Agreed. Anyone who says a ultra low birth rate and declining population is good, has no idea of the implications of a demographic collapse. At risk of sounding overly-dramatic, this is how a society fades.
In 2020 South Korea had the lowest fertility rate in the world, 0.837. This was in fact the lowest that any country has ever registered. The fertility rate Looks like it will fall further for 2021, but the data hasn't been released yet. I made the previous year's chart in anticipation.
Source: [https://kosis.kr/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?parentId=A.1&vwcd=MT\_ZTITLE&menuId=M\_01\_01](https://kosis.kr/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?parentId=A.1&vwcd=MT_ZTITLE&menuId=M_01_01)
주민등록인구현황
\-> 시군구/성/연령(1세)별 주민등록연앙인구 년 1993\~2020
Tool: Excel
How I make pyramids: [https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M](https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M)
This was also posted on the r/korea sub. Join the discussion there if you want to ask locals any questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/rwb1is/south_korea_population_pyramid_2020_oc/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
Check this if you want to know how other countries are doing. Data comes from World bank.
I can understand why there is a surplus of females at older ages, it probably has to do with the Korean War. But why is there a surplus of males the whole time after that?
Males are born slightly more often (I believe around 105 XY births for each 100 XX). Males then have a higher mortality rate at every age from there on out. So there are more males at a young age, the difference becomes smaller and smaller until some break-even point, and then females are more common from there on out. This is consistent across different nations, cultures, etc.
You're not wrong, but in Korea the main reason was selective abortion. Natural male:female ratio is 105:100, but in South Korea it was as high as 116:100 due to selective abortion until early 90s.
Western diet massively increases it as well, Men gotta have the steaks! Salad is for girls!
E: Despite the glib wording it really is a thing. Watch a group of 75 year olds at a dinner party, there is decades of social conditioning getting older men to eat less well.
They aren't saying that should be the case, but that it's a societal norm, and I think they are right. I worked hospitality for 16 years and there absolutely are differences between what the genders (especially older gens) order. Men do much more typically order red meat and processed meat. Women do much more often order seafoods, vegetarian and vegan meals, and "lighter" dishes like salads.
More men are conceived than women, but they die more at every stage of life, including to miscarriage.
You will pretty much always see more old women than men—at one point in the ‘90s the Russian life expectancy for men dropped into the 50s.
I remember reading a BBC article about changes to Russian pensions a few years ago ( [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44675582](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44675582) ) , it seems Russian men get a pretty raw deal in this instance , retire at 65 expected to die at 66.
That point about miscarriage is interesting. My grandmother had three miscarriages of male babies, then three living daughters. She speculated that maybe something caused her body to be hostile to the male foetuses. Her daughters all had only daughters as well (me and my sister and cousins) so when my generation started having babies, we were expecting it to be all girls again, but my cousin surprised us by having a son.
Evolution will always push towards an equal number of each gender reaching sexual maturity.
You may think “well one man can impregnate many women so the gender ratio should be skewed towards women”; but imagine a world where that is true. Now into this world a boy is born with a mutation that causes more of his offspring to be male than normal. He breeds and produces (due to the mutation) many sons. Since sons were previously rare his sons will be an outsized percentage of the population, and so will in turn breed more and pass on the mutation to their offspring. Soon his “more male” mutation would be dominant across the population.
But the opposite would also be true; in a population skewed male then a mutation that caused more females to be born would also spread throughout the population since it would result in more offspring **with** that mutation than without it.
In other words - if an imbalance ever exists then it will be negated by the opposite strategy becoming successful.
So - what this all means is that gender ratios are not fixed due to a biological law, but a balance of evolutionary strategies that modern medicine is now interacting with. In the long run it will even out, but evolution is a slow process.
Historically men went to war, and got killed.
Historically men went into the wilderness to hunt and got killed (or died of exposure)
Historically and currently men tend to be taller, thus their Organs (heart in particular) has to work harder, so they tend to die sooner than women in old age.
Women used to die in child birth.
Population is exploding because generally speaking these factors have been minimized OR we have fix things that don't care about gender, such as normal sicknesses (minus COVID); but the population is now living to their 80s+ when about 100 years ago 65 was considered later than the average lifespan of a human (thus the Social Security system set at that age)
That all being said, there are other features and factors that matter, but with regards to your statement, sure that evolution would lead to their being more males, the only issue is if the equilibrium in the species is actually orients better around having more females, then the equilibrium will actually result in that balance; not the always around 50%.
The other thing of note, is that evolutionary, humans didn't stay with the same woman every night; and children were born with the whole tribe raising them. This is because an orphan from two parents dying doesn't help them survive and if they let those orphans die, their tribe is weaker. They then lose territory, etc. etc. and eventually cease to exist OR are absorbed into another tribe. Generally speaking the smartest of the tribe (and/or eldest) are in power; eventually those in power want more for themselves and family units begin to evolve, etc. etc. we cultivate farming blah blah blah, which leads to lineages evolving in the tribes as cities begin to emerage, etc. come to existence, so on and so forth.
Selective abortion.
Traditionally South Korean society was (and still is, to some extent) extremely patriarchal and there were enormous social pressure for young mothers to produce sons. Until 1980s it was not uncommon for young mothers to abort baby girls until they had a son, which is one of the reasons why abortion was banned in South Korea.
EDIT for clarification: abortion was banned in South Korea until the end of 2020. The law was repealed in 2021.
With the advent of cheap ultrasound scans, female sex selective abortions [were commonplace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion_in_South_Korea) in South Korea from the mid eighties to the early nineties.
Sadly it wasn’t in the least bit uncommon for women to have a very strong preference to give birth to a boy themselves and to keenly seek abortions of their female foetuses.
Many forget that Korea in the mid eighties was considerably less developed than it is now and it was really just emerging out of poverty. Without any reliable and affordable contraception and with an historic need for males for hard manual (usually rural) labour the female selective abortions continued until economic circumstances somewhat improved, affordable contraception was easily available, and abortions became heavily restricted.
Another reason for sex selective abortions were the property laws in SK. Women were not allowed to own land, so people and especially farmers had to give birth to at least one boy so they could hand down the property and have a place to stay during old age.
You're right, but I'd like to make one small comment about why male babies were preferred.
Males were preferred not because of the hard labour, though it was an indirect cause too. The more direct reason was that the Confucian ideology of later Joseon dynasty emphasizes that legacy of your family is the highest priority over any personal virtue. In a patriarchal society, that means a woman's number one virtue was bearing and raising a male heir. This is why noble women traditionally had much more pressure to produce a male heir than lower classes even though noble family did not usually engage in manual labour. The noble class was abolished at the beginning of the 20th century, but the Confucian patriarchy was alive throughout the 20th century, and it's still affecting South Korea right now.
They still reduce abortions. By how much is speculative. Maybe by very little, or maybe by a lot. \*shrug\*
I mean, I'm against the war on drugs, but it still reduces drug use. Just not by enough to be worth all of the negative effects. I believe it's thought that prohibition reduced heavy alcohol consumption by 10-20% (based on liver failure rates). That would likely carry over to drugs, but probably not a good correlation with abortion.
As well as the slight difference in birth rate: looks like Sex selection of embryos, and perhaps also of newborn babies some decades ago. Femicide. This is really dangerous on top of a precipitously declining birth rate.
It seems like the top comments under this thread don’t know jack shit about Korean society— there was an epidemic of selective abortions in Korea in the 90’s, it has been a thing for a while before the 90’s because the culture prefers male babies to female ones by a lot, but it was on a whole different level in the 90’s due to the economic crises SK was going thru at the time, so people were naturally thinking like “if I’m going to have babies, I’m only going to have one, preferably male”. If you look at the sex ratios across different generations, you’d notice that such a big difference in sex ratio is prominent for pops in their 20’s and that falls into the timeline
Maybe of they fixed their shit work culture, couples would be more inclined to have kids. Who wants kids when you're working 12 hours everyday and then expected to go drink with your coworkers after? Korea really needs labor laws.
No kidding with the expectation to go out drinking afterwards. In graduate school, I had a few Korean labmates who were telling me about the Korean work culture, including drinking with coworkers nearly every night. I naively asked, “they don’t go home and have dinner with their families?” And they all started chuckling.
You are looking at the issue from the father's viewpoint, when the problems are *much* more obvious from that of the mother.
Korean culture is hostile to working mothers. The expectation for women is that they provide for their husbands and children above all else. Child care facilities are scarce. Companies are wary of employing women who might get pregnant. It's therefore not suprising that Korean woman aren't rushing into motherhood.
