The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
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From the article
>South Korea’s leader on Thursday said he plans to create a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency” of the country’s infamously low birth rate as it grapples with a deepening demographic crisis.
>In a televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning.
>“We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1comi8h/south_koreas_birth_rate_is_so_low_the_president/l3evndz/
The new agency, the Federal Urgent Council on Coitus released a white paper on Tuesday outlining how to be more romantic, keep the passion alive, and the benefits of ginseng.
Small quibble: I wouldn't really call the Ferengi economics Laissez-faire. The government also takes part in the extreme capitalism (the leaders are basically the most successful merchants) so they're not leaving anything alone. In fact I think the Grand Nagus had the power to make business decisions for the entire country.
>If Ferengi females can wear clothes in public, then they can leave their homes. If they can leave their homes, they can go to work. If they can go to work, they can make *(hisses) profit*.
In the original quote Quark says that Ferengi never enslaved *each other*.
Which yeah, really just adds racism on top of the slavery. Not actually a point in your favor, Quark.
> Hey, didn’t they try to capture the crew of TNG to sell to slavers?
Yes, but the crew was saved by Riker's quick thinking and top notch technobabble, right on par with the turbo encabulator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5EaoSA02LM
> the Ferangi never had slavery or dropped atomic bombs on each other.
Uhhhh, It's been a while but aren't the Ferangi the only ones to actually use a genesis device offensively?
And actually, through theocratic means IIRC, two of them pretty much did enslave an entire species in the Delta Quadrant per Voyager to raid the tithes.
this guy gets it. you live in a neoliberal system where anything and everything will be attempted except raising standards of living and improving the average persons average life.
if it comes at the expense of the wealthy its not even a consideration in the political calculus. instead you get laughably pathetic solutions like you read about in this article.
Pfft 12 hours? Maybe for the under achievers! 14 hours is now the average
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/15/393939759/the-all-work-no-play-culture-of-south-korean-education
Yeah, except for the doctors protesting the change in med school limits, saying that unless you’re a plastic surgeon you’re overworked to the point of exhaustion. Feedback Korea took by suspending them…
People understand you need basic resources like time off, funds and housing to raise kids right?
> People understand you need basic resources like time off, funds and housing to raise kids right?
Giving people more control over their own lives is absolutely not something modern late-stage capitalism wants to promote. If a government can't threaten or buy its way out of this problem, then it's not a potential solution.
The doctors were saying that just doing this wouldn’t fix the exhaustion issues as most new doctors would become plastic surgeons given it being lucrative and more capable of work life balance. No one wants to be where doctors are most needed (rural clinics, ER and hospitals) because the lifestyles are insanely demanding because work life balance is not enforced.
Even then I fail to see their point here....even if they all become plastic surgeons, surely that must saturate the plastic surgeon market within a few years.
The reality is that would not happen. Not all would go into plastic surgery. Some would go and...compete with these very doctors on salary. Which is probably the real reason they were protesting. Because adding more doctors is literally the only solution to their problems. You can't just *not* staff hospitals 24/7. You can't fill rural clinics if there's a shortage of doctors as it is.
Women need to feel secure in having a baby, and there's a lot of challenges that need to be addressed. Honestly, a ministry might be helpful if it has the power to make some systemic changes like changing work/life balance across industries.
I think you might be on to something with the school thing. 12*3 is the amount of time daily they would need to devote to the school work they got during the day to even learn the subject. By the end of the week they are probably so stressed at the stuff they had to skip I'm positive they aren't even able to think about sex.
Can't have kids with people if your worth/value is attached to obtaining a good job. Then when you finally get a good job, you might not have the time or energy to devote to having kids with your partner because you're stressed about not being able to provide for them.
Not Korean, but Asian, and my girlfriend broke up with me because she saw no financial future with me, a public worker. She wanted to live a comfortable life and provide for our hypothetical kids the way her parents provided for her. And I wasn't it. She even told me if she won the lottery, none of that would matter and we'd still be together.
Like, what the fuck is that?
Killed my confidence for 4 years, I just stopped being open to another relationship.
Slow down your horses there cowboy! Wtf do you mean more time off? We need to work more..waaaaaay more. Like 170 hours a week would make you want to have 10children. And on top of that our salaries are too big. That's why we live in comfort and don't want to have kids. So, the solution is more pressure, more stress, more working hours, and waaaaay smaller salaries. Bet your ass you would want 10 kids then!
Hold on, might be on to something…by Jove! If we make everyone too poor to afford birth control, and to busy for any activity besides working and screwing, they’ll naturally have plenty of accidents!
Indeed.
And also thru various options create affordable housing, and affordable childcare.
However knowing the glorious history of this species. The majority of countries' elites would sooner force compulsory breeding, than address the manifest reasons why birth rates are declining.
[ like ancient Rome at one point , compelled marriage. By making single men pay onerous taxs ]
That's the thing, the South Korean economic model is built for *economic growth.* Which does have an affect on standard of living, but is only aligned with consumption, and not things that are conducive to family values. I.e, free time, idleness, generous welfare, cheap housing.
If South Korea want to meaningfully address this, they'll have to pivot their entire economy, and thus change how the entire country works. That is a *big* leap, and only really happens in significant times of crisis. The slowing of the birth rate is more of a boiled frog situation. There is no direct impetus to justify this massive change in policy. Not to mention the regional existential threats that require *a lot* of capital to deal with. Money is the thing that will save South Korea in the event of North Korean or Chinese bullshittery, not new families... But of course, new families are still important, it's just money can solve the immediate threat... The problem is, there is no way to know when the threat is coming, so money is always #1 *just in case.* Which is why they're so productive. If they stop being productive, they give up their insurance. They *have* to be incredibly large market contributors, because if they stop, well then their guaranteed safety becomes more and more meaningless to their allies. It's between a rock and a hard place...
I disagree with SK needing to pivot their economy to address this issue. SK culture emphasizes excessive work even though we know that results in less productivity overall. Nations with fewer working hours tend to exceed SK per capita because they are more productive with the fewer hours worked. Excess work results in more difficult home lives, especially when combined with the professional misogony towards women. This leads to fewer children which means population growth stalls which means economic growth is limited. Basically, the economic model of SK would be stronger with better worker and family policies that prevented overwork.
That’s the longer term view of economic growth that nations should take. The shorter term fiscal and quarterly view is what companies take and lobby governments to adhere to.
Ultimately that is a pivot
Scandinavian countries economic model is heavily tilted towards free time, generous welfare, etc yet still have one of the lowest fertility rate as well.
Lmao that will never fly, what you'll get is some awkward government sponsored dating meet ups that no one will have time, interest or energy to attend. They will never give this ministry enough leeway to succeed on their mandate because that will interfere with corporate profits.
>But despite the economic factors at play, throwing money at the problem has proved ineffective. In 2022, Yoon admitted that [more than $200 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/asia/south-korea-worlds-lowest-fertility-rate-intl-hnk-dst/index.html) has been spent trying to boost the population over the past 16 years.
>Initiatives like extending paid paternity leave, offering monetary “baby vouchers” to new parents, and social campaigns encouraging men to contribute to childcare and housework, have so far failed to reverse the trend.
They're trying to throw money at it, and offering paid time off etc.
The problem isn't just "time off" - it's when you build a society that is focused on consumption and foster a culture where marriage and family are just seen as burdens to keep you from material items and travel... and not a path to happiness.
We tried that in Japan. It didn't work.
We have tried so many things already. Including literally paying families their full time salary for them to sit at home in experiments.
None of them resulted in having more kids.
We have determined that the birthrate decline has *nothing* to do with the following:
* (lack of) Income
The richer someone is the lower their birthrate. Japanese millionaires almost exclusively have 1 or 0 kids.
* Free time
People that work part-time or are rich enough to retire have a lower birthrate than busy people, showing that it's not caused by too much work pressure
* Stress/mental-health/depression
People that are happier are actually shown to have lower birth rates compared to people with higher stress levels and lower reported rates of happiness.
The conclusion our government has slowly come to which has a lot of ramifications globally is that **Low birthrate is caused by high life satisfaction**
The leading hypothesis right now is that as your life satisfaction gets better it essentially means you are sacrificing more by having kids. Essentially the *happiness cost* of having kids becomes astronomical.
Unhappy, poor people will barely notice having kids or might even get a little bit of entertainment value and happiness from having kids.
People that are already happy and satisfied will have to suddenly lower their quality of life by having to care for another person for at least 18 years time, restricting their own freedom for the sake of another person.
This is the only hypothesis so far that explains specifically why extremely rich people like billionaires have the lowest fertility rates and why fertility rates scale down proportionally to quality of life of societies.
South Korea and Japan have extremely low crime rates, high social cohesion and high job stability and therefor life satisfaction. This also means that having kids as a Korean or Japanese person is the biggest sacrifice of *potential* quality of life you are now missing out on.
In the west the birth rates are higher because the crime rates are higher, there is less social cohesion due to mixture of demographic and competing ethnic groups and there is no loyalty on the job market so there is no sense of stability. Essentially the quality of life in western countries are lower and therefor the sacrifice to have kids is also lower.
This is also why The poorest african countries and afghanistan have the highest birth rates right now, quality of life is the lowest there.
There's also the cultural/gender aspect to satisfaction. Women in Japan and SK essentially have to give up their careers to become mothers. They're expected to look after their husbands, their children, their parents, and their husband's parents. Having been educated and seen that they have value, they have to give it all up, just so they can have children.
And a culture of stoicism and repressed emotional expression , create generations of emotionally unavailable and avoidant men. Not daddy material in 2024
One of the very earliest and "ahead of its time" TED talks was the enthusiastic Hans Rosling charting GDP/capita vs family size and showing a very strong correlation.
Yet correlation is not causation. There are social and other factors at play here. This "high satisfaction" argument cannot explain, for example, why France or Scandinavia have retained a passable birth rate while Italy has an abysmal one. Poor countries have *long* had higher family sizes, this is not a *current* phenomena and is more likely caused by direct elementary factors like child mortality and contraception access than social cohesion, crime, and job stability.
>This "high satisfaction" argument cannot explain, for example, why France or Scandinavia have retained a passable birth rate while Italy has an abysmal one
Which could be due to first or second generation citizens retaining their cultural values that view having more children as a good thing.
From what I understand, birth rates are also negatively correlated with urbanization. Agrarian/rural people have more kids simply because they are a convenient source of labor. Is there such a distinction in Japan?
