmcwatters• 3 years ago

Governments around the world are asleep while young people are struggling everywhere on every major developed country in the world to do simple things like find a place to live and have children.

I wonder what type of BS the G7 talk about instead of this. What could be more pressing?

mytailorisrich2• 3 years ago

The problem is that governments keep pushing for population growth when this is the root cause of most of our environmental problems...

Low fertility rates at the moment are only an issue in that we need to adapt to them.

chaostheory5• 3 years ago

Adapting to them is one way of putting it. The main problem is that our socialist programs such as social security and Medicare can’t survive when the population isn’t growing the right way ie working adults must drastically outnumber retired seniors

chaostheory5• 3 years ago

If the population trends are correct, the housing problem will fix itself. The data in Japan supports that view.

amelius• 3 years ago

The housing problem may be fixed but what about the care for the elderly?

shuckles3• 3 years ago

The housing problem in Japan's big cities did not fix itself with a shrinking population (they're growing) but instead with nationalization of land use laws.

Qem• 3 years ago

If the population trends are correct, the housing problem will fix itself.

Only if climate change doesn't reach levels where lots of coastal properties are wrecked by rising seas. IIRC a large fraction of global population live close to the coast.

shadowtree2• 3 years ago

It's a sign of wealth and abundance if fertility rates are falling. See Africa and it's still very high rates and every single historic trend line as evidence.

Strongest causation factors are urbanization and female education/employment.

East Asia urbanized faster then the US, also has little to no immigration ... hence populations will shrink quite drastically. China will halve in what, the next 5 decades?

xupybd• 3 years ago

The one child policy played a big role as well

jeffbee• 3 years ago

Between countries, fertility is associated with poverty. But within countries, it’s the opposite. Higher fertility comes along with wealth and well-being. So if the rich, educated people in your advanced society are not reproducing, that’s a bad indication.

trefoiled• 3 years ago

If it's a sign of wealth and abundance that fertility rates are falling, how do you explain that fertility rates are falling in the poorest areas of Africa, too?[1]

[1]. https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-acr...

mxkopy2• 3 years ago

historic trend line as evidence

What history? The last 50 years or so? That's barely a recollection of yesterday's meal by anthropic standards.

You're confusing westernization for wealth. The two are correlated by coincidence.

tannhauser232• 3 years ago

Yeah when it falls from 10 kids per couple to 2-3. But not when it falls below 1, which is what happened in South Korea:

"Kim, a product designer and art instructor, calls her hopes of one day having children "just a fantasy" — especially now, when housing costs are soaring, the job market is oversaturated and marriage rates are plummeting."

Doesn't sound like wealth and abundance to me.

rayiner• 3 years ago

Strongest causation factors are urbanization and female education/employment.

There's a general trend, yes, but the details are important. The total fertility rate for native-born American women was near replacement as recently as 2008.

tr_user• 3 years ago

That's great, we should all stop having children so everyone can be richer. Maybe the last person on earth would reconsider if they want to split their wealth with anyone or if they want to die as the richest of all time.

mostlysimilar• 3 years ago

At least as far as the US is concerned the government is beholden to the ultra wealthy, who need no change because they are thriving. The government will make small adjustments along the edges but won't truly threaten the status quo.

swagasaurus-rex• 3 years ago

Wages are set by a baseline of the cost of living. Young single workers might tolerate having essentially no savings for a few years but eventually they will find a better job or a cheaper cost of living area.

This has a direct impact on what kinds of businesses can operate in high cost of living areas. Businesses need high enough volume or margin to pay the rent and wages of their workers. So far outsourcing has localized the negative impacts of failing low-margin businesses in wealthy nations. But that's also coming into question with national security concerns.

nine_zeros2• 3 years ago

I wonder what type of BS the G7 talk about instead of this. What could be more pressing?

They talk about GDP and growth - which can only come from squeezing each worker more and more.

In America, I don't see any legislation for paid maternity and paternity leave. People are expected to lose their jobs, drop their careers and pay more for insurance when they are dropped from their jobs.