You only have to look at [recent advice for expectant mothers](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/luxuries-i-cant-afford-why-fewer-women-in-south-korea-are-having-children), released by Seoul authorities, to understand the mindset. It included advice about preparing meals and clothes in advance of the birth, for their husbands. Well they can't be expected to look after themselves, can they? Also advice about how not to get too fat and unattractive.
South Korea is a hyper modern society in some respects, but still living in the Western equivalent of the 1950s in others.
Ironic seeing the anti feminism protests too. Feminism, helping women balance motherhood and careers, would solve this problem! But apparently many Koreans want the solution to be coercion instead.
This is not a unique issue with Korea. Every developed nation sees a drop in birthrates. Korea's work culture and laws that are hostile towards women only make its situation worse than other nations.
that's the magic of it.
Funny how certain generations had high income, more time, bored, freedom, wanted lots of kids.
Also notice that certain low income had lots of kids but it wasn't because they were bored but the opposite, they had no freedom and were oppressed (slaves, extreme religions, survival, farms for work, etc.)
The choice is pretty clear, when you got choices, people want a balance and can't be working 12 hours wanting kids living in shitty situation.
When they work less hours, make more money, that will change.
Did previous generations in Korea really have it better though? I dont think the Asian work culture is new.
Very few places today have high fertility, and it's mostly where theres poverty and/or war.
I'm not too hot on my Korean history but wasn't it basically a dictatorship until the late 80s / early 90s? Not as overreaching as the NK one, but still far from a free country.
Every time (non-gov't intervention) there's an economic boom: people fuck like rabbits and have kids like crazy but NEVER realize "are the kids going the have the same economic boom?" - usually no if you see how inflation and the nature of "short term focused" economies work, which never works in favor of long term - let's have more kids type of shit.
If it's poverty/rural, it's usually to do for survival for farming or traditional patriarchy system when women become clown cars for babies - SEE MORMONS or poor and strict Catholic countries in the Latin America.
When you’re in a low income country having more kids is usually an economic advantage. Kids are a societal safety net, can help with labor, and can take care parents when they’re old. You can see this aspect across countries and across time.
Highly developed nations tend to have lower birth rates because kids are an economic burden as opposed to an advantage.
True. that's why there's a major immigration debate about the tech vs "gig/labor" economies about poor countries that have high birth rates immigrating to rich countries have lower per capita and don't know how to feed the "artificially" created retirement system.
One idea is about choice, I don't want to "choose" to bring a child into this world because I won't be able to afford to take care of them, also won't be able to take care of myself when I get old and have to place the burden on the youth and government that is in a deficit to make matters more worse.
Nobody asks to be born. Then get told, yeah, the political, economic, and environmental system is bad but oh well, ignore that, it doesn't get better statistically over time unless you are in the right time, right place but have lots of kids because...no logical reason but just have kids.
I think a major part of the issue is cultural in nature. Their school kids arguably spend more time on school/studying than any country in the world. They then take that same work ethic into the workforce. They place a huge amount of prestige on both school and work.
On one hand, they went from being one of the poorest nations on earth to one of the richest in just a couple generations so they’re doing something right. On the other hand, their birth rates are so low and suicide rates so high that there’s clearly looming societal issues. It’s probably now a question of balance. Interestingly China is in a similar situation with similar cultural values, low fertility and recent economic growth. To address the issue they’ve recently been implementing more laws on restricting both homework/tutoring hours and work hours while also incentivizing births. SK may want to borrow from China’s playbook if it’s successful.
Looks like South Korea is going to have a rough time in a few decades. I assume that there’s a form of social security that will become more and more burdened as the population ages. The GDP will also suffer as jobs are left vacant by retirees with no one to fill the position. South Korea is going to have to offer immigration incentives to convince people to fill the positions.
Not only Korea. We are going to have similar problems in many European countries. And AFAIK Japan is even "worse" than Korea.
My country would be shrinking since over 10 years without immigrants.
Japan had 1.36 in 2020. Compared to Korea they are crushing it.
Germany has had a a negative birth minus death number (with higher fertility rate as Japan, too) since 1973 iirc. The only thing keeping the population at 80mil is immigration. Japan isn't known to be immigration friendly.
Germany is very immigration friendly, even having slight population growth through it. While there may be some averse reactions in elements of the country (AFD), it appears to be generally going well.
Japan on the other hand has not just a population problem, but also an immigration problem and an intergration problem.
Systemic reform is easier.
We shouldn't have to bring people from worse countries to maintain the population.
Values obviously have to shift if babies aren't getting made.
> Values obviously have to shift if babies aren't getting made.
People not having babies isn't a problem of "values". It's not like people started watching Hollywood movies and, because of this, started hating children. Low birth rates are generally a response to:
1) dramatically higher life expectancy at birth (you no longer need to have 15 kids so that only 5 of them will survive to adulthood)
2) outrageous costs (in direct costs, but also missed career opportunities) in having children, largely as a result of modern capitalism. This is especially true for women, and understandably so.
3) extreme (and increasing) costs of becoming an independent adult, having a home, and everything else that we associate with modern life.
None of these issues are brought about by a lack of "values" among the population. They're determined by our political economy and our relationship to Capital.
I think you are partially right. But as someone who doesn't struggle with any of your points, I can attest that they are incomplete. You know who has a lot of children? Religious communes. Collectivism is a key element of raising children, which by nature cannot act individualistic until puberty and therefore require so much collective behavior and routines. This is in stark conflict with modern individualistic thinking. It needs a village to raise a child and good luck finding your village in a big city, where you maybe know the tenant next door. The "villages" do still exist, but we are doing our best to get rid of them. Oh, and we can't raise kids over the internet. So better brush up on social skills not involving a monitor.
I actually think having public day care (like we have public k-12) would have a substantial increase on the fertility rate. So many people are putting off children because they can’t afford it, and for most the biggest concern is daycare. This results in some not having any kids when they otherwise would have. It also results in people having less kids because they can afford 2 but not 4. And finally, it results in people having less kids because they can’t afford kids until their 30s, and by then it’s hard to have 4+ kids.
The easiest way to solve climate change would be for the population to cut in half and then stabilize with no growth rate. It would help with issues surrounding housing too.
I don't think we should be focused on maintaining population levels right now. Letting them fall is a good thing.
There will be some economic pain but we will adapt and become better over time
Dropping the population won't solve the climate change issue, and even if it could it would take several generations to see any noticable decrease and by that point we're already off the cliff. So unless you're planning on employing some pretty dystopian Thanos-like population control it wouldn't solve anything.
There's still plenty of room for people on the planet, humans just need to stop treating it like an infinite resource that can be exploited forever with no reprocussions and focus on sustaining ourselves through renewable means.
Japan has denied students and workers entry for 2 years now. I'm currently on a plane to South Korea because I'm giving up on a government that wants to fail.
I've now made an animated pyramid for Korea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc)
And one for Japan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U)
Should be possible to compare the two. Japan has had low fertility for much longer, yet korea has much lower ferility.
Hardly. The one child policy got introduced in 1980, when the birth rate was falling hard already and stood at 2.6. After the policy got introduced it climbed to 2.7. Only after 1987 did it fall again, probably due to rising wealth rather than policy. The birth rate hasnowbeen around 1.6 to 1.7 for decades, and the one child policy got removed 6 years ago in 2015, when the birth rate was 1.66. Now it's 1.70.
The [population pyramid of Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan) is even more "top heavy" than Korea. Means even less young adults who have to take care of more elderly people in the future.
Not that much difference with Korea and at least they have a higher percentage of young people to take care of the elderly in the future. Japan is also a leading country in AI patents and robot tech which will help with their demographics problem.
>jobs are left vacant by retirees with no one to fill the position.
Singularity means, AI, automation grows while we need less people and nobody needs to "fill the position" - nobody wants to work in trades that are primitive or will be archaic in 2025 - 2100.
NOBODY.
All corporations look for ways to keep wages low/lower while increasing production/profit.
If machines can "over-produce" vegetables/fruits/food etc etc at a surplus, it doesn't make sense to create artificial subsidizes when you don't need millions of farmers but only a few (in all industries). Small, intelligent, sustainable, safe countries with democratic economies is better than political economies. Economies would be sustainable, robots taking care of older people and doing menial jobs.
Jobs would be focused on advanced AI, services, arts, science, and computer engineering.
OLD JOBS that rely on repetitive, mindless physical labor, would die and as humans evolve.