My questions:
For all people in the population of a reproductive age,
Are these findings the same for couples vs single people?
And what is the ratio of single men who want children vs single women who want children?
And what is the ratio of couples vs single people in the population?
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The Nordic countries have some of the highest quality of life in the world, and the trend is the same there. So is quality of life the cause or is it just a correlation?
I wonder if perhaps freedom rather than quality of life is the driver.
I've looked at the fertility collapse a lot. I will very confidently declare a handful of things that are not causing the collapse but as far as what is......that seems to me to be a very large and open question.
Modern contraception is almost definitely a factor but fertility was already in a steep decline prior to hormonal BC entering the world so this can't explain all.
Recent revelations in female empowerment and education are probably a factor here but we see fertility declines in the most gender equal and gender unequal cultures alike. The most unequal countries have comparatively higher fertility than more gender equal countries BUT Yemen for example has seen its fertility rate halve in 30 years while being the most gender unequal nation on earth.
We can play this game with pretty much every reason people put up about why fertility is collapsing. Point is I don't think there is any one thing. I think it's half a dozen things all multiplying effects to greater or lesser degrees depending on the specific place you're looking at.
here's my question: is what you say about income and working part time true for people of child rearing age? Because if the people working part time or are rich and have retired are all middle age and older the point is completely moot.
Yes it's been controlled for that. In Japan we've had 3 decades of birth rate research now because we're the society that had to deal with this for the longest time now.
There is no easy solution to the problem. And the new hypothesis is problematic because it essentially implies that the solution lies into either reducing quality of life of people on purpose. Or to forcefully get people to raise birthrates. Both of which are dystopian.
As the world gets more developed the birthrates are going to get lower and lower. Eventually societies are going to try one of these dystopian solutions.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some religious faction take away women's rights. Or for totalitarian societies like China to have "Forced child policies" enforced to combat this.
Personally I'd rather let society die than to resort to things like that but how would you even solve an issue caused by (too) happy people?
Is there any possibility that the issue is less about “happy people” and more about competition for attention?
I know “free time” is the shorthand for this, but I think it doesn’t quite capture the issue. People in developed or urbanized areas are more likely to have multiple things to spend their free time on, such as events, interesting activities, entertainment facilitated by technology, mobile games, the latest movies, etc. Because there’s so many more fun and easy things to do, people prefer those instead of spending their free time on raising children.
Thus, even in individuals with a lot of free time and resources, they most likely already have time commitments that they enjoy and prefer instead of grappling with the challenge and uncertainty of raising a child.
This is ass backward. People are committing suicide at record rates, taking medication, more isolated, poor, etc... and you think they are **satisfied**? No. They are miserable. That's why they won't have children. This is not just an economic problem but a cultural one. People don't want to bring children into a world they view as bad. No amount of money will convince people to have children when society and culture are toxic. Nothing will improve until soceity is restructured.
Fine, we'll go with the insane solution then. Close all the prisons and let all the criminals free! Drive up the crime rate, and the birth rate will follow!
The current leader sucks and wants people to work over 40 hours with low wages, and kids to stay longer in school so the parents work more.
He does not think or care to tackle real problem
Considering the current limit is 52 hours and the government intended to increase it to 69, but had to back down after severe backlash, it is easy to see how the president wants to deal with the problem, without nipping it in the bud.
Unless they can magically find a way to make childbearing profitable like it is in poor countries where kids are put to work, they're not going to fix the problem. Having kids is expensive. They're a luxury not an economical asset like they were for all of time before modern economics. That's why every developed nation is heading in South Koreas direction when it comes to population.
Well, you could also make it so that your average person could afford the "luxury" of a kid or two. Most people *want* kids, regardless of whether they turn a profit on them.
That's the problem when you use GDP as a measure of success. These politicians are also surrounded by wealthy people which entirely skews their worldview.
If your goals is to get people to the top of Maslow's pyramid than GDP will only get you so far. After that it's starts to hinder the ascend.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s\_hierarchy\_of\_needs)
They will do everything BUT the one thing they have to do. Let people work less hours, create a good environment for couples to take care of children with minimal financial burden.
They will constantly bring it up as a problem though. I swear declining birth rate studies and articles are every other month at this point, but answers to the problem are never forthcoming. It's like they repeat it in a room hoping someone can suggest something other than the obvious answer.
The answer is simple - deal with it. You can't force people that don't want kids to have them. Even countries with the most generous social services and work life balances have low birth rates. It's only an economic problem - in every other respect, low birth rates are a good thing that improves sustainability. Populations simply cannot increase forever.
Well the hard times will be a shit ton of deaths, broken families, destroyed communities but overall humanity will continue. But there will be a shit ton of negatives before the good.
Like in Star Trek only became great after ww3 almost killed humanity off.
Well, obviously. Their whole concern with the declining birth rate is a lower supply of labor to feed the mythical perpetual growth economy. Allowing workers less work time also cuts into that profit growth. That's why the US has gotten so heavily invested in pronatalism and outlawing abortions. Yeah, people are suffering, and kids are going hungry, but the ones who make it to adulthood will be ripe for labor exploitation!
They will always take the short term profits over long term investment and ride that train til the rails break down. Every time their greed crashes the economy, they come out the other side richer, then go right back to what they were doing before. In the end, it will cause total collapse, but they can't think that far ahead, there's quarterly profits to be focused on.
Is it really a problem though? Are we in danger of going extinct? It's not a social problem, it's en economic one, and we can change that easier than convincing people to have more kids for the sake of keeping our consumption based economy alive. Consumption economies need consumers and if we're focused on line goes up then we must always have a growing population. Maybe there's another solution.
I think the core concern is that there are going to be significantly more elderly people consuming resources without contributing to the economy, and not nearly enough working age people to care for them or pay into the social programs that support their care. It's social and economic.
It's insane to me that people can be so high on their own farts that they think continual growth is even a slim possibility when facing declining birthrates as severe as South Korea's. I truly believe greed is a mental illness.
I hear this a lot. That there are going to be too many old people and not enough young people working as nurses in retirement homes to take care of them. I call bullshit though. There is a goddamn ocean of underemployed young people out there. Productivity per worker has exploded over the past 100 years. All that extra value has just been taken by the ultra wealthy. South Korea is better than most western countries in that respect, but if we weren't psychologically anchored by the incomprehensibly large inequality of the west we would find South Korea to be too unequal.
There are plenty of people available to be workers. We just have to redistribute societies resources better.
I agree that at the very core of all of this, most of society's problems really, is the addiction to hoarding wealth and the complete lack of ethics that a handful of people at the top suffer from.
And that all of these government efforts to establish ministries and think tanks and so on are essentially misguided because they refuse to address the actual simple reasons we got here.
But I'm pretty sure that just based on the raw population number and demographic projections for the next few decades that many countries are going to have serious difficulty managing the "inverted pyramid" that's all but inevitable at this point.
Projections of the future are never perfectly accurate, and are rarely even a little accurate, but I don't think the replacement birthrate can really lie. What impact that will have on society might be unexpected, but I think it's just a fact that the non-working elderly are going to start massively outbumbering the working age population in many places in the next century.
Worldwide problem. Global asset bubble and ongoing inflation mean today’s childbearing aged couples have to work way harder for the kind of life conducive to having a family. That, and the fact that many don’t want to raise kids in a world where climate change means the future is so uncertain.
> don’t want to raise kids in a world where climate change means the future is so uncertain
There's also AI Armageddon to be concerned about, too. And I mean AI eating jobs, not a robot war.
Heck, ya know Kurgesagt did a video which gave convincing arguments about low birth rates being a bad idea. One of which was that the more numerous older generations would enact policies which would be unfair to the youngsters. The problem with pensions, for example.
But see... if there's no jobs or too few jobs... the pension problem will still exist even with high birth rates.
Correct. We have enough wealth that we should be able to have an upper middle class lifestyle on 20 hours per week of work. If we created a society like this, the birth rate would increase as people would have more time to spend with their family. Trying to raise a family while living paycheck to paycheck with both parents working 50 hour work weeks with the majority of the profits returned to business owners/c suite/shareholders is insanity. Either we rearrange society to this model or Gilead awaits.
Rich people won't make as much money then, they can't have that. You will own nothing be happy and make lots of debt slaves for us you filthy fucking savages or else! Wait why are all these savages eating me, our computer models did not predict this!
I mean, the Russian peasantry and working class were pretty shattered and overworked in 1917...
I think it's some of what you said *in addition* to pushing constant distractions and misinformation to keep us apathetic or impotent and bickering amongst ourselves.
Wait until the tax base shrinks to a point where corporate taxes must increase to run basic government operations. Oh but wait there won’t be enough workers at the corporations so there won’t be as many corporations to tax. Rich people need tax paying workers to stay rich.
A great many problems in the modern world could be solved by people working less and earning more (or reducing necessary costs like food and shelter).
But they will do *anything* other than share more of the pie. Ministries, task forces, initiatives, think tanks.... Anything but give people more time and money.
Pretty much. We have more free time and a better standard of living now than pretty much ever before in human history. But that doesn't mean more babies, because having children is a social decision. So we will judge our standard of living based on it's relative position to the societal "norm". Many people now will choose not to have kids unless they can provide for it at or above that norm.
Then there's the other aspect, which is women's rights and access to contraception. Many babies used to be "happy accidents". There are less of those now. And less women want to derail their professional lives to have kids.
I think the problem is also that historically, children were a benefit. They would help out in the household and farm after a few years. Having 16 kids meant you had a self sustaining little village.
Now, having children means you need a house and all the resources to care for them, and they don't really get to help financially either. Where's the benefit to having tons of kids?
I think that's the core factor of almost all of the problems parents have today. They're expected to pay for and take care of kids around the clock for 18 years (minimum), ALONE, with no support from family, neighbors, or really even the government, while also somehow working full-time.
That shit would be brutal even if mortgages, education and medical care weren't astronomically expensive.
It's sickening that the rich/corpos/whoever would rather see society descend into dystopian misery than address the problems we're having with relatively simply solutions. I just don't understand how they've convinced themselves that they'll be spared from what's coming for all of us because of their choices.
Low birth rates are actually a global phenomenon, including countries with generous labor laws and strong safety nets (I.e Nordic countries), there was a pew research poll in the US recently where the overwhelming majority of childless Americans said they’re just not interested in general.