Without security of income but with constantly rising expenses, people are spending their entire lives precariously, just to increase some bullshit GDP number. How the fuck is a woman supposed to carry another human, safely, in her body for 9 months and raise it for another 2 months at least?

christophilus• 3 years ago

Not to be snarky, but how did humans ever do this in the past without all of those things? I think paternity leave and maternity leave are great ideas, but they’re a bandaid.

The real problem is that society has changed to be hostile to healthy human existence. You need a car to live in most of the USA. Extended families and support are spread out across the nation. Rather than cooking together in your kitchen and playing together on a whim, everything has to be planned around commutes and— often— long distance travel. Societal expectations are that families are small. Nothing is built for large families. The list goes on and on, but over all, I think it’s a long list of things— with economics being one— that underpins this.

q845712• 3 years ago

and raise it for another 2 months at least

most of us get raised for about two decades, right? I mean acknowledging that 240 months is at least 2 months in the most literal sense but even if we think that it's reasonable for the mother of a 2-month old infant to be working full time surely there's still almost 2 full decades of potential precarity around food, housing, healthcare, general wellness...

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

In America, I don't see any legislation for paid maternity and paternity leave.

Democrats led west coast and northeast coast states, and Colorado and Illinois, have 18 to 20 weeks of paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of paid paternity leave (or leave for taking care of anyone in general).

On the federal level, it was most recently proposed by Democrats in the Build Back Better bill at the end of 2021, but it did not pass.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

ralph84• 3 years ago

The elites have decided they don’t need a middle class anymore.

amerkhalid• 3 years ago

This makes me wonder about science fiction stories. As automation in labor force increases, there is less demand for labor. Governments will also be able survive with fewer tax payers.

Eventually, reproducing without license and training will be illegal. Then completely banned. And then there will be more machines and fewer humans.

And primitive societies will continue to reproduce but eventually be conquered.

And then machines will slowly gain enough intelligence and self awareness that they will overthrow human masters.

And eventually it will be just machines debating meaning of life.

NovaDudely7• 3 years ago

As much as we can blame elites for a lot of these issues - Sheer physical depletion of energy and resource per-capita is one of the big driving forces behind a lot of these things nowadays.

Don't get me wrong, the elites are definitely making things a LOT worse but it is not entirely on them.

If everyone in this world lived like the middle classes, we would strip the planet bare in no time. The middle class is probably going to be remembered as just a weird moment in time thanks to the great blow off of the petroleum age.

The best thing those in power can do is try to organise for a society that doesn't require as much consumption.

cjensen• 3 years ago

Why would they talk about this? The solution is obvious, and the US has practiced the solution for a very long time now: immigration at a sufficient rate to make up for the decline in population.

This is really mostly a problem for Japan and Korea where they don't play sufficiently well with immigrants.

coldtea2• 3 years ago

That's only a solution if you view populations as replaceable, that culture and shared history doesn't matter, and that nations are just arbitrary grouppings of people that can be changed at will.

Which works for the US, because it's a country of immigrants from all over the place anyway, colonized quite recently in historical terms (there are nations and cultures with 10x and 20x the longevity and far more continuity). If you start with a country with shared history and a cohesive culture, people are not seen as equally replaceable.

johnwalkr• 3 years ago

What do you mean by "don't play sufficiently well with immigrants"?

Japan is very easy to emigrate to if you have skills (for many visas defined as an undergrad degree). There is no requirement to hire locally first, the process is streamlined based on a points system it's only a several weeks to get a visa and as little as 1 year to get permanent residency.

It's also easy to go to university there and stay, or emigrate as a low-level blue collar worker. There's a language barrier but for things like immigration, taxes, help in daily life, most cities offer support in 5+ languages. It is missing the lottery system of the US however.

berjin2• 3 years ago

People aren't breeding because it takes much longer to complete an education and save up for a home. Immigration doesn't address this.