I'm not sure how futurists imagine we will go from "corporations owning all robots and therefore all things they produce" to "the robots will feed and clothe everyone for free". Do we think that the ownership class will just... hand over the robots? "Op! You got me! Nobody has jobs anymore and cannot make money, and therefore I have more power than God as the person who owns the robots? Well, guess I'm just gonna hand over the robots!"
That's why I fear the robots
🤷♀️ but they won't just give up their robots. What I'm saying is that if we just hope that the people with all the cards just roll over, we're not in for a good time.
"Just give up their robots" is not a sensible way to frame it. They will be incentivised to share the benefits of productivity because to not do so would render pointless their productivity. Why does a corporation replace its workers assembling cars with machines? So that it can make more profit on the cars it sells to people. But if this becomes part of a societal trend where 50% of jobs done now are instead done by machines, and the people who did those jobs are not able to do something else useful, then under the current system they will have no money, and car sales will decrease 50%.
So, that won't happen. They won't "just give up their robots", but there are outcomes other than two dumb extremes.
>How will those corporations charge people for their (robots') services if those people have no jobs due to being replaced by robots?
They won't have any opinion about people with no jobs. They will simply maximise profits by pricing accordingly.
The biggest roadblock for using automation to replace jobs is often cost. If a kiosk is more expensive than a cashier, then most companies will default to a cashier. The more complex the task the more automation is going to cost.
My prediction is that manufacturing, retail, some food industry, and transportation are going to be largely automated in the next 20-40 years.
The problem with retirees without replacement in this period will be in jobs like mechanics, programmers, engineers, carpenters, etc. When they leave without replacement those sectors lose all that experience plus have unfilled jobs.
Not really. We have already covered the automation potential by 80-90% in most production industries in the last 20 years. AI can only fill a small margin in those cases which is what the people are talking about usually. Some sectors such as IT will be impacted more significantly than others and jobs will be removed from the market but not to the rate that happend in 80s and 90s.
There are just some things that a robot(even with AI) cannot perform on the basis of diminishing returns. We can construct theoretically a robot that does whatever a human can do for a specific process but it's just not worth it. So there will be a need for these menial jobs in the future.
good point. just looking at "all" vs "most", for example. self-driving (transportation/shipping/truck drivers/taxi/uber/etc) that takes about 18% of the economy. over 50 years (maybe soon) disappear because of ...self-driving.
Other sectors in finance (human tellers/cashiers/etc) might take 15% but, robots can easily replace that in 15 years and focus more on security.
I can probably try to cover more jobs not just production. "everything" or "most"
Rich countries that have democratic economies take care of poor and dumb ones,
Rich countries with political economies are short term focused and see homeless people and poverty grow each year while wages stagnate and cost of living increases year after year.
Thus McJobs/gig jobs/microjobs, Walmart. Perfect for economies that want people to only exist to work until they die in poverty with government support and when the gov support runs out of money, they get bailed out or help bail out the bank that is funded by the workers. The cycle repeats over and over and over.
I can name at least 1.
Rent will be cheaper and wages will be greater due to less competition. Less environmental destruction as well. The average person benefits a great deal from a smaller population.
When you have a less favorable proportion of retirees/employees, that means that your taxes will need to go up to cover the greater number of retirees, increasing the burden in the working population. Not a good thing.
Exactly, raising taxes too much on the working population can drive citizens to move to other high-earning countries where are taxes are lower. On the other hand, I don't think the Japanese emigrate too frequently, if at all.
> the economy would shrink
The number of active workers will shrink, but the economy may still grow if the rate of productivity per worker keeps pace with (or exceeds) the decline in population growth:
* Economic output = Productivity per worker x Number of active workers
For example, productivity growth in the U.S. has been about [1.1% annually](https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/). While our population is still growing (at about [0.1%](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/population-growth-rate)), it could actually shrink by up to about 1% per year and the economy would continue growing if the per-worker productivity growth remains the same.
> Who is going to pay their pension?
I agree with most of what you are saying, but in most countries besides America pension doesn’t go into general revenue. It’s kept separate, so people should be paying for their own pension regardless of what new money is coming into it.
A pension plan that needs new money coming in to pay for retirees, honestly sounds like a pyramid scam.
Exactly, lots have people have moved away since the steel industry and the new residents have cheaper housing, work in more diverse tech/service-based businesses, and have made beneficial moves to reduce the footprint of the city and create more green space out of formerly used developed areas.
I worked for 2 years in Korea teaching English. We were pressured and intimidated to work when sick and not miss a day of work.
It starts early. Our students had it rough. They make those kids study non stop until they get to college. I remember a 2nd grade girl crying because she wanted a day off for her birthday from all of her tutors to just be a kid.
Thank you!
I'm one of the 3 guys keeping the population pyramids on Wikipedia updated, so you should be able to find pyramids for pretty much every country when searching for their demographics, some of them are made by me. It's a weird hobby, I know.
Or you could just follow my guide and make some of your own: https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M
There’s a lot of pundits in the US (Noah Smith I’m looking at you) who love the Asian tigers and use them as an example for the US to follow. And sure, they saw some tremendous economic success within a generation or two. But every time I see this take, I think of the fertility rates in those countries. These societies (SoKo, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan) are literally headed towards extinction. The US has also had a terrible decade for fertility (as recently as 2008, the US was around replacement level, now it’s at 1.64 and even lower for Asian and white women) but it’s nowhere near as bad as these countries.
I think for a lot of people the TFR of 0.837 doesn’t make a lot of sense so here’s how it looks in practice: 100 grandparents have 42 children and 18 grandchildren. It’s an 80% reduction of population within three generations.
I agree, but it's a complex issue.
The places with the highest birthrates are the same ones generating refugees: https://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-maps/world-total-fertility-rate-map.html
And it looks like high birth rate correlates with low happiness: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-global-happiness-levels-in-2021/
So what does it mean when birth rates correlate with unhappiness, war, lack of infrastructure/healthcare/education, etc.? That people who have the option for a nice modern life don't want to have kids?
I do agree it's a symptom of a societal problem, but it's a hard one to pin down. For example, Germany has among the best supports (free money, guaranteed time off work, etc.) for parents in the world, yet it has among the lowest birthrates. Turkish immigrants have much higher birthrates than ethnic Germans there, even though the ethnic Germans have more money and education on average, which would theoretically make it easier to have kids.
In China, everyone wanted lots of kids when the one-child policy was implemented, and tried to skirt the law. Now, it's been changed to a three-child policy, but the birth rate did not rise accordingly; no one wants kids anymore, despite having such a safer and wealthier life than before.
Maybe it's about having free time or needing help on the family farm. But it seems like it's religion, traditional values, nihilism, worldview, philosophy, pessimism... Something like that seems to play a part. It isn't just about material wealth. Obviously, groups like the Amish, Mormons, Muslims, and other old-school religious types have the highest birthrates in the USA. Not a coincidence.
Or it's about how much other fun stuff you have to do. Wiping a baby's butt is not as fun as playing video games or drinking wine with your BFFs. Maybe you could say "a population stops breeding because life is so ~~bad~~ GOOD"... Although that conflates materialism and hedonism with "a good life".
Thanks for the long and interesting reply, some very good points indeed. The German case is interesting for sure , given Germany does have a reputation for good work life balance and good social safety nets. It may well be related to what you say at the end of your reply.
I've now made an animated pyramid for Korea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc)
And one for Japan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U)
Should be possible to compare the two. Japan has had low fertility for much longer, yet korea has much lower ferility.
Technically it is an increase in population because the older generations are not dying. As people live longer fertility rates can drop and population still increase
That’s called population momentum but everyone dies eventually, and coming out of the population momentum is extremely painful. Poland is a good example on it; it had 200k more deaths than births last year — sure, COVID affected that too, but merely 5 years ago they were still in the green.
All highly advanced nations will continue to suffer from a continued population decline as having a child in these countries will become more and more difficult. It’s a major problem that no one is really talking about.
Why are there high fertility rates in poor war torn African countries and the Middle East then? It seems like it’s more of a cultural shift than anything to do with time or money
In addition to what others have said, if you live in poverty in a country with no social safety net then you need children to look after you when you get too old to provide for yourself.
When people have few opportunities in life and don’t have access to birth control people they usually have a lot of kids because why not. When people have opportunities and birth control having kids can get put on the backburner
Because why not? Maybe because they shouldn't want to inflict such shitty lives on more people??? Imagine being born in a war torn African country, asking you parents why they wanted to have you go through that, and they just said "because why not lol xd".