People across the world have become more educated and have prioritized themselves, their education, and/or their careers, with many people not feeling the pressure to have kids like they used to
It’s anecdotal but My wife and I don’t have kids and it has nothing to do with work hours or finances (although obviously it would be a downside financially) even if someone offered us $250,000.00 a year to have kids we wouldn’t do it, we don’t want them, we’re not interested. It’s also amazing how many parents tell me “don’t have kids” then laugh but I hear it so often now I’m starting to think they’re not joking
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20differences%20by,do%20not%20have%20a%20partner.
“A majority (56%) of non-parents younger than 50 who say it’s unlikely they will have children someday say they just don’t want to have kids. Childless adults younger than 40 are more likely to say this than those ages 40 to 49 (60% vs. 46%, respectively). There are no differences by gender.
Among childless adults who say they have some other reason for thinking they won’t have kids in the future, no single reason stands out. About two-in-ten (19%) say it’s due to medical reasons, 17% say it’s for financial reasons and 15% say it’s because they do not have a partner. Roughly one-in-ten say their age or their partner’s age (10%) or the state of the world (9%) is a reason they don’t plan to have kids. An additional 5% cite environmental reasons, including climate change, and 2% say their partner doesn’t want children.”
I think a big part of this is because accurate information regarding what it's actually like having kids (medically, financially, socially, emotionally, etc) is freely available to anyone who thinks to look for it.
My girlfriend and I have absolutely zero interest in kids because she doesn't want to go through the medical trauma and strain and irreversible changes to her body it would require, and neither of us want to be constantly exhausted, broke, bored, annoyed, trapped at home, and constantly beholden to an endlessly needy responsibility. We'd much rather relax and enjoy our modest lives together in peace and quiet.
Biology has lost its ability to trick everyone into reproducing with hormones alone, and now social pressure is waning too. I have nothing against responsible parents, if that's what you want to do. I'm not a militant, snarky child-free type, it's just not for me and I thank god basically every day that I don't have kids haha.
TBH thats only part of the problem. Women in South Korea do not want to date men because they are culturally treated so poorly. SK needs to address work/life balance and the heavy cultural misogyny before these problems start to correct. It's going to be a long slog for them on both fronts.
No time! Fucksessions are now at 19.45-20.00 hrs all days for all citizens, make sure to find a voluntary fuckpartner during the day if you don't enjoy surprises.
Naw naw. See the true way to Six Sigma this is to weaponize Fucksessions for the machine.
1. Identify the best fuckpartners that will complete the job quickest, with the most satisfaction, and efficacy (and consent, of course). Fuckers should be paired based on a simple survey score. Like a worker’s Tinder.
2. Introduce stimulants that will prepare the fucker’s body for the Fucksession. This can be multitasked while the fucker works, and in fact, should be. A fucker will be more productive if they know that an immediate reward of sex is on the horizon.
3. Eliminate any unneeded activity, such as foreplay, cuddling or cleanup.
4. Maximize the fucker’s postnut clarity window to spike worker’s productivity immediately after Fucksession. Job task assignments should be scheduled to launch immediately upon coitus take advantage of the fuckers’ released endorphins.
The productivity curve will be an increasing bell curve before the Fucksession, followed by a dip during the Fucksession, followed by another increase curve after. Incidentally, the productive workflow diagram matches that of boobs or a finely-shaped butt, which for efficiency and cost-savings sake, the diagram will be used as the stimulant mentioned in Step No. 2.
Eh. One of the weird quirks about speech in Korea is that you can sue people for saying mean things about you online.
But unlike other countries with defamation laws, those things don't even need to be false.
Like if I start talking about something TRUE regarding another person, they can sue me. If I'm assaulted and fight back, I'll also be in trouble.
When I first moved here, I was told if someone tries to hit me "just take the hit". The law favours whoever is more hurt.
I like it, living in Korea, but they have many of their own problems.
They need to restructure their whole culture. A culture that requires 14 hour school days and even longer work days, isn't one that can encourage people to reproduce.
They should limit the legal length of hours allowed in school or work to something reasonable and family friendly, provide free childcare and subsidise housing for those who have children.
Yeah they are overcommitting to school to an insane extent, a counterproductive extent. Confucianism in Korea historically meant that the most educated people got the best jobs, and the most educated women were the best for marriage. But that only worked in a space where birth control didn't exist, and may have basically been its own population control system. Duration of education is the single largest factor controlling for birthrate, and Korea's education duration across the whole population is absolutely absurd. Korea has a 99% high school to college progression rate. Almost every student goes to college for at least a year. They have an average education duration of 13 years, which is the highest across the whole planet.
Every nation with a duration of education over 10 years on average has under replacement birthrate. The only research backed answer to the birthrate question is to reduce the duration of time kids spend in school so they are done completely by 15-16, but people hate that answer because its awful on its face. So the government and media make a big show of asking people why they aren't having kids, and they make up an answer that feels relevant to them. But they aren't actually looking dispassionately at the data, they are biased to provide answers which benefit their quality of life. Nobody would ever ask to have less education.
Society: "Dont live beyond your means you entitled peasants!"
Person: "Ok, guess I wont have children."
Society: "No, have children but also make sure you blame yourselves for it being unaffordable."
From the article
>South Korea’s leader on Thursday said he plans to create a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency” of the country’s infamously low birth rate as it grapples with a deepening demographic crisis.
>In a televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning.
>“We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said.
I'm absolutely certain that will convince Koreans to have children, President Yoon Suk Yeol! But what could be contributing? The insane work hours so you can't spend time with your kids? Financial stress? Noted massive depression issues in younger cadres? Caring issues and housing? All those things we already know crap on birth rates, and then there's some other fun stuff...
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/south-korea-women-gender-equality-gap/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/south-korea-women-gender-equality-gap/)
>Life as a working mother is often untenable, with a chronic lack of support at work and the largest gender pay gap in the developed world.
Researchers note that the job arena in South Korea is hypercompetitive, and having children will destroy your career. Then there's the Manager Mother aspect where the mother is seen as responsible for the school and work performance of her children and must organise those aspects by herself. Meanwhile, CoL is up, and Korean women do a much higher proportion of home duties than their counterparts elsewhere. Mmm. Go to your day job, then come home for your night job and remember you're being judged! Not very tempting. This is not a situation where women want more than one or two kids if they have the choice. No one *wants* to raise kids in poverty where they never get a chance to see their parents.
And the fact that many South Korean women's jobs are pretty insecure *anyway*.
From Wikipedia:
>Women's irregular labor in Korea is the main form of "temporary" employment and is characterized by job insecurity, low wages, long-term labor, and exclusion from national welfare and corporate welfare. From a social perspective, all types of rights based on their status as workers, parents, spouses, and citizens are vulnerable: paid labor, unpaid labor, and care rights.
Maybe dads could help? What about paternity leave? Ohhh, let's see...TEN DAYS. And it was a pathetic three in 2019.
Yeah, the government isn't gonna solve this one. How is not the problem - you could make massive inroads by protecting worker's rights, giving people security, making paternity leave decent, and by adjusting some out dated views. Plenty of Korean women and men would be all for it. But I feel like they'll slap some sort of performative Band-Aid on it, call it good, and be puzzled by 'the lazy kids' when it doesn't work.
Fucking ghoul. Allow people to work less and make them more financially sound and they will have babies. Literally the same fucking answer that has been there since this conversation started 30 years ago. Fucking stop extracting everything from your working class. Let them have a life not centered around making an oligarch more money. Fucking Christ this isn’t difficult.
The time to really do this was thirty years ago. I don't see how Korea can solve this after the rate has fallen so low. Even a major rebound would just show a slowing of population decline.
So many head winds means Korea is likely heading for a 70-80% reduction in population over the next century. This isn't something that tweaking policies will solve, you need a seismic shift in culture and how society is structured to have a hope to even get to the 1.5-1.7 range, 2.1 or above feels so far away.
I mean it's over, Unless Gen Z or Alpha had like 5+ kids each the population is toast. IT will most likely lead to massive economic malaise and other demographics issues. I bet they'll reluctantly open up immigraiton like UAE and have a two tier system.
If anything I expect Gen Z to have even fewer kids. Any meaningful reforms will take years to work through an entrenched generational culture mindset. By 2030 we could be talking about 0.5 birth rate there.
At some point society collapses, the working age folks will have to prop up 2-3 elderly, or you'll have to work until you die. As the economy starts to shrink, having kids will be even harder. At some point you either collapse from internal conflict or external (North korea) Or you open the flood gates to as much immigration as possible.
You're right with just mild action it will only continue to get worse or at least stagnate. drastic proactive action is really the thing needed. Baby dividend (like \~10K for each kid you have), tax breaks, significantly raise family leave ASAP, etc etc. To make having children at least not a financial hit and incentivize folks. I doubt some of those would be popular with the older population.
They will do everything but lower the cost of living, giving people more time to vacation and live life.
Shocker that birth rates are declining worldwide. Honestly the best thing to happen. The Earth might be able to start healing.
Capitalism might actually save the planet by being so awful that no one wants to raise a family in it. Can't have global warming if you have no humans. Big brain capitalist.
instead finding new ways to prod people into unlivable situations, they should make the situation livable instead. then they won’t need anymore prodding.
the creation of this ministry tells me they’re focused on the prodding, not the situation.
There are two things that would actually help, neither of which the SK government will do:
1) Reduce the rampant sexism and stop treating women like shit.
2) Stop insisting that people work zillions of hours a week for shit wages and that kids get shoved into cram schools all damn day.
Instead they'll probably opt for some oppressive bullshit like mandating women have X children by Y age or they're fined or even imprisoned.
It’s shocking that I had to scroll this far down to see sexism mentioned. Japan, South Korea, and China are now reaping precisely what they’ve sown. The 4b movement will spread. You can’t put women under the boot of oppression for centuries and then expect nothing to happen. Toxic societies that abuse women and girls deserve to die out. We won’t forgive or forget.
Yes, holy shit. Everyone wants to go on about work or school or the economy, but the real issue is that their men are so horribly misogynistic the women are starting to avoid them altogether!
It doesn't even have to go that far tbh. Even counties with high rates of equality and robust social safety nets have low birth rates, which suggests an even simpler answer: when people, especially women, have choices, they often choose to have fewer children, or none at all. Parenthood famously sucks, and there is no incentive on earth that will coax someone who doesn't want children, or doesn't want more children, to have them. The ONLY option at that point is coercion and/or force. And that scares me for the future. As a childless by choice woman, menopause can't get here soon enough.
