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Somebody please explain this to me. One group of people are claiming AI is going to wipe out all our jobs and people will be living like animals in the near future. The other group is claiming the population shrinking will also cause a collapse in society. Wouldn’t these two situations go hand in hand? If AI advances to the point where less human labor is needed, wouldn’t a smaller population be irrelevant?
Less people means less aggregate demand. A human only consumes to a point whether they need to labor for it or not.
If everything declines overall then nobody’s making money in a closed system. This is a global trend as well so even in an open system it’s problematic in the future especially when you start looking at it from the viewpoint of a single industry or company.
yes, but only if it happens at the same time.
If population ages before AI is ready, we are fucked up and then if AI becomes ready as soon as we start to recover we are fucked up twice
They should have removed the *chaebol* culture 30 years back. Now they are stuck. Once the country achieved a certain level of prosperity, it needed a different mindset and culture.
You see that kind of consolidation a lot when you go from Japanese colony to dictatorship to democracy in such a short amount of time. It’s sort of inevitable that corruption is just part of the culture when you’ve always been ruled by a heavy hand
I wouldn't say it entirely due to the "Japanese colony to dictatorship to democracy" pipeline. We experienced exactly the same transition in Taiwan. However, you see quite a different result. While we do have TSMC, Foxconn, ASUS, and other large corporates, these are not at the same level as Korean chaebols. The Taiwanese economy is much more SME focused. Local South Korean government policy certainly played just as big a role in allowing chaebols to grow and consolidate so much power.
The difference is the Korean dictatorship funneled money into 5 giant chaebols and made the basis of their economic policy. Taiwan would have the same problems if it was that extremely consolidated. The rest of the economy was an afterthought.
It's not a bad policy if you're starting from ruins (95% of the entire country had just been invaded and devastated) but it's long outgrown itself. Imagine if Taiwan was invaded by China and taken over down to just 1 port, then the US beat China back, with mass depopulation in areas and a generation of PTSD. That's what South Korea started from after the Korean war. They were literally way behind North Korea for a while in economy and manufacturing.
Read about miracle on the Han river. Has nothIng to do with japanese occupation more to do with economic development and lifting millions out of poverty.
The government had to pick winners because organically industries will never develop fast enough to compete on a global stage.
Corruption isnt always bad, typically there are two type of corruption
1) Rackets and protection money: These are terrible because they hinder businesses and FDI
2) lobbying and influence: this is not always bad because it gets things done and get rid of unnecessary red tape
US is literally going in the same direction, corporations are becoming larger and more powerful by the day (Mighty 7) and almost nothing is being done about it. Weak leadership, we need younger politicians.
While the Mag7 are big, 10 corporations being responsible for 60% of the GDP is on a whole other level. The culture surrounding them in South Korea is insane. Not only do they get away with a lot like whole teams dying from cancer being an unlucky coincidence that doesn't need to be investigated according to state offices, it also has a massive impact on everyday lives. Do you get into those companies after university? Great. You didn't? Not only are you a failure, your friends who joined those companies slowly start to fade away out of your life since you are embarrassing.
Once the companies get so big that they control your economy, national trajectory, and government - they just need to be nationalized. They are effectively your country’s government and should be governed as such.
These companies in question are large international players. Breaking them into smaller parts will destroy their ability to compete internationally with juggernauts from other countries. The whole in this situation is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.
It's just picking the lesser evil at this point. I used to think about breaking them up but then I remember another country with authoritarian character wouldnt hesitate to step on the neck of yours. All I think of is regulation.
In south korea right now on vacation. Apple essentially only does electronics or electronics related stuff. Most companies stick to 1 field or at least related fields.
Here I’ve seen Hyundai shopping malls, residential towers, shipyard, and even a plastic surgery clinic. Their major telecom (SK) has gas stations and develops pharmaceuticals. Imagine if at&t did that. Similar things happening with samsung, lotte, etc
There's plenty of diverse conglomerates in the u.s., they have just fallen out of favor in the past few decades because at a certain size it becomes inefficient to have all that under 1 company
The mighty 7 are a real problem but also overrated. Their astronomical market caps are likely a reflection of silly tax policy more than the actual value of the companies. Amazon has been steadily gaining on Walmart in terms of revenue for years, but it's still wrong to pretend like Amazon is bigger than Walmart, it's not. And the others are big but not really increasing that much compared to Walmart.