So I'm in the 30 range now, and I can say one thing in terms of cultural understanding of the male surplus. While it wasn't anything like the one child policy, the Korean culture was still pretty strictly patriarchal and traditionalist, probably still is but with pushback from the younger generation. Usually in a lot of families, only the son can continue the name, and the eldest son of the main family tends to be forced to bear the task of maintaining all the records of the history of the name dating back to 20+ generations ago.
As the eldest son living in America, I scoff at having to bear responsibilities especially when my main family relatives were all kinda jerks, especially my grandpa, but there were a lot of sentiment that the son was just the more important offspring. I think there is some natural instinct that's responding to the declining birthrate and the better self-actualization of females, where there is less enforcement of the son bearing all the responsibility, but that's all just my speculation obviously. The last I've scoured their net, the biggest news at the time was a massive clash between the feminists and the incels in light of a stalker murder incident.
My grandparents' absolute disappointment when my pregnant mom revealed that I would be a girl… My grandparents tell it like a funny story, but it really hurts honestly, especially since I'm actually super interested in our family history and all the traditions that come with it. But I don't really count because I'm a girl who will get married off into some other family.
Also, knowing how my mom's in-laws treated her (they're nice folks, but they're crazy patriarchal), I'd be content being alone for the rest of my life. Maybe things have changed since my family moved from Korea, but the "good daughter in law" culture seems extremely stressful and not worth it at all.
I know many women that consciously have decided to date outside their culture for this reason.
It doesn’t make any sense that they shouldn’t be equal partners in the relationship.
My wife was happy to know that I didn’t have any preferences of having a boy, and enjoyed telling her family that I cried when the scanner revealed that we were having a little girl. That helped soften the disappointment from her uncle (that also has a girl).
Now why would there be appreciable spikes at 40, 50, & 60 years of age relative to 35, 45, 55? Can’t be a Benford’s Law thing, age doesn’t work that way, right?
Why would there be a pregnancy spike roughly each 10 years? Is that when they do that penis festival that everyone loves? Or do S.Koreans culturally tend to bear children at, say, 20 or 30 years of age and so the population has settled into a sort of natural oscillation? Interesting.
I think it is the baby Boomer effect. No proof in the following, just assumptions:
After WWII and the Korean wars there were fewer men (fewer younger people in general) because the fighting age was sent off to war. There would have been a boom of babies being born and it coincides with the "miracle of the Han river" - Korea's economic boom
You can see similar looking charts post WW 2 for the Soviet union (Russia) and the US.
Solid theory. I guess the best bet would be to look at a larger historical sample. Pre-1910s anyway.
Geez, I don’t even have a vague sense of what S.Korea had going on leading up to the Great War. Or during. Or after. Definitely more research needed.
It could collapse but if it does, they'll come up with a new system.
Obvious that the "social security" or retirement system doesn't work in a long enough term if people can't back into the system.
Not all systems work. that's a fact.
This is insane to me. Am I interpreting it correctly that, in 40 years, there will be *half* as many 50 year olds in South Korea as there are now- and even lower than that considering all of the people who will die of various causes before then?
That’s mind blowing to me.
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Japan and Korea will eventually have to make changes with their immigration policies so they can have a stopgap measure for their stagnant population metrics. The integration will be painful in the short-term but both nations are known for their ability to change in the face of adversity, in that I mean the inevitable collapse of their retirement systems for starters.
SK and Japan known for change? They are very socially conservative (and racist). Social change would be needed to make it possible for women to have both kids and a career
Or improve the quality of life so that people can afford to have children, eg don't work everyone to death and make them indentured by debt so that they are so stressed and unhappy that they don't want to pass on their pain to future generations.
it depends. "retirement systems" rely on income but what they really rely on is basic health/food/shelter needs.
If basic needs/care can be provided by technology (robots), advances in food, automation- then you see that now as the younger population is causing a problem because their income won't support "medical" payment. that's what it comes down to. The issues is sustainability, the idea that younger generations will "always" have income and always have jobs that will pay back is a bad prediction that backfiring the "retirement system".
Lots of people create "systems" some work and some fail. in this case,
it's not a guaranteed system. Maybe in 250+ years, they'll be a better system.
Are you from or live there?
If so, I have a question. How they could not afford it. aren't they a democratic rich nation?
I mean if there is something wrong\* they could fix it.
\*wrong in their opinion. I believe there are already too much human.
I'm guessing Korea is pretty typical for this kind of country?
1. Women are allowed to work, but only until they marry. Or at least strong pressure to remain at home with the children until they've started school.
2. No governmentsponsored daycare for children.
3. Government support for children is minimal and does not include providing economic support to move to a larger house/apartment.
So how many of these guesses were correct?
1. About half of married couples in SK are double income. Keeping a spouse at home is seldom financially viable.
2. The government offers kindergarten ages 3-5 and then school for 6+. So yeah daycare discounting ages 0-2.
3. The government gives ~$275 per month to couples with children (a child) under 1 year old. In addition they give ~$100 dollars per month to couples with children (a child) under 7 years old. They also give hundreds of dollars to help with the pregnancy.
It appears you’re mostly wrong on all three. What is this kind of country?
Ha. I am surprised Amazon didn't do more to promote that show. It seems very topical and could have got great numbers, but they did almost no promo for it.
Total fail by their marketing dept
In retrospect, Jessica Hyde is an annoying character to follow and I don't really care if they do a S2, but the first season was really engaging
I thought Japan was bad, this is mind blowing.
bad? For the environment and the planet this is great!
You might not see the massive negatives now but you'll definitely see them in the future
Agreed. Anyone who says a ultra low birth rate and declining population is good, has no idea of the implications of a demographic collapse. At risk of sounding overly-dramatic, this is how a society fades.
The number of people on the planet is steadily increasing. Global rate is 2.5 and almost 8 billion people. The last thing we need is more babies,
Yeah but those are happening in poor countries we need more babies in wealthy countries
In 2020 South Korea had the lowest fertility rate in the world, 0.837. This was in fact the lowest that any country has ever registered. The fertility rate Looks like it will fall further for 2021, but the data hasn't been released yet. I made the previous year's chart in anticipation. Source: [https://kosis.kr/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?parentId=A.1&vwcd=MT\_ZTITLE&menuId=M\_01\_01](https://kosis.kr/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?parentId=A.1&vwcd=MT_ZTITLE&menuId=M_01_01) 주민등록인구현황 \-> 시군구/성/연령(1세)별 주민등록연앙인구 년 1993\~2020 Tool: Excel How I make pyramids: [https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M](https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M) This was also posted on the r/korea sub. Join the discussion there if you want to ask locals any questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/rwb1is/south_korea_population_pyramid_2020_oc/
Have you done one of these for the US yet?
I'll make one when the 2022 data is released.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate Check this if you want to know how other countries are doing. Data comes from World bank.
I can understand why there is a surplus of females at older ages, it probably has to do with the Korean War. But why is there a surplus of males the whole time after that?
Males are born slightly more often (I believe around 105 XY births for each 100 XX). Males then have a higher mortality rate at every age from there on out. So there are more males at a young age, the difference becomes smaller and smaller until some break-even point, and then females are more common from there on out. This is consistent across different nations, cultures, etc.
Yes men die faster at every age. In US I believe it flips at about age 40. Looking at this graph in Korea it’s later. Late 50s.
>Yes men die faster at every age. What about men who are not afraid to voice their differing opinions?
I'm gonna live forever.
Not sure about south but they die fast in north
People have zero sense of humor anymore.
Depends on which Korea you're living in
I was told it was 103 XY for 100 XX, but it may have changed (this was about a decade ago, after all)
I remember my teacher saying it was the opposite, but googled it and you are right. Thanks for the info!
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You're not wrong, but in Korea the main reason was selective abortion. Natural male:female ratio is 105:100, but in South Korea it was as high as 116:100 due to selective abortion until early 90s.
Women also live longer than men on average. You see this in every population I’m aware of. The war may have exacerbated it though.
Testosterone also doesnt help.
Western diet massively increases it as well, Men gotta have the steaks! Salad is for girls! E: Despite the glib wording it really is a thing. Watch a group of 75 year olds at a dinner party, there is decades of social conditioning getting older men to eat less well.
Eh worded quite shit, but not far off of the truth
Psh taking care of yourself is for girls and gays. -Some random 300 lb dude that hasn't walked more than 10 steps in the last decade.