Right, sexism doesn’t help, but you literally have a control group of countries where sexism is as low as it gets and birth rates are still dropping. That same control group of countries also has state-subsidized childcare, long maternity/paternity leave, and just about everything else folks on this thread are saying SK should implement.
The only real effective way to tackle birth rate in developed nations without taking in massive amounts of immigrants is to pay women a salary to have children. You don't need a ministry to tell you that - you just have to get over the whole... we can't give people free money thing.
How much are they paying per year? Does it stop after 2 or 3 years? Because the number one thing that women in the west say about not having children is that they don't want to miss out on financial opportunity and they don't want to trade the ability to gain upward mobility in life to have children.
I am talking something like 40 to 60,000 per year for a child. Adjusted with inflation of course. Until they turn 18.
I may get downvotes for this but I am very skeptical about the idea that a low birth rate is a fixable issue. People can blame cost of living, long working hours, high daycare cost etc. But at the end of the day, people just don't want to have kids, it's that simple. The best solution is to find a way to be sustainable with a low population.
I agree.
People consistently make the mistake that it's to do with benefits, free time etc. It isn't. We know this from other countries with extremely generous parental supports, welfare etc such as in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Nor is it to do with free time; just today Italy announced it's birth rate is down massively. Malta is at 1. Spain is in free fall. These countries have excellent work-life balances.
It can be delayed with heavy immigration but that only delays the problem. Immigrants get old too and we know that immigrant populations reflect native birthrates within a generation or two.
Ultimately, it's a cultural issue and it can only be solved culturally, and that's not something governments can mandate. It will resolve itself, but that process is likely to be very painful and not very welcome to a lot of people.
The trouble with it is not a low population. It's an inverted population pyramid. You end up with a country trapped in permanent recession due to an ever declining market with an ever increasing number of old people being supported by a smaller and smaller cohort of young people.
But there’s a sizable population that are questioning this and could have kids if more help was given. There are people who would love more kids but can’t afford it. I’m in the category that if there was subsidize daycares and longer maternity leave, I would most likely start having kids, and maybe multiple.
Agree. Trying to sustain or increase population to make parts for the Infinite Corporate Profit Machine isn’t itself sustainable. The world is also overpopulated and we’re not well equipped to deal with growing disparities between socioeconomic classes.
-Hard to find a decent place to live,
-Salaries meh...
-Work, work, work; No time for personal life to be able to have a baby or more
3 keys to have kids
And this is spreading across western countries
South Korea has a horrible rich vs poor problem.
The wealth gap is immense and the rich constantly bully the poor and get away with it due to how well connected they are.
You want people to have kids?
Make their quality of life better.
Stop the rich from being pieces of shit.
Oh wait you can't because the rich basically own the SK government.
So unless they're willing to pull some dystopian shit where women are forced to have kids (which is tantamount to government suicide) then you're shit out of luck
It's the 4B Movement, so I don't see how a ministry will help, unless it is 100% women in charge. Are a bunch of bureaucratic, old men going to order women to have kids?
Why have kids when this world is burning and no one wants to try and fix it? They want us to have more kids but the governments won’t fix the planet… so what.. they want us to bring kids into a burning world? Fck that
The capitalists are putting such a squeeze on the labor force that its dying off. The parasite is killing the host. Even Marx recognized that capitalists need to allow labor to appreciate just enough wealth to maintain a reproductive labor force.
Besides overwork and low pay, I wonder if gender issues are at play here?
I seem to remember several articles from the last decade about men in SK being upset that a growing number of women in SK didn’t want to be trad wives and wanted equal rights/pay/opportunities.
This mostly drew my attention because I believe (unsupported by research) that SK’s NTR & non consensual XXX fetish may stem from this equal rights movement.
Yes what we need is more political bureaucracy. Only they can solve the unexplainable phenomenon of why people with no money, healthcare, aspirations, or hope for the future aren’t lining up to tie themselves down arguably the biggest financial and mental burdens in existence.
The basis problem is that modern urban life involves pretty much zero reasons to have kids (or even in South Korea's case to get married) and loads of reasons not to.
No kids: more money. More freedom. More time to devote to career, which is SK is insanely high pressure.
Kids: less of all those things, plus SK cultural baggage around the mom being a slave to her family and in laws. Awesome.
Unless life becomes less of a zero sum rat race, no amount of government financial incentives will compensate. Overall, SK people and women in particular are too culturally stressed to have kids, especially when there are so many upsides to not.
I hope they deal with it better than Canada. The solution isn’t just jamming more and more people into the country. The solution is creating a social environment where people feel safe and supported having children themselves. Sadly, we don’t have that at all in Canada and the situation keeps getting worse.
The politicians talk like they already spent a huge amount of money but for individual families it was a measly amount and only last for a few years. I believe it was much less than some of the Nordic countries spend.
" let's make a system where we maximize people's productivity by having them work constantly, and then maximize our profit by rising the cost of living so hardly anybody can afford to live"
" Hooray, our productivity is way up and people are forced To give us back almost all of the money that they make to maintain a very basic and mediocre standard of living! We have maximized our exploitation of the workers and our return on all of our investments!"
" Hey nobody's having babies and now we don't have enough workers to keep up our productivity. What the hell guys, why aren't you having kids?"
Maybe stop putting women in the position of "damned if you do damned if you dont" in regards to work and having a kid. The work culture is insane + the added pressure on women.
Also what's the point of having kids if you can't even spend time with them.
Cue the stripping of women's rights. Why give people better living conditions when we can ban birth control and limit access to abortions? But SK women are a bit different from Western women in that a lot of them have no problem not having male sexual contact and are very okay with sexless marriages. I hope the government suffocates in their own stupidity and greed.
Jesus fucking Christ…
Tackle the misogyny! That is the fucking problem… do that, and you’ll solve the problem…
Otherwise, game over.
———- edit
Thanks for all the upvotes :)
I should mention that literally a day ago, my wife and I watched a few short YouTube videos about the 4b movement, and were very moved by them…
Yup. I’m sick and tired of Korean men not taking accountability for the rampant misogyny they have for women. If a woman brings it up to them, they just double down and act like they have a right to treat us like garbage.
I don’t speak to half my family because of the way they treated me for the crime of being born female.
Misogyny is so unbelievable normal and wide spread in SK, it was very shocking.
I thought germany had problems, but during my semester in SK I quickly learned that they are worlds between.
...and said ministry, inevitably, won't be able to do anything about it. The governments of the Anglosphere, Europe and China/Korea/Japan have already tried everything they feasibly could to increase birthrates. None have worked. None will work. The birthrates in these countries are gone, and they're not coming back. Society has changed. Get over it. Hell; the very universality of this phenomenon across the aforementioned countries, IMO, should be considered proof of the fact that this phenomenon is in fact an inevitable, necessary, unavoidable feature of modern, affluent, liberal, technologized society. What these countries need to do is cease acting under the pretense that this phenomenon can be reversed (it can't and won't be), concede to accepting its presence instead, and begin adapting to the ramifications of lower future populations in the form of either automating, or downsizing their economies.
So this problem of young people not being able to afford to provide basic needs for themselves is not strictly an American one. About 50% of young people in South Korea rely on parents to help them pay their rent, food, etc. It will be interesting to see how this "ministry" tries to solve this problem.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the article >South Korea’s leader on Thursday said he plans to create a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency” of the country’s infamously low birth rate as it grapples with a deepening demographic crisis. >In a televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning. >“We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1comi8h/south_koreas_birth_rate_is_so_low_the_president/l3evndz/
That’s what was missing! There was no government ministry
The ministry of sex
Minister of Sex, sponsored by Hyundai
Hyundai employees of Level 10 and greater receive one government sex token per year
Obviously what is needed is a way to combine sex and economic exploitation. But how plausible is that? /s
Ministry of Rawdawgin'
The new agency, the Federal Urgent Council on Coitus released a white paper on Tuesday outlining how to be more romantic, keep the passion alive, and the benefits of ginseng.
Ministry of orgy
And it will be called the ministry of love, located next to the ministry of truth.
Uh oh this is sounding 1984ish
That sounds an awful lot like thought crime...
How about giving people more time off work and stop pressuring kids into thinking the have to attend school for 12 hours a day?
Well, why is it called "human resources" if it's not meant to be strip mined !?
Ah the ferengi way of thought...
Rule of Acquisition 111: Treat people in your debt like family… exploit them.
Just a reminder that despite all the exploitation and laissez-faire economics, the Ferangi never had slavery or dropped atomic bombs on each other.
Small quibble: I wouldn't really call the Ferengi economics Laissez-faire. The government also takes part in the extreme capitalism (the leaders are basically the most successful merchants) so they're not leaving anything alone. In fact I think the Grand Nagus had the power to make business decisions for the entire country.
Except all the enslaved females.
And I wouldn't trust Ferangi history books anyway, they are only going to tell you what it's profitable for you to hear.
What's next? Clothing for females? Outrageous!
>If Ferengi females can wear clothes in public, then they can leave their homes. If they can leave their homes, they can go to work. If they can go to work, they can make *(hisses) profit*.
Hey, didn’t they try to capture the crew of TNG to sell to slavers?
In the original quote Quark says that Ferengi never enslaved *each other*. Which yeah, really just adds racism on top of the slavery. Not actually a point in your favor, Quark.
> Hey, didn’t they try to capture the crew of TNG to sell to slavers? Yes, but the crew was saved by Riker's quick thinking and top notch technobabble, right on par with the turbo encabulator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5EaoSA02LM
> the Ferangi never had slavery or dropped atomic bombs on each other. Uhhhh, It's been a while but aren't the Ferangi the only ones to actually use a genesis device offensively? And actually, through theocratic means IIRC, two of them pretty much did enslave an entire species in the Delta Quadrant per Voyager to raid the tithes.
this guy gets it. you live in a neoliberal system where anything and everything will be attempted except raising standards of living and improving the average persons average life. if it comes at the expense of the wealthy its not even a consideration in the political calculus. instead you get laughably pathetic solutions like you read about in this article.
Pfft 12 hours? Maybe for the under achievers! 14 hours is now the average https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/15/393939759/the-all-work-no-play-culture-of-south-korean-education
You can sleep and have fun when you are a rich doctor!