Immigration at a large scale replaces the culture and race of the locals so what you're suggesting is that Korean people and Korean culture are worth nothing. Let's just make every place on earth a globalist culture with the same people, same language, same brands etc etc. No.

steele• 3 years ago

Kids in cages Master Policy

batmaniam• 3 years ago

Same story in every country sadly. Income inequality grows, people work longer and harder to make ends meet, no savings to start a family or buy a home. And politicians funneling public money into a blackhole they say is gonna fix the problem, but it ends up nowhere near its stated purpose. Remember PPP, everyone?

For South Korea though, the tone deafness is just astounding here. Like they're still at war, aren't they? They're just in a cease-fire right now. They're gonna need a steady supply of troops, and having low birthrates is gonna put them in a disadvantage when war breaks out. It's a real national security concern, yet stealing public money is more important to those in power. Just wow.

h0l0cube3• 3 years ago

They're gonna need a steady supply of troops, and having low birthrates is gonna put them in a disadvantage when war breaks out.

A cursory Googling shows that the population is ~52m in South Korea vs ~26m in North Korea

rs999gti• 3 years ago

How many of the 52m SK are men 17-49?

Wars are fought by abled bodied men and typically not women, children, and the elderly.

trafficante• 3 years ago

South Korea’s mandatory military conscription policy is exacerbating the issue.

Women (rightfully) complain that having a baby negatively impacts their careers. In South Korea, young men are required by law to spend nearly two years in compulsory military service between 18-28.

I’m honestly surprised the SK birth rate isn’t even lower.

belter• 3 years ago

North Korea Fertility Rate: 1.82 births per woman (2020)

South Korea Fertility Rate: 0.84 births per woman (2020)

_-david-_2• 3 years ago

How accurate are NK statistics?

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

No way of knowing. Remarkable that it's below 2 either way for such a poor country. If they faked it they surely wouldn't have made it lower, so it's possible the real rate is even below that.

ed_balls• 3 years ago

Pure propaganda, but it's really hard to estimate. At least with China you have some data. Chinese government would say there were 10.5 mln live births in 2021, but there were only 4.6 mln mandatory tuberculosis vaccinations distributed.

Some kids were not vaccinated, you can use a single dose for 2 kids, but that gives you 9.5 mln.

h0l0cube3• 3 years ago

Yet SK has just shy of double the population. NK also has 10 years lower life expectancy, possibly owing to sanctions and constrained food supply

swsieber• 3 years ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35233008

35 points, 84 comments, 6 hrs ago.

omot2• 3 years ago

I think America/Europe would've gone through a similar phenomenon were it not for immigration. Immigration presents a significant challenge to the culture, but it's a necessity to keep evolving the economy and make sure your population/ideas don't stagnate.

I'm from Japan, and I think Japan would've potentially kept it's second place in GDP ranking if they were more aggressive with opening up the country to immigrants and creating a narrative for what it means to be Japanese outside of blood and heritage.

NovaDudely7• 3 years ago

Australia's birth rate would have fallen below 2.1 back in 1976. Thanks to immigration our population is still growing.

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

Why care about nominal GDP though? More important how the economy does per capita and Japan seems to have held its wealth over time, there's almost no change¹ since the 90s. Economically and development wise, Japan has done remarkably well.

Mass immigration is a big gamble, with problems societies might not foresee and that only manifest many years later. It worked more or less well in a place like Canada, but for a counter example look at Western Europe, they messed it up.

¹ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

omot2• 3 years ago

What do you mean? The EU is the third largest GDP and half of the GDP is just comprised of France, Germany, and Italy all of which has a dwindling native population, and its growth propelled by easy immigration within the EU.

NovaDudely7• 3 years ago

What seems like bad news for the growth based human world, is great news for the biocentric view of the world. Yes, it is a rough road ahead but long term this is not a bad thing.

andrekandre4• 3 years ago

  > bad news for the growth based human world

if thats true, why would an investor even contemplate investing into anything?

can capitalism even function without population growth?

actually_a_dog2• 3 years ago

Good point. Maybe we should stop doing capitalism and do something that's going to be sustainable for the long run.