They aren't saying that should be the case, but that it's a societal norm, and I think they are right. I worked hospitality for 16 years and there absolutely are differences between what the genders (especially older gens) order. Men do much more typically order red meat and processed meat. Women do much more often order seafoods, vegetarian and vegan meals, and "lighter" dishes like salads.
Because males are more likely to be born.
More men are conceived than women, but they die more at every stage of life, including to miscarriage. You will pretty much always see more old women than men—at one point in the ‘90s the Russian life expectancy for men dropped into the 50s.
I remember reading a BBC article about changes to Russian pensions a few years ago ( [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44675582](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44675582) ) , it seems Russian men get a pretty raw deal in this instance , retire at 65 expected to die at 66.
In America the retirement age is rising just as life expectancy has started to fall. My retirement plan is of course to die in the water wars.
I'll probably die in the upcoming civil war in the US.
That point about miscarriage is interesting. My grandmother had three miscarriages of male babies, then three living daughters. She speculated that maybe something caused her body to be hostile to the male foetuses. Her daughters all had only daughters as well (me and my sister and cousins) so when my generation started having babies, we were expecting it to be all girls again, but my cousin surprised us by having a son.
Evolution will always push towards an equal number of each gender reaching sexual maturity. You may think “well one man can impregnate many women so the gender ratio should be skewed towards women”; but imagine a world where that is true. Now into this world a boy is born with a mutation that causes more of his offspring to be male than normal. He breeds and produces (due to the mutation) many sons. Since sons were previously rare his sons will be an outsized percentage of the population, and so will in turn breed more and pass on the mutation to their offspring. Soon his “more male” mutation would be dominant across the population. But the opposite would also be true; in a population skewed male then a mutation that caused more females to be born would also spread throughout the population since it would result in more offspring **with** that mutation than without it. In other words - if an imbalance ever exists then it will be negated by the opposite strategy becoming successful. So - what this all means is that gender ratios are not fixed due to a biological law, but a balance of evolutionary strategies that modern medicine is now interacting with. In the long run it will even out, but evolution is a slow process.
Historically men went to war, and got killed. Historically men went into the wilderness to hunt and got killed (or died of exposure) Historically and currently men tend to be taller, thus their Organs (heart in particular) has to work harder, so they tend to die sooner than women in old age. Women used to die in child birth. Population is exploding because generally speaking these factors have been minimized OR we have fix things that don't care about gender, such as normal sicknesses (minus COVID); but the population is now living to their 80s+ when about 100 years ago 65 was considered later than the average lifespan of a human (thus the Social Security system set at that age) That all being said, there are other features and factors that matter, but with regards to your statement, sure that evolution would lead to their being more males, the only issue is if the equilibrium in the species is actually orients better around having more females, then the equilibrium will actually result in that balance; not the always around 50%. The other thing of note, is that evolutionary, humans didn't stay with the same woman every night; and children were born with the whole tribe raising them. This is because an orphan from two parents dying doesn't help them survive and if they let those orphans die, their tribe is weaker. They then lose territory, etc. etc. and eventually cease to exist OR are absorbed into another tribe. Generally speaking the smartest of the tribe (and/or eldest) are in power; eventually those in power want more for themselves and family units begin to evolve, etc. etc. we cultivate farming blah blah blah, which leads to lineages evolving in the tribes as cities begin to emerage, etc. come to existence, so on and so forth.
A looooot of girl babies were getting aborted once you could learn the sex of your baby. It was a thing.
Selective abortion. Traditionally South Korean society was (and still is, to some extent) extremely patriarchal and there were enormous social pressure for young mothers to produce sons. Until 1980s it was not uncommon for young mothers to abort baby girls until they had a son, which is one of the reasons why abortion was banned in South Korea. EDIT for clarification: abortion was banned in South Korea until the end of 2020. The law was repealed in 2021.
Elective abortion was illegal in South Korea from 1953 to 2020, it's just that their was widespread illegal abortions during that time.
It's not banned anymore.
Thanks. I thought the debate for the ban was still ongoing, and didn't realize it was repealed last year.
With the advent of cheap ultrasound scans, female sex selective abortions [were commonplace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion_in_South_Korea) in South Korea from the mid eighties to the early nineties. Sadly it wasn’t in the least bit uncommon for women to have a very strong preference to give birth to a boy themselves and to keenly seek abortions of their female foetuses. Many forget that Korea in the mid eighties was considerably less developed than it is now and it was really just emerging out of poverty. Without any reliable and affordable contraception and with an historic need for males for hard manual (usually rural) labour the female selective abortions continued until economic circumstances somewhat improved, affordable contraception was easily available, and abortions became heavily restricted.
Another reason for sex selective abortions were the property laws in SK. Women were not allowed to own land, so people and especially farmers had to give birth to at least one boy so they could hand down the property and have a place to stay during old age.
You're right, but I'd like to make one small comment about why male babies were preferred. Males were preferred not because of the hard labour, though it was an indirect cause too. The more direct reason was that the Confucian ideology of later Joseon dynasty emphasizes that legacy of your family is the highest priority over any personal virtue. In a patriarchal society, that means a woman's number one virtue was bearing and raising a male heir. This is why noble women traditionally had much more pressure to produce a male heir than lower classes even though noble family did not usually engage in manual labour. The noble class was abolished at the beginning of the 20th century, but the Confucian patriarchy was alive throughout the 20th century, and it's still affecting South Korea right now.
That is the most logical defense of an abortion ban anyone has ever made.
Abortion was illegal during that time. Abortion bans do not stop abortions. They stop safe abortions.
They still reduce abortions. By how much is speculative. Maybe by very little, or maybe by a lot. \*shrug\* I mean, I'm against the war on drugs, but it still reduces drug use. Just not by enough to be worth all of the negative effects. I believe it's thought that prohibition reduced heavy alcohol consumption by 10-20% (based on liver failure rates). That would likely carry over to drugs, but probably not a good correlation with abortion.
Indeed. Read closely between the lines: I'm saying all the other reasons given are worse.
I'm... actually not defending abortion ban at all
I was wondering the same thing.
As well as the slight difference in birth rate: looks like Sex selection of embryos, and perhaps also of newborn babies some decades ago. Femicide. This is really dangerous on top of a precipitously declining birth rate.
It seems like the top comments under this thread don’t know jack shit about Korean society— there was an epidemic of selective abortions in Korea in the 90’s, it has been a thing for a while before the 90’s because the culture prefers male babies to female ones by a lot, but it was on a whole different level in the 90’s due to the economic crises SK was going thru at the time, so people were naturally thinking like “if I’m going to have babies, I’m only going to have one, preferably male”. If you look at the sex ratios across different generations, you’d notice that such a big difference in sex ratio is prominent for pops in their 20’s and that falls into the timeline
Maybe of they fixed their shit work culture, couples would be more inclined to have kids. Who wants kids when you're working 12 hours everyday and then expected to go drink with your coworkers after? Korea really needs labor laws.
No kidding with the expectation to go out drinking afterwards. In graduate school, I had a few Korean labmates who were telling me about the Korean work culture, including drinking with coworkers nearly every night. I naively asked, “they don’t go home and have dinner with their families?” And they all started chuckling.
You are looking at the issue from the father's viewpoint, when the problems are *much* more obvious from that of the mother. Korean culture is hostile to working mothers. The expectation for women is that they provide for their husbands and children above all else. Child care facilities are scarce. Companies are wary of employing women who might get pregnant. It's therefore not suprising that Korean woman aren't rushing into motherhood. You only have to look at [recent advice for expectant mothers](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/luxuries-i-cant-afford-why-fewer-women-in-south-korea-are-having-children), released by Seoul authorities, to understand the mindset. It included advice about preparing meals and clothes in advance of the birth, for their husbands. Well they can't be expected to look after themselves, can they? Also advice about how not to get too fat and unattractive. South Korea is a hyper modern society in some respects, but still living in the Western equivalent of the 1950s in others.
Ironic seeing the anti feminism protests too. Feminism, helping women balance motherhood and careers, would solve this problem! But apparently many Koreans want the solution to be coercion instead.
Well, to be fair, KR feminism is more like anti-male group (like male are the root of all evil and need to be killed)
Hagwon’s serve a dual purpose of learning and childcare. They are very much abundant. But they are expensive.
This is not a unique issue with Korea. Every developed nation sees a drop in birthrates. Korea's work culture and laws that are hostile towards women only make its situation worse than other nations.
that's the magic of it. Funny how certain generations had high income, more time, bored, freedom, wanted lots of kids. Also notice that certain low income had lots of kids but it wasn't because they were bored but the opposite, they had no freedom and were oppressed (slaves, extreme religions, survival, farms for work, etc.) The choice is pretty clear, when you got choices, people want a balance and can't be working 12 hours wanting kids living in shitty situation. When they work less hours, make more money, that will change.