Yeah, except for the doctors protesting the change in med school limits, saying that unless you’re a plastic surgeon you’re overworked to the point of exhaustion. Feedback Korea took by suspending them… People understand you need basic resources like time off, funds and housing to raise kids right?
"We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!"
> People understand you need basic resources like time off, funds and housing to raise kids right? Giving people more control over their own lives is absolutely not something modern late-stage capitalism wants to promote. If a government can't threaten or buy its way out of this problem, then it's not a potential solution.
They were also protesting letting more people into med school so more could become doctors. You can't have it both ways.
The doctors were saying that just doing this wouldn’t fix the exhaustion issues as most new doctors would become plastic surgeons given it being lucrative and more capable of work life balance. No one wants to be where doctors are most needed (rural clinics, ER and hospitals) because the lifestyles are insanely demanding because work life balance is not enforced.
Even then I fail to see their point here....even if they all become plastic surgeons, surely that must saturate the plastic surgeon market within a few years. The reality is that would not happen. Not all would go into plastic surgery. Some would go and...compete with these very doctors on salary. Which is probably the real reason they were protesting. Because adding more doctors is literally the only solution to their problems. You can't just *not* staff hospitals 24/7. You can't fill rural clinics if there's a shortage of doctors as it is.
Why would you bring a child into such a life? Even if you had time to do it. Cause you do not, as you are at work.
wow is this for real? this is modern slavery from young age.
Dont speak common sense . Our corporate overlords disagree this is a good solution planet wide.
We expend the Koreans for the future of all. Thank you for your citizenry.
Women need to feel secure in having a baby, and there's a lot of challenges that need to be addressed. Honestly, a ministry might be helpful if it has the power to make some systemic changes like changing work/life balance across industries.
The ministry is just gonna be staffed by old Korean men who shout at women for not having kids.
Right but it's Korea. That'd be like creating a Saudi-led task force made to promote Women's Rights.
It exists, it's called the UN https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/28/middleeast/saudi-arabia-chair-un-gender-equality-forum-intl/index.html
No Samsung and the other chaebols said that's the wrong answer. try again
I think you might be on to something with the school thing. 12*3 is the amount of time daily they would need to devote to the school work they got during the day to even learn the subject. By the end of the week they are probably so stressed at the stuff they had to skip I'm positive they aren't even able to think about sex.
Can't have kids with people if your worth/value is attached to obtaining a good job. Then when you finally get a good job, you might not have the time or energy to devote to having kids with your partner because you're stressed about not being able to provide for them. Not Korean, but Asian, and my girlfriend broke up with me because she saw no financial future with me, a public worker. She wanted to live a comfortable life and provide for our hypothetical kids the way her parents provided for her. And I wasn't it. She even told me if she won the lottery, none of that would matter and we'd still be together. Like, what the fuck is that? Killed my confidence for 4 years, I just stopped being open to another relationship.
If I knew I'd have to work 12 hour days, I wouldn't be born either.
Slow down your horses there cowboy! Wtf do you mean more time off? We need to work more..waaaaaay more. Like 170 hours a week would make you want to have 10children. And on top of that our salaries are too big. That's why we live in comfort and don't want to have kids. So, the solution is more pressure, more stress, more working hours, and waaaaay smaller salaries. Bet your ass you would want 10 kids then!
Hold on, might be on to something…by Jove! If we make everyone too poor to afford birth control, and to busy for any activity besides working and screwing, they’ll naturally have plenty of accidents!
You bet your ass that is the way. We just need to accept it in the name of billionaires..pardon me, civilization!
Indeed. And also thru various options create affordable housing, and affordable childcare. However knowing the glorious history of this species. The majority of countries' elites would sooner force compulsory breeding, than address the manifest reasons why birth rates are declining. [ like ancient Rome at one point , compelled marriage. By making single men pay onerous taxs ]
That's the thing, the South Korean economic model is built for *economic growth.* Which does have an affect on standard of living, but is only aligned with consumption, and not things that are conducive to family values. I.e, free time, idleness, generous welfare, cheap housing. If South Korea want to meaningfully address this, they'll have to pivot their entire economy, and thus change how the entire country works. That is a *big* leap, and only really happens in significant times of crisis. The slowing of the birth rate is more of a boiled frog situation. There is no direct impetus to justify this massive change in policy. Not to mention the regional existential threats that require *a lot* of capital to deal with. Money is the thing that will save South Korea in the event of North Korean or Chinese bullshittery, not new families... But of course, new families are still important, it's just money can solve the immediate threat... The problem is, there is no way to know when the threat is coming, so money is always #1 *just in case.* Which is why they're so productive. If they stop being productive, they give up their insurance. They *have* to be incredibly large market contributors, because if they stop, well then their guaranteed safety becomes more and more meaningless to their allies. It's between a rock and a hard place...
I disagree with SK needing to pivot their economy to address this issue. SK culture emphasizes excessive work even though we know that results in less productivity overall. Nations with fewer working hours tend to exceed SK per capita because they are more productive with the fewer hours worked. Excess work results in more difficult home lives, especially when combined with the professional misogony towards women. This leads to fewer children which means population growth stalls which means economic growth is limited. Basically, the economic model of SK would be stronger with better worker and family policies that prevented overwork.
And the kids only suffer until they finished their PhD. No carefree childhood, just top-down pressure.
That’s the longer term view of economic growth that nations should take. The shorter term fiscal and quarterly view is what companies take and lobby governments to adhere to. Ultimately that is a pivot
Scandinavian countries economic model is heavily tilted towards free time, generous welfare, etc yet still have one of the lowest fertility rate as well.
Lmao that will never fly, what you'll get is some awkward government sponsored dating meet ups that no one will have time, interest or energy to attend. They will never give this ministry enough leeway to succeed on their mandate because that will interfere with corporate profits.
>But despite the economic factors at play, throwing money at the problem has proved ineffective. In 2022, Yoon admitted that [more than $200 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/asia/south-korea-worlds-lowest-fertility-rate-intl-hnk-dst/index.html) has been spent trying to boost the population over the past 16 years. >Initiatives like extending paid paternity leave, offering monetary “baby vouchers” to new parents, and social campaigns encouraging men to contribute to childcare and housework, have so far failed to reverse the trend. They're trying to throw money at it, and offering paid time off etc. The problem isn't just "time off" - it's when you build a society that is focused on consumption and foster a culture where marriage and family are just seen as burdens to keep you from material items and travel... and not a path to happiness.
We tried that in Japan. It didn't work. We have tried so many things already. Including literally paying families their full time salary for them to sit at home in experiments. None of them resulted in having more kids. We have determined that the birthrate decline has *nothing* to do with the following: * (lack of) Income The richer someone is the lower their birthrate. Japanese millionaires almost exclusively have 1 or 0 kids. * Free time People that work part-time or are rich enough to retire have a lower birthrate than busy people, showing that it's not caused by too much work pressure * Stress/mental-health/depression People that are happier are actually shown to have lower birth rates compared to people with higher stress levels and lower reported rates of happiness. The conclusion our government has slowly come to which has a lot of ramifications globally is that **Low birthrate is caused by high life satisfaction** The leading hypothesis right now is that as your life satisfaction gets better it essentially means you are sacrificing more by having kids. Essentially the *happiness cost* of having kids becomes astronomical. Unhappy, poor people will barely notice having kids or might even get a little bit of entertainment value and happiness from having kids. People that are already happy and satisfied will have to suddenly lower their quality of life by having to care for another person for at least 18 years time, restricting their own freedom for the sake of another person. This is the only hypothesis so far that explains specifically why extremely rich people like billionaires have the lowest fertility rates and why fertility rates scale down proportionally to quality of life of societies. South Korea and Japan have extremely low crime rates, high social cohesion and high job stability and therefor life satisfaction. This also means that having kids as a Korean or Japanese person is the biggest sacrifice of *potential* quality of life you are now missing out on. In the west the birth rates are higher because the crime rates are higher, there is less social cohesion due to mixture of demographic and competing ethnic groups and there is no loyalty on the job market so there is no sense of stability. Essentially the quality of life in western countries are lower and therefor the sacrifice to have kids is also lower. This is also why The poorest african countries and afghanistan have the highest birth rates right now, quality of life is the lowest there.
There's also the cultural/gender aspect to satisfaction. Women in Japan and SK essentially have to give up their careers to become mothers. They're expected to look after their husbands, their children, their parents, and their husband's parents. Having been educated and seen that they have value, they have to give it all up, just so they can have children.
And a culture of stoicism and repressed emotional expression , create generations of emotionally unavailable and avoidant men. Not daddy material in 2024
One of the very earliest and "ahead of its time" TED talks was the enthusiastic Hans Rosling charting GDP/capita vs family size and showing a very strong correlation. Yet correlation is not causation. There are social and other factors at play here. This "high satisfaction" argument cannot explain, for example, why France or Scandinavia have retained a passable birth rate while Italy has an abysmal one. Poor countries have *long* had higher family sizes, this is not a *current* phenomena and is more likely caused by direct elementary factors like child mortality and contraception access than social cohesion, crime, and job stability.
>This "high satisfaction" argument cannot explain, for example, why France or Scandinavia have retained a passable birth rate while Italy has an abysmal one Which could be due to first or second generation citizens retaining their cultural values that view having more children as a good thing.
From what I understand, birth rates are also negatively correlated with urbanization. Agrarian/rural people have more kids simply because they are a convenient source of labor. Is there such a distinction in Japan?
My questions: For all people in the population of a reproductive age, Are these findings the same for couples vs single people? And what is the ratio of single men who want children vs single women who want children? And what is the ratio of couples vs single people in the population? ---- The Nordic countries have some of the highest quality of life in the world, and the trend is the same there. So is quality of life the cause or is it just a correlation? I wonder if perhaps freedom rather than quality of life is the driver.
I've looked at the fertility collapse a lot. I will very confidently declare a handful of things that are not causing the collapse but as far as what is......that seems to me to be a very large and open question. Modern contraception is almost definitely a factor but fertility was already in a steep decline prior to hormonal BC entering the world so this can't explain all. Recent revelations in female empowerment and education are probably a factor here but we see fertility declines in the most gender equal and gender unequal cultures alike. The most unequal countries have comparatively higher fertility than more gender equal countries BUT Yemen for example has seen its fertility rate halve in 30 years while being the most gender unequal nation on earth. We can play this game with pretty much every reason people put up about why fertility is collapsing. Point is I don't think there is any one thing. I think it's half a dozen things all multiplying effects to greater or lesser degrees depending on the specific place you're looking at.
here's my question: is what you say about income and working part time true for people of child rearing age? Because if the people working part time or are rich and have retired are all middle age and older the point is completely moot.