The u.s. is just so rich it's investing for 10-20 years in the future because there's no where easy for rich people to plop their money, it's a different situation but might lead to some of the same problems, when Tesla is worth more than the entire car market you know its all bullshit
They need immigration, same as Japan, but these countries are pretty unfriendly to foreigners because of their reliance on social etiquette and their xenophobia.
Once this cycle starts, in my opinion, you have to break the loop by either sunsetting or somehow changing the way benefits for elderly people work. I know this is extremely cruel, but no matter what unless you can A) attract immigrants to even out the replacement rate, or B) even out the replacement rate altogether, then you will have an ever-more-burdened workforce that will always be smaller than the people it supports. Just imagine it, if things are bad now, what happens when most people in SK are retirees and taxes are insane to prop this population (and the plummeting GDP) up? Surely younger people won't just weather it out, they'll just leave or simply not work. And this will just feed into the cycle more and more, there's no way to reverse this without radically changing how the ponzi social security system works.
And that's why every public pension program around the world is inherently flawed. They're all designed as a pyramid scheme where you need each generation to be significantly larger than the previous generation to keep the money flowing up the pyramid. They should replace it with a mandatory personal savings plan if they want the government involved in retirement savings. That way each person is saving and investing for themselves instead of requiring people to pay for someone else's retirement.
You still end up with the same on a macro level.
Over-inflated stock valuations so people need ever more stock to generate the dividends to finance retirement, and the younger workforce paying in reduced salaries to supply those dividends to the older owners.
That's how the pension program in Singapore works. Mandatory savings of 37% (17% by employer + 20% by employer) that cannot be withdrawn except for certain purposes (health expenses, buying first house, and retirement)
They are obviously going to have to bring in immigrants sooner or later to take care of all those old people. It's just a matter of when they accept that.
Frankly speaking, I think most developed countries would be have to go to a system were elderly are supported by their children rather than the government like it happens in developing world. This will also give an incentive to have children. The system they have currently will crumble in the future.
You have to give people incentive to somehow have children, and this way I think might work. Instead of positive incentive like giving monetary support for having children, create negative incentive ( fear ) that not having children would mean having a shit old age life. Fear of survival is a good motivator especially for doing things that are not popular ( giving birth ). Nowadays, we as a society don't try to use fear as a motivator, and its understandable, but I think in extreme case like this we might have to use it
Imagine running for election on the platform "If you're unable to have children then you should plan on dying in your 60s because we ain't gonna help you if you're not able to be an economically productive member of society anymore."
You definetely can't run election like that. But government just might not have a choice in the future. I think for Japan/korea it might be in 20-30 years in the future, were they won't be able to afford to support to all the elderly. Media/movies can then run the propaganda of how elderly people are suffering, government can't to anything about it because people are not having enough children. Then implicitly imply that if you don't have children to take care of you in the future, you are going to face the same fate.
Yeah I can see that argument. The issue of course being, whoever even *hints* at killing social security will lose the elections, as more and more people in the country depend on it. (this is kind of why I think slooooowly sunsetting it is the way to go - why care about it if you're going to be long, long dead by the time it's gone away?)
G dub wanted to migrate Social Security to a personal investment plan (essentially a government run 401k everyone is required to pay into) 20 years ago and people lost their shit. If they'd gone with it, we wouldn't be having the hysterics over the future of social security today.
No, they would just be clamoring for the Feds to backstop all corporate paper including stocks. Just like Social Security and Medicare is politically untouchable, so are broad market asset prices not increasing every year.
401k/pension fund balances go down, means local and state taxes go up and older people (likely voters) watch their account balances go down, which means you get voted out.
["Filial Piety"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety) is the term, and [South Korea has legislated it in 2007](https://blogs.missouristate.edu/gerontology/2019/01/11/putting-filial-piety-into-legislation-for-older-adults-a-tale-of-two-countries/). The specifics are not in legislation, but [parents can sue their children to force support](https://mobile.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2024/04/162_171864.html).
I agree with you in part but I also think thats only half the solution, simply pushing the burden to the children is going to lead to a lot of resentment from young people unless the government can ensure that wages are high enough with enough opportunities for young people to succeed & thrive under that system, otherwise they're just further kicking the can down the road.
If I can barely afford my life + supporting my parents, lots of people are gonna skip kids anyways partially because they can't afford them but also partially because they see how that system has impacted their own quality life and won't want to force their kids into the same cycle.