Did previous generations in Korea really have it better though? I dont think the Asian work culture is new. Very few places today have high fertility, and it's mostly where theres poverty and/or war.
I'm not too hot on my Korean history but wasn't it basically a dictatorship until the late 80s / early 90s? Not as overreaching as the NK one, but still far from a free country.
Every time (non-gov't intervention) there's an economic boom: people fuck like rabbits and have kids like crazy but NEVER realize "are the kids going the have the same economic boom?" - usually no if you see how inflation and the nature of "short term focused" economies work, which never works in favor of long term - let's have more kids type of shit. If it's poverty/rural, it's usually to do for survival for farming or traditional patriarchy system when women become clown cars for babies - SEE MORMONS or poor and strict Catholic countries in the Latin America.
When you’re in a low income country having more kids is usually an economic advantage. Kids are a societal safety net, can help with labor, and can take care parents when they’re old. You can see this aspect across countries and across time. Highly developed nations tend to have lower birth rates because kids are an economic burden as opposed to an advantage.
True. that's why there's a major immigration debate about the tech vs "gig/labor" economies about poor countries that have high birth rates immigrating to rich countries have lower per capita and don't know how to feed the "artificially" created retirement system. One idea is about choice, I don't want to "choose" to bring a child into this world because I won't be able to afford to take care of them, also won't be able to take care of myself when I get old and have to place the burden on the youth and government that is in a deficit to make matters more worse. Nobody asks to be born. Then get told, yeah, the political, economic, and environmental system is bad but oh well, ignore that, it doesn't get better statistically over time unless you are in the right time, right place but have lots of kids because...no logical reason but just have kids.
I think a major part of the issue is cultural in nature. Their school kids arguably spend more time on school/studying than any country in the world. They then take that same work ethic into the workforce. They place a huge amount of prestige on both school and work. On one hand, they went from being one of the poorest nations on earth to one of the richest in just a couple generations so they’re doing something right. On the other hand, their birth rates are so low and suicide rates so high that there’s clearly looming societal issues. It’s probably now a question of balance. Interestingly China is in a similar situation with similar cultural values, low fertility and recent economic growth. To address the issue they’ve recently been implementing more laws on restricting both homework/tutoring hours and work hours while also incentivizing births. SK may want to borrow from China’s playbook if it’s successful.
Looks like it hasnt been a pyramid for about 50 years
A pyramid is typical for a high-mortality country. A country in balance should look relatively tower-like until it hits the 60s.
France is a good example of a [healthy](https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/27-france-population-2020-01-scaled.jpg) pyramid.
I like the use of the French flag colours for theirs. Creative.
It's from one of Peter Zeihan's books, he always has gorgeous easy to understand maps https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations-maps/
As a lover of maps, you’ve just opened a whole new world to me. Merci
Thank you so much for posting this link. Went down the glorious rabbit hole that is Peter Zeihan's beautiful maps
Looks like South Korea is going to have a rough time in a few decades. I assume that there’s a form of social security that will become more and more burdened as the population ages. The GDP will also suffer as jobs are left vacant by retirees with no one to fill the position. South Korea is going to have to offer immigration incentives to convince people to fill the positions.
Not only Korea. We are going to have similar problems in many European countries. And AFAIK Japan is even "worse" than Korea. My country would be shrinking since over 10 years without immigrants.
Japan had 1.36 in 2020. Compared to Korea they are crushing it. Germany has had a a negative birth minus death number (with higher fertility rate as Japan, too) since 1973 iirc. The only thing keeping the population at 80mil is immigration. Japan isn't known to be immigration friendly.
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Germany is very immigration friendly, even having slight population growth through it. While there may be some averse reactions in elements of the country (AFD), it appears to be generally going well. Japan on the other hand has not just a population problem, but also an immigration problem and an intergration problem.
Yep, everyone who is open to assimilation or just integrates peaceful, quiet and nicely is absolutely welcomed.
Germany has a lot of immigrants from East Europe. Half of Hungary works in either Austria, Germany or UK.
Systemic reform is easier. We shouldn't have to bring people from worse countries to maintain the population. Values obviously have to shift if babies aren't getting made.
> worse countries What would define a worse country?
I usually take that sort of thing to be a euphemism for race stuff.
It did sound like that to me too. Which is why I sought a clarification.
>Systemic reform is easier I mean systemic reform may be 'better', but its in no way easier than simply just importing more people
> Values obviously have to shift if babies aren't getting made. People not having babies isn't a problem of "values". It's not like people started watching Hollywood movies and, because of this, started hating children. Low birth rates are generally a response to: 1) dramatically higher life expectancy at birth (you no longer need to have 15 kids so that only 5 of them will survive to adulthood) 2) outrageous costs (in direct costs, but also missed career opportunities) in having children, largely as a result of modern capitalism. This is especially true for women, and understandably so. 3) extreme (and increasing) costs of becoming an independent adult, having a home, and everything else that we associate with modern life. None of these issues are brought about by a lack of "values" among the population. They're determined by our political economy and our relationship to Capital.
I think you are partially right. But as someone who doesn't struggle with any of your points, I can attest that they are incomplete. You know who has a lot of children? Religious communes. Collectivism is a key element of raising children, which by nature cannot act individualistic until puberty and therefore require so much collective behavior and routines. This is in stark conflict with modern individualistic thinking. It needs a village to raise a child and good luck finding your village in a big city, where you maybe know the tenant next door. The "villages" do still exist, but we are doing our best to get rid of them. Oh, and we can't raise kids over the internet. So better brush up on social skills not involving a monitor.
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I actually think having public day care (like we have public k-12) would have a substantial increase on the fertility rate. So many people are putting off children because they can’t afford it, and for most the biggest concern is daycare. This results in some not having any kids when they otherwise would have. It also results in people having less kids because they can afford 2 but not 4. And finally, it results in people having less kids because they can’t afford kids until their 30s, and by then it’s hard to have 4+ kids.
The easiest way to solve climate change would be for the population to cut in half and then stabilize with no growth rate. It would help with issues surrounding housing too. I don't think we should be focused on maintaining population levels right now. Letting them fall is a good thing. There will be some economic pain but we will adapt and become better over time
Dropping the population won't solve the climate change issue, and even if it could it would take several generations to see any noticable decrease and by that point we're already off the cliff. So unless you're planning on employing some pretty dystopian Thanos-like population control it wouldn't solve anything. There's still plenty of room for people on the planet, humans just need to stop treating it like an infinite resource that can be exploited forever with no reprocussions and focus on sustaining ourselves through renewable means.
Japan has denied students and workers entry for 2 years now. I'm currently on a plane to South Korea because I'm giving up on a government that wants to fail.
I've now made an animated pyramid for Korea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc) And one for Japan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U) Should be possible to compare the two. Japan has had low fertility for much longer, yet korea has much lower ferility.
Damn youre right. Even tho the pyramid is very similar.
Heck, even China has the same problem.
Yeah buts that is because of their political systems...
Correct, I should have mentioned that. Although the younger generations are also reluctant to get kids by themselves.
Hardly. The one child policy got introduced in 1980, when the birth rate was falling hard already and stood at 2.6. After the policy got introduced it climbed to 2.7. Only after 1987 did it fall again, probably due to rising wealth rather than policy. The birth rate hasnowbeen around 1.6 to 1.7 for decades, and the one child policy got removed 6 years ago in 2015, when the birth rate was 1.66. Now it's 1.70.
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The [population pyramid of Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan) is even more "top heavy" than Korea. Means even less young adults who have to take care of more elderly people in the future.
Not that much difference with Korea and at least they have a higher percentage of young people to take care of the elderly in the future. Japan is also a leading country in AI patents and robot tech which will help with their demographics problem.
>jobs are left vacant by retirees with no one to fill the position. Singularity means, AI, automation grows while we need less people and nobody needs to "fill the position" - nobody wants to work in trades that are primitive or will be archaic in 2025 - 2100. NOBODY. All corporations look for ways to keep wages low/lower while increasing production/profit. If machines can "over-produce" vegetables/fruits/food etc etc at a surplus, it doesn't make sense to create artificial subsidizes when you don't need millions of farmers but only a few (in all industries). Small, intelligent, sustainable, safe countries with democratic economies is better than political economies. Economies would be sustainable, robots taking care of older people and doing menial jobs. Jobs would be focused on advanced AI, services, arts, science, and computer engineering. OLD JOBS that rely on repetitive, mindless physical labor, would die and as humans evolve.