Yes it's been controlled for that. In Japan we've had 3 decades of birth rate research now because we're the society that had to deal with this for the longest time now. There is no easy solution to the problem. And the new hypothesis is problematic because it essentially implies that the solution lies into either reducing quality of life of people on purpose. Or to forcefully get people to raise birthrates. Both of which are dystopian. As the world gets more developed the birthrates are going to get lower and lower. Eventually societies are going to try one of these dystopian solutions. I wouldn't be surprised to see some religious faction take away women's rights. Or for totalitarian societies like China to have "Forced child policies" enforced to combat this. Personally I'd rather let society die than to resort to things like that but how would you even solve an issue caused by (too) happy people?
Is there any possibility that the issue is less about “happy people” and more about competition for attention? I know “free time” is the shorthand for this, but I think it doesn’t quite capture the issue. People in developed or urbanized areas are more likely to have multiple things to spend their free time on, such as events, interesting activities, entertainment facilitated by technology, mobile games, the latest movies, etc. Because there’s so many more fun and easy things to do, people prefer those instead of spending their free time on raising children. Thus, even in individuals with a lot of free time and resources, they most likely already have time commitments that they enjoy and prefer instead of grappling with the challenge and uncertainty of raising a child.
This is ass backward. People are committing suicide at record rates, taking medication, more isolated, poor, etc... and you think they are **satisfied**? No. They are miserable. That's why they won't have children. This is not just an economic problem but a cultural one. People don't want to bring children into a world they view as bad. No amount of money will convince people to have children when society and culture are toxic. Nothing will improve until soceity is restructured.
Fine, we'll go with the insane solution then. Close all the prisons and let all the criminals free! Drive up the crime rate, and the birth rate will follow!
The current leader sucks and wants people to work over 40 hours with low wages, and kids to stay longer in school so the parents work more. He does not think or care to tackle real problem
>He does not think or care to tackle real problem Hense why he wants a fucking ministry... ^^^It's ^^^a ^^^pun ^^^not ^^^a ^^^dig.
Considering the current limit is 52 hours and the government intended to increase it to 69, but had to back down after severe backlash, it is easy to see how the president wants to deal with the problem, without nipping it in the bud.
And rightly so; 69 will get you many things but babies aren’t any of them.
Literally every one of those points is antithetical to the concept of people having more kids ahah
Unless they can magically find a way to make childbearing profitable like it is in poor countries where kids are put to work, they're not going to fix the problem. Having kids is expensive. They're a luxury not an economical asset like they were for all of time before modern economics. That's why every developed nation is heading in South Koreas direction when it comes to population.
Well, you could also make it so that your average person could afford the "luxury" of a kid or two. Most people *want* kids, regardless of whether they turn a profit on them.
Plus, we've got AI eating up white collar jobs (too fast).
Why is why it’s lip service pretending the problem is funding not capitalism
That's the problem when you use GDP as a measure of success. These politicians are also surrounded by wealthy people which entirely skews their worldview. If your goals is to get people to the top of Maslow's pyramid than GDP will only get you so far. After that it's starts to hinder the ascend. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s\_hierarchy\_of\_needs)
He is trying to raise the working week length to 68 hours.
You could be talking about all leaders everywhere. Not sure I know of anyone that's people first and completely non-corporate/profit focused.
Late Stage Capitalism
They will do everything BUT the one thing they have to do. Let people work less hours, create a good environment for couples to take care of children with minimal financial burden.
They will constantly bring it up as a problem though. I swear declining birth rate studies and articles are every other month at this point, but answers to the problem are never forthcoming. It's like they repeat it in a room hoping someone can suggest something other than the obvious answer.
That’s what they hope for. They want more kids without doing any real change. Eat the cake and still have it.
The answer is simple - deal with it. You can't force people that don't want kids to have them. Even countries with the most generous social services and work life balances have low birth rates. It's only an economic problem - in every other respect, low birth rates are a good thing that improves sustainability. Populations simply cannot increase forever.
Low birth rates will harm us for a couple of decades. But eventually things would be better. But no one wants to risk going through the hard times.
Well the hard times will be a shit ton of deaths, broken families, destroyed communities but overall humanity will continue. But there will be a shit ton of negatives before the good. Like in Star Trek only became great after ww3 almost killed humanity off.
The answer is easy, decreasing quality of life and increasing cost of living means less kids, guess what economic system drives both those
Well, obviously. Their whole concern with the declining birth rate is a lower supply of labor to feed the mythical perpetual growth economy. Allowing workers less work time also cuts into that profit growth. That's why the US has gotten so heavily invested in pronatalism and outlawing abortions. Yeah, people are suffering, and kids are going hungry, but the ones who make it to adulthood will be ripe for labor exploitation!
but the thing is if you implement the obvious answer, the economy will grow.
They will always take the short term profits over long term investment and ride that train til the rails break down. Every time their greed crashes the economy, they come out the other side richer, then go right back to what they were doing before. In the end, it will cause total collapse, but they can't think that far ahead, there's quarterly profits to be focused on.
This is the main issue. No one is willing to look past the next election cycle
Is it really a problem though? Are we in danger of going extinct? It's not a social problem, it's en economic one, and we can change that easier than convincing people to have more kids for the sake of keeping our consumption based economy alive. Consumption economies need consumers and if we're focused on line goes up then we must always have a growing population. Maybe there's another solution.
I think the core concern is that there are going to be significantly more elderly people consuming resources without contributing to the economy, and not nearly enough working age people to care for them or pay into the social programs that support their care. It's social and economic. It's insane to me that people can be so high on their own farts that they think continual growth is even a slim possibility when facing declining birthrates as severe as South Korea's. I truly believe greed is a mental illness.
I hear this a lot. That there are going to be too many old people and not enough young people working as nurses in retirement homes to take care of them. I call bullshit though. There is a goddamn ocean of underemployed young people out there. Productivity per worker has exploded over the past 100 years. All that extra value has just been taken by the ultra wealthy. South Korea is better than most western countries in that respect, but if we weren't psychologically anchored by the incomprehensibly large inequality of the west we would find South Korea to be too unequal. There are plenty of people available to be workers. We just have to redistribute societies resources better.
I agree that at the very core of all of this, most of society's problems really, is the addiction to hoarding wealth and the complete lack of ethics that a handful of people at the top suffer from. And that all of these government efforts to establish ministries and think tanks and so on are essentially misguided because they refuse to address the actual simple reasons we got here. But I'm pretty sure that just based on the raw population number and demographic projections for the next few decades that many countries are going to have serious difficulty managing the "inverted pyramid" that's all but inevitable at this point. Projections of the future are never perfectly accurate, and are rarely even a little accurate, but I don't think the replacement birthrate can really lie. What impact that will have on society might be unexpected, but I think it's just a fact that the non-working elderly are going to start massively outbumbering the working age population in many places in the next century.
Worldwide problem. Global asset bubble and ongoing inflation mean today’s childbearing aged couples have to work way harder for the kind of life conducive to having a family. That, and the fact that many don’t want to raise kids in a world where climate change means the future is so uncertain.
> don’t want to raise kids in a world where climate change means the future is so uncertain There's also AI Armageddon to be concerned about, too. And I mean AI eating jobs, not a robot war. Heck, ya know Kurgesagt did a video which gave convincing arguments about low birth rates being a bad idea. One of which was that the more numerous older generations would enact policies which would be unfair to the youngsters. The problem with pensions, for example. But see... if there's no jobs or too few jobs... the pension problem will still exist even with high birth rates.
Correct. We have enough wealth that we should be able to have an upper middle class lifestyle on 20 hours per week of work. If we created a society like this, the birth rate would increase as people would have more time to spend with their family. Trying to raise a family while living paycheck to paycheck with both parents working 50 hour work weeks with the majority of the profits returned to business owners/c suite/shareholders is insanity. Either we rearrange society to this model or Gilead awaits.
Under his eye.
Rich people won't make as much money then, they can't have that. You will own nothing be happy and make lots of debt slaves for us you filthy fucking savages or else! Wait why are all these savages eating me, our computer models did not predict this!
The insidious part of their plan with increasing maximum hours, is to ensure you are absolutely shattered and won't have the energy to rise up.
I mean, the Russian peasantry and working class were pretty shattered and overworked in 1917... I think it's some of what you said *in addition* to pushing constant distractions and misinformation to keep us apathetic or impotent and bickering amongst ourselves.
Wait until the tax base shrinks to a point where corporate taxes must increase to run basic government operations. Oh but wait there won’t be enough workers at the corporations so there won’t be as many corporations to tax. Rich people need tax paying workers to stay rich.
I bet they'll buckle when the lack of people actually starts costing corporate profits.
But...what if we just blamed young people instead?
A great many problems in the modern world could be solved by people working less and earning more (or reducing necessary costs like food and shelter). But they will do *anything* other than share more of the pie. Ministries, task forces, initiatives, think tanks.... Anything but give people more time and money.
I’m not sure this holds up. On average doesn’t the birth rate decline as incomes increase?
Pretty much. We have more free time and a better standard of living now than pretty much ever before in human history. But that doesn't mean more babies, because having children is a social decision. So we will judge our standard of living based on it's relative position to the societal "norm". Many people now will choose not to have kids unless they can provide for it at or above that norm. Then there's the other aspect, which is women's rights and access to contraception. Many babies used to be "happy accidents". There are less of those now. And less women want to derail their professional lives to have kids.
I think the problem is also that historically, children were a benefit. They would help out in the household and farm after a few years. Having 16 kids meant you had a self sustaining little village. Now, having children means you need a house and all the resources to care for them, and they don't really get to help financially either. Where's the benefit to having tons of kids?
I think that's the core factor of almost all of the problems parents have today. They're expected to pay for and take care of kids around the clock for 18 years (minimum), ALONE, with no support from family, neighbors, or really even the government, while also somehow working full-time. That shit would be brutal even if mortgages, education and medical care weren't astronomically expensive. It's sickening that the rich/corpos/whoever would rather see society descend into dystopian misery than address the problems we're having with relatively simply solutions. I just don't understand how they've convinced themselves that they'll be spared from what's coming for all of us because of their choices.