NovaDudely7• 3 years ago

There is the idea of capitalism as a free trade between people to optimize towards a certain goal, there might be a future in that. And then there is the Capitalism of today that is entirely focused on the capital part - I don't think that will have long legs.

The era of consistent returns on investments is probably going to fade over the coming decades. 3% interest year over year compounding - that will be a thing of the past.

This is why the biggest revolution that gives us a chance will be the hardest one. The first act of revolution is contemplation. As Tolstoy said "We all want to change the world but we do not want to change ourselves". The time will come when we need to change ourselves. To not only make the Solar-punk future but the Dharma-punk future.

We need L.E.S.S. Less Energy, Stuff & Stimulation. Use less, do less, be more.

thefz2• 3 years ago

can capitalism even function without population growth?

I wonder what is the expectation here. Cover every square meter of the earth with humans, or just squeeze more and more in the same places? What about resources like food, power... ?

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

In wealthy countries, I think it would make sense to raise taxes quite a bit but include huge tax deductions for kids. Like $20k/kid and keep AMT for very high (over 400k) incomes.

This would incentivize people to have kids and free up money to buy homes and keep a parent at home to raise the kids. Single people would pay very high taxes but I would imagine the rents in places they like to live would decrease.

flal_• 3 years ago

French here ( also parent of 3). France has strong fiscal incentive for families ( esp. for 3+ kids ), but that won't solve the housing issue : more money will just increase prices... Prices are high mostly because of the low supply.

andrekandre4• 3 years ago

  > Prices are high mostly because of the low supply.

what is causing the low supply?

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

The French benefit is very good but I’m talking about a radically, massive benefit. For example in a family of 5 where they have $120k income, they would get like an $80k deduction leaving them with $40k of adjusted income. Taxes on that would be very small (a few thousand very likely, $5k-$10k) leaving them with the lions share to properly raise their kids.

This is directed at middle and upper middle class people that are the ones we want having kids in the first place. Let’s pay them to spread their genes.

mnaei• 3 years ago

I've been considering the possibility of a "tragedy of the commons" in relation to child-rearing economics within countries with social security systems. It's unclear how many couples take into account the financial impact of having a child on their retirement plans. If they were to do so, the calculations would be rather discouraging. In fact, it could be economically beneficial for a couple to not have children while others continue to do so.

In the past, children served as a safety net for their parents in old age, as parents devoted much of their lives to raising them. However, in a world with a significantly inverted population pyramid, adult children may be responsible for supporting numerous elderly citizens through their taxes. This could potentially leave them unable to provide additional assistance to their own parents. On the other hand, those who chose not to have children could enjoy the benefits of compound interest accrued over 18+ years.

This situation creates a negative feedback loop. As the population declines more rapidly, the population pyramid becomes increasingly inverted, placing greater strain on younger generations to support the elderly. This further exacerbates the economic challenges of having children, as they will be required to work harder and longer hours to sustain the economy.

jamesgill• 3 years ago

the fertility rate — the average number of children born to a woman in her reproductive years

I've always had a problem with the term 'fertility rate', because it seems misleading. It does not indicate whether women are fertile or not; it means the women--for many possible reasons, of which 'infertility' is only a small percentage--did not give birth.

roelschroeven• 3 years ago

Yes, thank you, that has always bothered me as well.

actually_a_dog2• 3 years ago

Almost everybody is dancing around it here, but the real lesson here for us all is that capitalism, or, at least the way we're doing capitalism today, is unsustainable. You simply can't have the kind of sustained transfer of wealth from lower and middle income people to the top 1% that we've had over the past 50 years and claim what you're doing is a sustainable system.

I recently saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs

The speaker, Nick Hanauer, has a net worth somewhere around a billion dollars. In his talk, he explicitly says he's a capitalist, capitalism is good, etc. But, if you ignore all that and look at the rest of what he says, he comes this >< close to advocating socialism.