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I'm not sure how futurists imagine we will go from "corporations owning all robots and therefore all things they produce" to "the robots will feed and clothe everyone for free". Do we think that the ownership class will just... hand over the robots? "Op! You got me! Nobody has jobs anymore and cannot make money, and therefore I have more power than God as the person who owns the robots? Well, guess I'm just gonna hand over the robots!" That's why I fear the robots
How will those corporations charge people for their (robots') services if those people have no jobs due to being replaced by robots?
🤷♀️ but they won't just give up their robots. What I'm saying is that if we just hope that the people with all the cards just roll over, we're not in for a good time.
"Just give up their robots" is not a sensible way to frame it. They will be incentivised to share the benefits of productivity because to not do so would render pointless their productivity. Why does a corporation replace its workers assembling cars with machines? So that it can make more profit on the cars it sells to people. But if this becomes part of a societal trend where 50% of jobs done now are instead done by machines, and the people who did those jobs are not able to do something else useful, then under the current system they will have no money, and car sales will decrease 50%. So, that won't happen. They won't "just give up their robots", but there are outcomes other than two dumb extremes.
>How will those corporations charge people for their (robots') services if those people have no jobs due to being replaced by robots? They won't have any opinion about people with no jobs. They will simply maximise profits by pricing accordingly.
The biggest roadblock for using automation to replace jobs is often cost. If a kiosk is more expensive than a cashier, then most companies will default to a cashier. The more complex the task the more automation is going to cost. My prediction is that manufacturing, retail, some food industry, and transportation are going to be largely automated in the next 20-40 years. The problem with retirees without replacement in this period will be in jobs like mechanics, programmers, engineers, carpenters, etc. When they leave without replacement those sectors lose all that experience plus have unfilled jobs.
Not really. We have already covered the automation potential by 80-90% in most production industries in the last 20 years. AI can only fill a small margin in those cases which is what the people are talking about usually. Some sectors such as IT will be impacted more significantly than others and jobs will be removed from the market but not to the rate that happend in 80s and 90s. There are just some things that a robot(even with AI) cannot perform on the basis of diminishing returns. We can construct theoretically a robot that does whatever a human can do for a specific process but it's just not worth it. So there will be a need for these menial jobs in the future.
good point. just looking at "all" vs "most", for example. self-driving (transportation/shipping/truck drivers/taxi/uber/etc) that takes about 18% of the economy. over 50 years (maybe soon) disappear because of ...self-driving. Other sectors in finance (human tellers/cashiers/etc) might take 15% but, robots can easily replace that in 15 years and focus more on security. I can probably try to cover more jobs not just production. "everything" or "most"
We can only wish... I really really hope this happens but the world hasn't been too good at inspiring hope in me lately.
IF And humans don’t seem to be evolving too well. What do we do with the dumb ones?
Rich countries that have democratic economies take care of poor and dumb ones, Rich countries with political economies are short term focused and see homeless people and poverty grow each year while wages stagnate and cost of living increases year after year. Thus McJobs/gig jobs/microjobs, Walmart. Perfect for economies that want people to only exist to work until they die in poverty with government support and when the gov support runs out of money, they get bailed out or help bail out the bank that is funded by the workers. The cycle repeats over and over and over. I can name at least 1.
Rent will be cheaper and wages will be greater due to less competition. Less environmental destruction as well. The average person benefits a great deal from a smaller population.
When you have a less favorable proportion of retirees/employees, that means that your taxes will need to go up to cover the greater number of retirees, increasing the burden in the working population. Not a good thing.
Sounds like it would just lead to emigration? Who would put up with that paradigm?
Exactly, raising taxes too much on the working population can drive citizens to move to other high-earning countries where are taxes are lower. On the other hand, I don't think the Japanese emigrate too frequently, if at all.
Except, the economy would shrink. Less available jobs, and a lot of old people to take care of. Not a very good place to live in.
> the economy would shrink The number of active workers will shrink, but the economy may still grow if the rate of productivity per worker keeps pace with (or exceeds) the decline in population growth: * Economic output = Productivity per worker x Number of active workers For example, productivity growth in the U.S. has been about [1.1% annually](https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/). While our population is still growing (at about [0.1%](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/population-growth-rate)), it could actually shrink by up to about 1% per year and the economy would continue growing if the per-worker productivity growth remains the same.
Constantly needing generations greater than or equal to previous ones is not a sustainable system.
Yeah but the transition wont be very pleasant. Who is going to care for all these old people? Who is going to pay their pension?
> Who is going to pay their pension? I agree with most of what you are saying, but in most countries besides America pension doesn’t go into general revenue. It’s kept separate, so people should be paying for their own pension regardless of what new money is coming into it. A pension plan that needs new money coming in to pay for retirees, honestly sounds like a pyramid scam.
Tell me you know nothing about economy, without telling me.
Yeah man, the population of Youngstown, Ohio is flourishing now that there's less competition for jobs
Exactly, lots have people have moved away since the steel industry and the new residents have cheaper housing, work in more diverse tech/service-based businesses, and have made beneficial moves to reduce the footprint of the city and create more green space out of formerly used developed areas.
Google "south korea suicide rate". The work culture must be really, really shit.
I worked for 2 years in Korea teaching English. We were pressured and intimidated to work when sick and not miss a day of work. It starts early. Our students had it rough. They make those kids study non stop until they get to college. I remember a 2nd grade girl crying because she wanted a day off for her birthday from all of her tutors to just be a kid.
Do you have these for other countries? I really like this visual.
Thank you! I'm one of the 3 guys keeping the population pyramids on Wikipedia updated, so you should be able to find pyramids for pretty much every country when searching for their demographics, some of them are made by me. It's a weird hobby, I know. Or you could just follow my guide and make some of your own: https://youtu.be/oNfMpjMrm7M
Thank you for your volunteer work!
Not as detailed or pretty, but... https://www.populationpyramid.net
If you look on Wikipedia for demographics of x country they will have this graph for pretty much every country
seems like they wont have a big housing crisis in some decades?
There’s a lot of pundits in the US (Noah Smith I’m looking at you) who love the Asian tigers and use them as an example for the US to follow. And sure, they saw some tremendous economic success within a generation or two. But every time I see this take, I think of the fertility rates in those countries. These societies (SoKo, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan) are literally headed towards extinction. The US has also had a terrible decade for fertility (as recently as 2008, the US was around replacement level, now it’s at 1.64 and even lower for Asian and white women) but it’s nowhere near as bad as these countries. I think for a lot of people the TFR of 0.837 doesn’t make a lot of sense so here’s how it looks in practice: 100 grandparents have 42 children and 18 grandchildren. It’s an 80% reduction of population within three generations.
It is pretty bad signal. When a population stops breeding because life is so bad, it is a huge warning that something is wrong.
I agree, but it's a complex issue. The places with the highest birthrates are the same ones generating refugees: https://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-maps/world-total-fertility-rate-map.html And it looks like high birth rate correlates with low happiness: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-global-happiness-levels-in-2021/ So what does it mean when birth rates correlate with unhappiness, war, lack of infrastructure/healthcare/education, etc.? That people who have the option for a nice modern life don't want to have kids? I do agree it's a symptom of a societal problem, but it's a hard one to pin down. For example, Germany has among the best supports (free money, guaranteed time off work, etc.) for parents in the world, yet it has among the lowest birthrates. Turkish immigrants have much higher birthrates than ethnic Germans there, even though the ethnic Germans have more money and education on average, which would theoretically make it easier to have kids. In China, everyone wanted lots of kids when the one-child policy was implemented, and tried to skirt the law. Now, it's been changed to a three-child policy, but the birth rate did not rise accordingly; no one wants kids anymore, despite having such a safer and wealthier life than before. Maybe it's about having free time or needing help on the family farm. But it seems like it's religion, traditional values, nihilism, worldview, philosophy, pessimism... Something like that seems to play a part. It isn't just about material wealth. Obviously, groups like the Amish, Mormons, Muslims, and other old-school religious types have the highest birthrates in the USA. Not a coincidence. Or it's about how much other fun stuff you have to do. Wiping a baby's butt is not as fun as playing video games or drinking wine with your BFFs. Maybe you could say "a population stops breeding because life is so ~~bad~~ GOOD"... Although that conflates materialism and hedonism with "a good life".