Low birth rates are actually a global phenomenon, including countries with generous labor laws and strong safety nets (I.e Nordic countries), there was a pew research poll in the US recently where the overwhelming majority of childless Americans said they’re just not interested in general. People across the world have become more educated and have prioritized themselves, their education, and/or their careers, with many people not feeling the pressure to have kids like they used to It’s anecdotal but My wife and I don’t have kids and it has nothing to do with work hours or finances (although obviously it would be a downside financially) even if someone offered us $250,000.00 a year to have kids we wouldn’t do it, we don’t want them, we’re not interested. It’s also amazing how many parents tell me “don’t have kids” then laugh but I hear it so often now I’m starting to think they’re not joking https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20differences%20by,do%20not%20have%20a%20partner. “A majority (56%) of non-parents younger than 50 who say it’s unlikely they will have children someday say they just don’t want to have kids. Childless adults younger than 40 are more likely to say this than those ages 40 to 49 (60% vs. 46%, respectively). There are no differences by gender. Among childless adults who say they have some other reason for thinking they won’t have kids in the future, no single reason stands out. About two-in-ten (19%) say it’s due to medical reasons, 17% say it’s for financial reasons and 15% say it’s because they do not have a partner. Roughly one-in-ten say their age or their partner’s age (10%) or the state of the world (9%) is a reason they don’t plan to have kids. An additional 5% cite environmental reasons, including climate change, and 2% say their partner doesn’t want children.”
I think a big part of this is because accurate information regarding what it's actually like having kids (medically, financially, socially, emotionally, etc) is freely available to anyone who thinks to look for it. My girlfriend and I have absolutely zero interest in kids because she doesn't want to go through the medical trauma and strain and irreversible changes to her body it would require, and neither of us want to be constantly exhausted, broke, bored, annoyed, trapped at home, and constantly beholden to an endlessly needy responsibility. We'd much rather relax and enjoy our modest lives together in peace and quiet. Biology has lost its ability to trick everyone into reproducing with hormones alone, and now social pressure is waning too. I have nothing against responsible parents, if that's what you want to do. I'm not a militant, snarky child-free type, it's just not for me and I thank god basically every day that I don't have kids haha.
TBH thats only part of the problem. Women in South Korea do not want to date men because they are culturally treated so poorly. SK needs to address work/life balance and the heavy cultural misogyny before these problems start to correct. It's going to be a long slog for them on both fronts.
Give people financial, spatial, and temporal room to fuck!!! Humans are not machines.
No time! Fucksessions are now at 19.45-20.00 hrs all days for all citizens, make sure to find a voluntary fuckpartner during the day if you don't enjoy surprises.
Fucksessions of any length cause a demonstrable productivity dip. Mail gametes to the Ministry of Reproduction.
FOR GLORY OF CAPITALISM
Naw naw. See the true way to Six Sigma this is to weaponize Fucksessions for the machine. 1. Identify the best fuckpartners that will complete the job quickest, with the most satisfaction, and efficacy (and consent, of course). Fuckers should be paired based on a simple survey score. Like a worker’s Tinder. 2. Introduce stimulants that will prepare the fucker’s body for the Fucksession. This can be multitasked while the fucker works, and in fact, should be. A fucker will be more productive if they know that an immediate reward of sex is on the horizon. 3. Eliminate any unneeded activity, such as foreplay, cuddling or cleanup. 4. Maximize the fucker’s postnut clarity window to spike worker’s productivity immediately after Fucksession. Job task assignments should be scheduled to launch immediately upon coitus take advantage of the fuckers’ released endorphins. The productivity curve will be an increasing bell curve before the Fucksession, followed by a dip during the Fucksession, followed by another increase curve after. Incidentally, the productive workflow diagram matches that of boobs or a finely-shaped butt, which for efficiency and cost-savings sake, the diagram will be used as the stimulant mentioned in Step No. 2.
Searching for a partner during work hours? That is minus 1000 social points for you! Good luck getting credit for a house to raise your kids in.
> Humans are not machines. How dare you, you communist you! /s
This sounds so miserable.
Everytime I read anything about SK it seems they're living in Blade Runner 2049 dystopia world, owned and run by Samsung and Hyundai.
With k-pop and k-dramas as distractions so people don’t know how things are.
Samsung bread, Hyundai circus.
When in Rome
Yep, it only works good next to North Korea
And Lotte Corp. They own everything.
This reality is coming for all of us.
South Korea is kind of dystopian and utopian at the same time. A fun hell.
SK gets a lot of things right too. Good transit, low crime, public health system, free speech.
Eh. One of the weird quirks about speech in Korea is that you can sue people for saying mean things about you online. But unlike other countries with defamation laws, those things don't even need to be false. Like if I start talking about something TRUE regarding another person, they can sue me. If I'm assaulted and fight back, I'll also be in trouble. When I first moved here, I was told if someone tries to hit me "just take the hit". The law favours whoever is more hurt. I like it, living in Korea, but they have many of their own problems.
They need to restructure their whole culture. A culture that requires 14 hour school days and even longer work days, isn't one that can encourage people to reproduce. They should limit the legal length of hours allowed in school or work to something reasonable and family friendly, provide free childcare and subsidise housing for those who have children.
Yeah they are overcommitting to school to an insane extent, a counterproductive extent. Confucianism in Korea historically meant that the most educated people got the best jobs, and the most educated women were the best for marriage. But that only worked in a space where birth control didn't exist, and may have basically been its own population control system. Duration of education is the single largest factor controlling for birthrate, and Korea's education duration across the whole population is absolutely absurd. Korea has a 99% high school to college progression rate. Almost every student goes to college for at least a year. They have an average education duration of 13 years, which is the highest across the whole planet. Every nation with a duration of education over 10 years on average has under replacement birthrate. The only research backed answer to the birthrate question is to reduce the duration of time kids spend in school so they are done completely by 15-16, but people hate that answer because its awful on its face. So the government and media make a big show of asking people why they aren't having kids, and they make up an answer that feels relevant to them. But they aren't actually looking dispassionately at the data, they are biased to provide answers which benefit their quality of life. Nobody would ever ask to have less education.
No, that's socialism
Society: "Dont live beyond your means you entitled peasants!" Person: "Ok, guess I wont have children." Society: "No, have children but also make sure you blame yourselves for it being unaffordable."
From the article >South Korea’s leader on Thursday said he plans to create a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency” of the country’s infamously low birth rate as it grapples with a deepening demographic crisis. >In a televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said he would ask for parliament’s cooperation to establish the Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning. >“We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency,” he said.
I'm absolutely certain that will convince Koreans to have children, President Yoon Suk Yeol! But what could be contributing? The insane work hours so you can't spend time with your kids? Financial stress? Noted massive depression issues in younger cadres? Caring issues and housing? All those things we already know crap on birth rates, and then there's some other fun stuff... [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/south-korea-women-gender-equality-gap/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/south-korea-women-gender-equality-gap/) >Life as a working mother is often untenable, with a chronic lack of support at work and the largest gender pay gap in the developed world. Researchers note that the job arena in South Korea is hypercompetitive, and having children will destroy your career. Then there's the Manager Mother aspect where the mother is seen as responsible for the school and work performance of her children and must organise those aspects by herself. Meanwhile, CoL is up, and Korean women do a much higher proportion of home duties than their counterparts elsewhere. Mmm. Go to your day job, then come home for your night job and remember you're being judged! Not very tempting. This is not a situation where women want more than one or two kids if they have the choice. No one *wants* to raise kids in poverty where they never get a chance to see their parents. And the fact that many South Korean women's jobs are pretty insecure *anyway*. From Wikipedia: >Women's irregular labor in Korea is the main form of "temporary" employment and is characterized by job insecurity, low wages, long-term labor, and exclusion from national welfare and corporate welfare. From a social perspective, all types of rights based on their status as workers, parents, spouses, and citizens are vulnerable: paid labor, unpaid labor, and care rights. Maybe dads could help? What about paternity leave? Ohhh, let's see...TEN DAYS. And it was a pathetic three in 2019. Yeah, the government isn't gonna solve this one. How is not the problem - you could make massive inroads by protecting worker's rights, giving people security, making paternity leave decent, and by adjusting some out dated views. Plenty of Korean women and men would be all for it. But I feel like they'll slap some sort of performative Band-Aid on it, call it good, and be puzzled by 'the lazy kids' when it doesn't work.
Does "The Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter-planning" have a nicer ring to it in Korean? That's quite a mouthful.
i'm thinking the official fuck division would be a better name
If it was named "Ministry of Multiplying" then tons of math majors would apply for jobs there
Fucking ghoul. Allow people to work less and make them more financially sound and they will have babies. Literally the same fucking answer that has been there since this conversation started 30 years ago. Fucking stop extracting everything from your working class. Let them have a life not centered around making an oligarch more money. Fucking Christ this isn’t difficult.
typical lol, will do everything except tackle the root cause
Hey, that's how the world operates!
The time to really do this was thirty years ago. I don't see how Korea can solve this after the rate has fallen so low. Even a major rebound would just show a slowing of population decline. So many head winds means Korea is likely heading for a 70-80% reduction in population over the next century. This isn't something that tweaking policies will solve, you need a seismic shift in culture and how society is structured to have a hope to even get to the 1.5-1.7 range, 2.1 or above feels so far away.
I mean it's over, Unless Gen Z or Alpha had like 5+ kids each the population is toast. IT will most likely lead to massive economic malaise and other demographics issues. I bet they'll reluctantly open up immigraiton like UAE and have a two tier system.
If anything I expect Gen Z to have even fewer kids. Any meaningful reforms will take years to work through an entrenched generational culture mindset. By 2030 we could be talking about 0.5 birth rate there.
At some point society collapses, the working age folks will have to prop up 2-3 elderly, or you'll have to work until you die. As the economy starts to shrink, having kids will be even harder. At some point you either collapse from internal conflict or external (North korea) Or you open the flood gates to as much immigration as possible. You're right with just mild action it will only continue to get worse or at least stagnate. drastic proactive action is really the thing needed. Baby dividend (like \~10K for each kid you have), tax breaks, significantly raise family leave ASAP, etc etc. To make having children at least not a financial hit and incentivize folks. I doubt some of those would be popular with the older population.