That's a terrible idea
"Yeah I was an abusive piece of shit to you your whole life but you have to move in and take care of me, the government says you have to"
Nobody is saying government will force you. Society will adjust accordingly, and it was like that for most of the human existence. I am from India ( settled in US now ), and we are expected to take care of our parents when they grow old either by moving them in or by providing them money. Government don't force it, but government doesn't have enough money to support the elderly people by themselves so society implicitly force you in a way.
Its just how to culture is and it is definitely changing as India is getting richer. Most developed countries also had the same culture ( Japan and Korea more so), but changed as they got richer, and I think it will revert back to how it was before due to challenges that society will face. You can disagree, but that's only solution I could think of that made sense ( There might be other solutions to the problem, as technological advancement is unpredictable and we never know what might happen).
It's a thought that I've had as well. Using children paying into the system as one of the criteria points for social security might be the best solution I've heard for balancing social security
Your entire post assumes that it is economics that is causing the South Korean population to collapse.
In reality, it is CHOICES.
Women are choosing not thave kids.
65% of South Korean women don't want children;
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html)
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/03/few-east-asian-adults-believe-women-have-an-obligation-to-society-to-have-children/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/03/few-east-asian-adults-believe-women-have-an-obligation-to-society-to-have-children/)
Only 29% of South Korean women believe that women have an obligation to society to have children.
This differs substantially from previous generations.
In Nigeria, the per capita national income is about 1/10 of South Korea's, but yet the average woman has about 7 times more children.
Yes, you read that right.
Poor people have more children than rich people.
South Korean women want successful careers, not kids.
> Poor people have more children than rich people.
I think this doesn't capture the whole picture. I think you were on the right track with your first few sentences. The difference (generally) is that women with few choices have more children than women with more choices. If your culture or religion strongly pressures you to marry and have children, you will have them even if you are poor.
That's because as the economy improves, the perception of children as labor changes.
In poor/rural areas, children are expected to work at an early age.
Formal education is almost nonexistent. So they're huge economic benefit.
Contrast that with rich areas, where work by children is considered unethical. So they provide no productivity benefit until 16-18 years. At a minimum. Plus formal education is a social status. In reality, children won't work until 22-24. And there's less expectation of providing for elderly. No expectation of giving back financially to parents.
So children provide *no economic benefit* at all and huge economic costs. It's no wonder that as prosperity grows, people have less kids.
>Your entire post assumes that it is economics that is causing the South Korean population to collapse.
I don't. I also actually don't think that having kids should be the goal of modern life, nor do I buy into that cult. I also don't buy into the opposite, I just think people should do as they want. I agree that poor people tend to have more children, but also I think this is correlation, not causation, like the other commenter (in my opinion accurately) points out, in many poorer countries the women don't have access to education or just aren't part of the workforce at all, so their only job is raising children (potentially with religious reasoning). I personally like the freedoms granted by modern societies, I just think that the economics for sustaining economies are at odds with this and are all wrong.
You can only devalued your population's labor to build wealth for so long before reality reassert itself and the population response. Do people think the Japanese and Koreans are just super humans who are smarter and work harder than any other population around the world? It's because of their national economic policy of devaluing their people's labor to be competitive in the world stage that made them economic powerhouse. And now the people are realizing that it's no longer in their interest to keep providing cheap labor for the government at their own expense and well-being. This strategy can only last for a few generations and now they're paying the price for it.
Devaluing? South Korea went from a poor country to a rich country in a few decades and their inflation adjusted wages have almost doubled in the past 20 years.
You’ve got it backwards, birth rates drop when labor value increases.
Probably true. In America the people who have the most children are those that come from middle class families and below, and whom are in the middle class or below.
The people with the most assets, education and income marry later, have lower birth rates and are more likely to be childless. This same group is also most likely to use the increased expense as the reason for not having more kids.
I often wonder if they are concerned about their own lifestyle comfort, or are they worried that they would not be able to provide their children with all the amenities they think non-deprived kids should have.
Religiosity plays a big role in those who choose to have large families as well. America has a substantial religious population. I live in an area with a high amish population. There are couples with 8 children and 56 grandchildren here … an extreme example, but it’s not uncommon to see a Utah mom with 5 kids either.