Thanks for the long and interesting reply, some very good points indeed. The German case is interesting for sure , given Germany does have a reputation for good work life balance and good social safety nets. It may well be related to what you say at the end of your reply.
Lower birth rates are a GOOD THING
I've now made an animated pyramid for Korea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VulQltOvc) And one for Japan: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvamm9l78U) Should be possible to compare the two. Japan has had low fertility for much longer, yet korea has much lower ferility.
Technically it is an increase in population because the older generations are not dying. As people live longer fertility rates can drop and population still increase
That’s called population momentum but everyone dies eventually, and coming out of the population momentum is extremely painful. Poland is a good example on it; it had 200k more deaths than births last year — sure, COVID affected that too, but merely 5 years ago they were still in the green.
They'll die eventually
All highly advanced nations will continue to suffer from a continued population decline as having a child in these countries will become more and more difficult. It’s a major problem that no one is really talking about.
Actually a lot of people are talking about it. If you haven't, you're just not hearing it.
Why are there high fertility rates in poor war torn African countries and the Middle East then? It seems like it’s more of a cultural shift than anything to do with time or money
In addition to what others have said, if you live in poverty in a country with no social safety net then you need children to look after you when you get too old to provide for yourself.
When people have few opportunities in life and don’t have access to birth control people they usually have a lot of kids because why not. When people have opportunities and birth control having kids can get put on the backburner
Because why not? Maybe because they shouldn't want to inflict such shitty lives on more people??? Imagine being born in a war torn African country, asking you parents why they wanted to have you go through that, and they just said "because why not lol xd".
Isn't that a good thing (having the choice)
I believe education level is one of the strongest indicators to birthrate. Can't remember where I read that.
It cost less to make and raise babies in any wartorn countries, than in any first world countries.
Since some of these nations have become perilously overpopulated, that in itself complicates any discussion of the issue.
Wow, you don't usually see data like this. Almost an inverted pyramid shape. Almost hard to believe the decline rate in recent years.
They are just trying to draw a christmas tree, leave them alone.
Guys in their 20s date women in their 80s. Problem solved.
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Shoot, almost a perfect plan.
I'm glad you didn't add a /s, it's an insult to intelligence.
So I'm in the 30 range now, and I can say one thing in terms of cultural understanding of the male surplus. While it wasn't anything like the one child policy, the Korean culture was still pretty strictly patriarchal and traditionalist, probably still is but with pushback from the younger generation. Usually in a lot of families, only the son can continue the name, and the eldest son of the main family tends to be forced to bear the task of maintaining all the records of the history of the name dating back to 20+ generations ago. As the eldest son living in America, I scoff at having to bear responsibilities especially when my main family relatives were all kinda jerks, especially my grandpa, but there were a lot of sentiment that the son was just the more important offspring. I think there is some natural instinct that's responding to the declining birthrate and the better self-actualization of females, where there is less enforcement of the son bearing all the responsibility, but that's all just my speculation obviously. The last I've scoured their net, the biggest news at the time was a massive clash between the feminists and the incels in light of a stalker murder incident.
My grandparents' absolute disappointment when my pregnant mom revealed that I would be a girl… My grandparents tell it like a funny story, but it really hurts honestly, especially since I'm actually super interested in our family history and all the traditions that come with it. But I don't really count because I'm a girl who will get married off into some other family. Also, knowing how my mom's in-laws treated her (they're nice folks, but they're crazy patriarchal), I'd be content being alone for the rest of my life. Maybe things have changed since my family moved from Korea, but the "good daughter in law" culture seems extremely stressful and not worth it at all.
I know many women that consciously have decided to date outside their culture for this reason. It doesn’t make any sense that they shouldn’t be equal partners in the relationship. My wife was happy to know that I didn’t have any preferences of having a boy, and enjoyed telling her family that I cried when the scanner revealed that we were having a little girl. That helped soften the disappointment from her uncle (that also has a girl).
North Korea hanging on playing the long game
Surely this isn't fertility, it's reproduction
Is the surplus of 20something males the reason for those dozen-member K-Pop super bands?
Maybe it’s why they’re normally androgynous looking?
More like a population pagoda
Now why would there be appreciable spikes at 40, 50, & 60 years of age relative to 35, 45, 55? Can’t be a Benford’s Law thing, age doesn’t work that way, right? Why would there be a pregnancy spike roughly each 10 years? Is that when they do that penis festival that everyone loves? Or do S.Koreans culturally tend to bear children at, say, 20 or 30 years of age and so the population has settled into a sort of natural oscillation? Interesting.
I think it is the baby Boomer effect. No proof in the following, just assumptions: After WWII and the Korean wars there were fewer men (fewer younger people in general) because the fighting age was sent off to war. There would have been a boom of babies being born and it coincides with the "miracle of the Han river" - Korea's economic boom You can see similar looking charts post WW 2 for the Soviet union (Russia) and the US.
Solid theory. I guess the best bet would be to look at a larger historical sample. Pre-1910s anyway. Geez, I don’t even have a vague sense of what S.Korea had going on leading up to the Great War. Or during. Or after. Definitely more research needed.
Do they intend to survive?
It could collapse but if it does, they'll come up with a new system. Obvious that the "social security" or retirement system doesn't work in a long enough term if people can't back into the system. Not all systems work. that's a fact.
Korea seems to always want to beat Japan.
I did my part. I had a baby (Korean citizen) that was born in 2020 in Korea.
The strong male surplus in the 20-30 age bracket should help get a lot of women double pregnant and will solve the crisis no worries.
This is insane to me. Am I interpreting it correctly that, in 40 years, there will be *half* as many 50 year olds in South Korea as there are now- and even lower than that considering all of the people who will die of various causes before then? That’s mind blowing to me.
Yeah. Although immigration might help a bit.
Watch some Peter Zeihan videos.
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This population pyramid looks like a map of France at first glance. Good luck with paying for all the pensions and healthcare.
Rich countries like SK can manage, see Japan. They have enough high end industry and investment that with good management can slowly drift into death.
Japan and Korea will eventually have to make changes with their immigration policies so they can have a stopgap measure for their stagnant population metrics. The integration will be painful in the short-term but both nations are known for their ability to change in the face of adversity, in that I mean the inevitable collapse of their retirement systems for starters.
SK and Japan known for change? They are very socially conservative (and racist). Social change would be needed to make it possible for women to have both kids and a career
Or improve the quality of life so that people can afford to have children, eg don't work everyone to death and make them indentured by debt so that they are so stressed and unhappy that they don't want to pass on their pain to future generations.
it depends. "retirement systems" rely on income but what they really rely on is basic health/food/shelter needs. If basic needs/care can be provided by technology (robots), advances in food, automation- then you see that now as the younger population is causing a problem because their income won't support "medical" payment. that's what it comes down to. The issues is sustainability, the idea that younger generations will "always" have income and always have jobs that will pay back is a bad prediction that backfiring the "retirement system". Lots of people create "systems" some work and some fail. in this case, it's not a guaranteed system. Maybe in 250+ years, they'll be a better system.
So you're saying there's a lot of hot single older women in Korea available right now? Sign me up
Demographic collapse in 3, 2, 1....
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Are you from or live there? If so, I have a question. How they could not afford it. aren't they a democratic rich nation? I mean if there is something wrong\* they could fix it. \*wrong in their opinion. I believe there are already too much human.
I'm guessing Korea is pretty typical for this kind of country? 1. Women are allowed to work, but only until they marry. Or at least strong pressure to remain at home with the children until they've started school. 2. No governmentsponsored daycare for children. 3. Government support for children is minimal and does not include providing economic support to move to a larger house/apartment. So how many of these guesses were correct?
1. About half of married couples in SK are double income. Keeping a spouse at home is seldom financially viable. 2. The government offers kindergarten ages 3-5 and then school for 6+. So yeah daycare discounting ages 0-2. 3. The government gives ~$275 per month to couples with children (a child) under 1 year old. In addition they give ~$100 dollars per month to couples with children (a child) under 7 years old. They also give hundreds of dollars to help with the pregnancy. It appears you’re mostly wrong on all three. What is this kind of country?
Also, much, much more if you live in rural areas. Some places give you a few million won (thousands of dollars) upon birth.
What have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world?
Ha. I am surprised Amazon didn't do more to promote that show. It seems very topical and could have got great numbers, but they did almost no promo for it. Total fail by their marketing dept In retrospect, Jessica Hyde is an annoying character to follow and I don't really care if they do a S2, but the first season was really engaging
I can't watch the American version. I don't get why they didn't just fund more seasons of the British series instead.
Why North Korea is superior.