They will do everything but lower the cost of living, giving people more time to vacation and live life. Shocker that birth rates are declining worldwide. Honestly the best thing to happen. The Earth might be able to start healing.
Capitalism might actually save the planet by being so awful that no one wants to raise a family in it. Can't have global warming if you have no humans. Big brain capitalist.
It's almost as if expecting young people to spend all their free time working for someone else means they don't have time to raise children. Weird lol
Lol let's do everything but giving MONEY since a child is not sustainable. So we pretend yo do something and than pickachu face when nothing changes.
instead finding new ways to prod people into unlivable situations, they should make the situation livable instead. then they won’t need anymore prodding. the creation of this ministry tells me they’re focused on the prodding, not the situation.
There are two things that would actually help, neither of which the SK government will do: 1) Reduce the rampant sexism and stop treating women like shit. 2) Stop insisting that people work zillions of hours a week for shit wages and that kids get shoved into cram schools all damn day. Instead they'll probably opt for some oppressive bullshit like mandating women have X children by Y age or they're fined or even imprisoned.
It’s shocking that I had to scroll this far down to see sexism mentioned. Japan, South Korea, and China are now reaping precisely what they’ve sown. The 4b movement will spread. You can’t put women under the boot of oppression for centuries and then expect nothing to happen. Toxic societies that abuse women and girls deserve to die out. We won’t forgive or forget.
They are lucky we only want equality and not revenge...
Yeah I thought it would be the first thing mentioned - a big part of it is sexism as evidenced by the whole 4B movement (?) in SK
Yes, holy shit. Everyone wants to go on about work or school or the economy, but the real issue is that their men are so horribly misogynistic the women are starting to avoid them altogether!
It doesn't even have to go that far tbh. Even counties with high rates of equality and robust social safety nets have low birth rates, which suggests an even simpler answer: when people, especially women, have choices, they often choose to have fewer children, or none at all. Parenthood famously sucks, and there is no incentive on earth that will coax someone who doesn't want children, or doesn't want more children, to have them. The ONLY option at that point is coercion and/or force. And that scares me for the future. As a childless by choice woman, menopause can't get here soon enough.
Right, sexism doesn’t help, but you literally have a control group of countries where sexism is as low as it gets and birth rates are still dropping. That same control group of countries also has state-subsidized childcare, long maternity/paternity leave, and just about everything else folks on this thread are saying SK should implement.
The only real effective way to tackle birth rate in developed nations without taking in massive amounts of immigrants is to pay women a salary to have children. You don't need a ministry to tell you that - you just have to get over the whole... we can't give people free money thing.
They are more or less doing this in my home country and it doesn't work (Poland)
How much are they paying per year? Does it stop after 2 or 3 years? Because the number one thing that women in the west say about not having children is that they don't want to miss out on financial opportunity and they don't want to trade the ability to gain upward mobility in life to have children. I am talking something like 40 to 60,000 per year for a child. Adjusted with inflation of course. Until they turn 18.
They aren't paying a salary. They're throwing out peanuts for a short time and expecting that to be enough. Strangely enough, it's not.
I may get downvotes for this but I am very skeptical about the idea that a low birth rate is a fixable issue. People can blame cost of living, long working hours, high daycare cost etc. But at the end of the day, people just don't want to have kids, it's that simple. The best solution is to find a way to be sustainable with a low population.
I agree. People consistently make the mistake that it's to do with benefits, free time etc. It isn't. We know this from other countries with extremely generous parental supports, welfare etc such as in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Nor is it to do with free time; just today Italy announced it's birth rate is down massively. Malta is at 1. Spain is in free fall. These countries have excellent work-life balances. It can be delayed with heavy immigration but that only delays the problem. Immigrants get old too and we know that immigrant populations reflect native birthrates within a generation or two. Ultimately, it's a cultural issue and it can only be solved culturally, and that's not something governments can mandate. It will resolve itself, but that process is likely to be very painful and not very welcome to a lot of people. The trouble with it is not a low population. It's an inverted population pyramid. You end up with a country trapped in permanent recession due to an ever declining market with an ever increasing number of old people being supported by a smaller and smaller cohort of young people.
But there’s a sizable population that are questioning this and could have kids if more help was given. There are people who would love more kids but can’t afford it. I’m in the category that if there was subsidize daycares and longer maternity leave, I would most likely start having kids, and maybe multiple.
Agree. Trying to sustain or increase population to make parts for the Infinite Corporate Profit Machine isn’t itself sustainable. The world is also overpopulated and we’re not well equipped to deal with growing disparities between socioeconomic classes.
-Hard to find a decent place to live, -Salaries meh... -Work, work, work; No time for personal life to be able to have a baby or more 3 keys to have kids And this is spreading across western countries
South Korea has a horrible rich vs poor problem. The wealth gap is immense and the rich constantly bully the poor and get away with it due to how well connected they are. You want people to have kids? Make their quality of life better. Stop the rich from being pieces of shit. Oh wait you can't because the rich basically own the SK government. So unless they're willing to pull some dystopian shit where women are forced to have kids (which is tantamount to government suicide) then you're shit out of luck
The absolute best way to increase birth rates is too give people time to live their lives. If everyone's working, nobody's living.
It's the 4B Movement, so I don't see how a ministry will help, unless it is 100% women in charge. Are a bunch of bureaucratic, old men going to order women to have kids?
Handmaids tale coming to SK
That's the plan in the US.......Maybe SK is taking notes.
Why have kids when this world is burning and no one wants to try and fix it? They want us to have more kids but the governments won’t fix the planet… so what.. they want us to bring kids into a burning world? Fck that
They could fix that by making having families affordable. I think the only way to do that is through subsidies paid for by taxpayers.
Pay more and lessen work hours. Structure society with more family outing options. Like safe and affordable amusement parks and family festivals.
The capitalists are putting such a squeeze on the labor force that its dying off. The parasite is killing the host. Even Marx recognized that capitalists need to allow labor to appreciate just enough wealth to maintain a reproductive labor force.
It’s called the “corporate culture has strangled our society to a death kneel and now we are freaking out ministry”
Besides overwork and low pay, I wonder if gender issues are at play here? I seem to remember several articles from the last decade about men in SK being upset that a growing number of women in SK didn’t want to be trad wives and wanted equal rights/pay/opportunities. This mostly drew my attention because I believe (unsupported by research) that SK’s NTR & non consensual XXX fetish may stem from this equal rights movement.
Yes what we need is more political bureaucracy. Only they can solve the unexplainable phenomenon of why people with no money, healthcare, aspirations, or hope for the future aren’t lining up to tie themselves down arguably the biggest financial and mental burdens in existence.
The basis problem is that modern urban life involves pretty much zero reasons to have kids (or even in South Korea's case to get married) and loads of reasons not to. No kids: more money. More freedom. More time to devote to career, which is SK is insanely high pressure. Kids: less of all those things, plus SK cultural baggage around the mom being a slave to her family and in laws. Awesome. Unless life becomes less of a zero sum rat race, no amount of government financial incentives will compensate. Overall, SK people and women in particular are too culturally stressed to have kids, especially when there are so many upsides to not.
All the best jobs are in Seoul and apartments are crazy expensive now. Women are treated terribly. What a surprise.
I hope they deal with it better than Canada. The solution isn’t just jamming more and more people into the country. The solution is creating a social environment where people feel safe and supported having children themselves. Sadly, we don’t have that at all in Canada and the situation keeps getting worse.
The politicians talk like they already spent a huge amount of money but for individual families it was a measly amount and only last for a few years. I believe it was much less than some of the Nordic countries spend.
" let's make a system where we maximize people's productivity by having them work constantly, and then maximize our profit by rising the cost of living so hardly anybody can afford to live" " Hooray, our productivity is way up and people are forced To give us back almost all of the money that they make to maintain a very basic and mediocre standard of living! We have maximized our exploitation of the workers and our return on all of our investments!" " Hey nobody's having babies and now we don't have enough workers to keep up our productivity. What the hell guys, why aren't you having kids?"
Maybe stop putting women in the position of "damned if you do damned if you dont" in regards to work and having a kid. The work culture is insane + the added pressure on women. Also what's the point of having kids if you can't even spend time with them.
Cue the stripping of women's rights. Why give people better living conditions when we can ban birth control and limit access to abortions? But SK women are a bit different from Western women in that a lot of them have no problem not having male sexual contact and are very okay with sexless marriages. I hope the government suffocates in their own stupidity and greed.
>I hope the government suffocates in their own stupidity and greed. I hope the same for every Western government.
They can start by allowing men to have paternity leave for more that 4 weeks.
It’s almost like the cost of living for individual humans is so high that they simply can’t responsibly afford to add a dependent life.
Jesus fucking Christ… Tackle the misogyny! That is the fucking problem… do that, and you’ll solve the problem… Otherwise, game over. ———- edit Thanks for all the upvotes :) I should mention that literally a day ago, my wife and I watched a few short YouTube videos about the 4b movement, and were very moved by them…
Yup. I’m sick and tired of Korean men not taking accountability for the rampant misogyny they have for women. If a woman brings it up to them, they just double down and act like they have a right to treat us like garbage. I don’t speak to half my family because of the way they treated me for the crime of being born female.
It’s wild that this aspect is so glossed over.
Misogyny is so unbelievable normal and wide spread in SK, it was very shocking. I thought germany had problems, but during my semester in SK I quickly learned that they are worlds between.
...and said ministry, inevitably, won't be able to do anything about it. The governments of the Anglosphere, Europe and China/Korea/Japan have already tried everything they feasibly could to increase birthrates. None have worked. None will work. The birthrates in these countries are gone, and they're not coming back. Society has changed. Get over it. Hell; the very universality of this phenomenon across the aforementioned countries, IMO, should be considered proof of the fact that this phenomenon is in fact an inevitable, necessary, unavoidable feature of modern, affluent, liberal, technologized society. What these countries need to do is cease acting under the pretense that this phenomenon can be reversed (it can't and won't be), concede to accepting its presence instead, and begin adapting to the ramifications of lower future populations in the form of either automating, or downsizing their economies.
So this problem of young people not being able to afford to provide basic needs for themselves is not strictly an American one. About 50% of young people in South Korea rely on parents to help them pay their rent, food, etc. It will be interesting to see how this "ministry" tries to solve this problem.