According to him (and I agree), the lessons we should be learning here are fivefold:

1. Markets aren't anywhere near as efficient in reality as they are in theory. That leads to some counterintuitive things like when Seattle raised their minimum wage, it didn't lead to unemployment because the price of labor went up; it led to people who work in restaurants being able to afford to eat in restaurants, which is good for the economy. Oh, and unemployment actually fell in the region while this was happening.

2. A big pillar of the neoliberal myth is that "...the price of something is always equal to its value." He directly goes on to tie this to the case of one person who makes $50k per year and another who makes $50M per year. The second person's work isn't 1000x more valuable than the first. The person getting paid $50k is only getting paid $50k because workers have lost almost all their bargaining power in the market, period.

"And by pretending that the giant imbalance in power between capital and labor doesn't exist, neoliberal economic theory became essentially a protection racket for the rich," he goes on to say.

3. Humans are not "perfectly rational, and relentlessly self-maximizing." Homo economicus is a myth; let us bury him where he lies. Greed is not good. Humanity's superpower isn't selfishness, but reciprocity and a willingness to cooperate.

4. The purpose of corporations is not solely to enrich shareholders (i.e. the "shareholder primacy" theory). Customers, workers, and communities matter as much or even more than shareholders. Which leads to...

5. The laws of economics are a choice. If we want to do something about all this, all we have to do is choose to do it.

Finally, one thing he said in the talk really sums it up for me, and that's this:

"[I]t isn't capital that creates economic growth,it's people; and it isn't self-interest that promotes the public good, it's reciprocity; and it isn't competition that produces our prosperity, it's cooperation."

Unfortunately, the contemporary practice of capitalism is incompatible with these principals, and the people who are benefitting from it are very powerful as a result of decades of neoliberalism. Those people I mentioned in the bottom half of the income spectrum, they have the power to make change happen. Just look at what's going on in France right now.

But the people at the top (not the 1%, really, more like 0.1% and the 0.01%) have the poor, the middle class, and somewhat well off all at each others' throats. Without mass, collective action, I do not hold out much hope for humanity over the next two decades.

Oh, and BTW, keep in mind, this isn't just me, some random canine on the internet saying this stuff. I do say this stuff on here frequently, and what it's gotten me is mostly downvotes and being made into a second class citizen who can only post at an average rate of a couple comments per hour, for no good reason that I can discern or anyone will tell me.

So, if you believe these words, feel free to not believe me. Hell, I got myself about as close to banned as you can get without actually getting banned or shadowbanned by, among other things, trying to tell y'all these things. But do believe this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hanauer, because he knows what he's talking about.

pyuser583• 3 years ago

The lessons the article refers to are “not enough government programs.” It ignore the fact that places like Sweden have a free fall fertility rate as well.

There are no “lessons” because there are no government programs shown to increase fertility rate.

So NPR just injects “more government programs” for purely ideological purposes.

naveen99• 3 years ago

Population density of 1300 / sq mile. Double that of Germany and Nigeria. How many people do you want to pack in there ?

mo_42• 3 years ago

As women started to work for income too, the amount of work greatly increased. Household work is still done primarily by women. So overall, we work much more. But I don’t think we work more because of the money (at least initially). We work for many other reasons: like your personal development, learning, social status… Who wants to be a house(man|wife) instead of a neurosurgeon?

lionelholt• 3 years ago

For perspective, take a look at the population history chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2022/03/Annual-World-Popu...

We are far from the point of all humans living comfortably given the planet's limited resources. Human overpopulation is the primary reason why we have the tyranny of resource wars (the U.S. -- not Russia -- being the worst offender of petrodollar hegemony), scarce water supplies, pandemics, economic meltdowns, etc.

Of course there are other factors, inefficiencies, waste, etc, but imagine if the global population was 1% of what it is currently. None of those other factors would matter.

South Korea has the lowest fertility rate, with lessons for us all

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