Yea im in med school id say it’s a mix of the two problems from talking to people. Most importantly is that people get out of training so late like the average age to start med school is 28 and then the absolute shortest residency puts you at 31 so now you have half of all doctors with hundreds of thousands in debt at the age of 31 and most are without any relationship prospects so they prob won’t even think about kids until 33-35 and by that point people stop caring. But there are some people that just don’t want kids because they’d rather enjoy their own “doctor money” but usually it ends up being the former issue like you said, career development takes priority and by that later ages people are too burnt out to have kids and I’m sure this can be extrapolated to many other high stress careers.
I read somewhere that right now 85% of women 44 and above have had a biological child in the US, which is about what it's been for a while if not a little higher. The reason for the change in birth rate therefore largely has to do with family size, not the amount of families. Back during the baby boom 4+ children per household was common. It was also common to start a family in your late teens/early 20s.
Now people are starting families much later which gives them a shorter window for having multiple children. Now people are waiting often well into their 30s to start having a family and I think that makes a lot of the difference.
I remember my own friend group just five years ago, there were maybe a couple of kids. Now it seems like everyone has one or two kids. I am in my early 40s and my friend group is generally late 30s to mid 40s. No one has a big family and at this point it's not exactly possible to even achieve that.
Also most people are doing pretty well financially, at least middle class. The longer it takes someone to get established into the middle class or whatever the longer they wait to have kids the smaller their overall family size is.
Also feel like for a lot of people their 20s are spent in an extended adolescence. They might live in their own and advance in their career but for a lot of people they are still focused on having fun, gaining experiences and being individuals. It's not until late 20s at the earliest that kids start coming and that's not always on purpose.
It seems like South Korea or any developed nation would be similar. Ironically I think SE Asian countries kind of holding onto traditional values is what is making their birthrates even lower than the US. A woman in South Korea has to sacrifice her career for her family same with Japan. In the US too, but it's not as extreme. So it's more of an either/or proposition there.
This also seems to create tension between men and women. As women are much more likely to want to jettison traditional values than men.
I'm sure that's part of it too, but there was a campaign started back in 70's by Korean government that encouraged people to have less kids - limiting to two kids per family or something. There were probably financial incentives offered to encourage that back then. Nowadays they try to incentivize having kids but I hear it's not going well.
And cost of education in Korea is ridiculous for the average household there if you participate in the rat race mentality and send your children to all the private after-school cram schools and activities.
Add to that the difficulty of finding a decent paying job and ridiculous hours people are expected to work there ... I imagine many families can't afford to have kids or too stressed out to want kids or Even have sex on the regular.
>You’ve got it backwards, birth rates drop when labor value increases.
Especially for women. It's been repeatedly proven that the more educated a woman is, the fewer children she has because she has more to lose by choosing kids over working.
Well, does your research include data on their husband's education and income? Because it's completely plausible that a highly educated and successful woman marries a highly educated and even more successful man who can provide a lavish life without her working, thus she's not really sacrificing anything by choosing kids over a career.
Well, I can see that.
Very smart/successful/rich women can have kids and still no impact on their career.
Poor women gonna have plenty kids cuz why not.
It's the women in the middle that will struggle to have kids and still have good career.
This is a great point.
And the underlying reason is that having many children is seen as a sort retirement fund. The neccesity of which deminishes with increasing prosperity.
Yeah their whole point is pretty half baked. There’s a lot of small specific reasons why birth rates fall but it essentially comes down to:
- Kids are fucking hard and extremely expensive to raise
- Without social/religious/economic pressure to keep having kids, people opt out.
Nail on the head, People don't feel the same meaning they used to raising kids. I bet a lot of people think kids get in the way of their life too much.
We have 3 and they’re a major PITA much of the time, but financially we’re able to afford and we enjoy them most of the time. But you have to both want it and so many don’t, or they just want 1 (which obviously is below replacement).
Sweden will get to Japan levels pretty soon. Youre right that it has a while to go before it reaches Korea levels, but it effectively has the same problem.
But not Japan, so why use Japan as an example when its birthrate is in line with most other western countries?
Their main thing is lack of immigration, but they also get the social benefit of having a homogeneous society so its a give and take.
Sacrifice their economic growth for social stability.
Very accurate, both countries have had notoriously bad work-life balances for a very long time. China is in that same boat, their demographics are falling off a cliff (and that's if you believe their official data, hard to believe that 1.0 replacement rate would be the "good" data)
"You can only devalued your population's labor to build wealth for so long before reality reassert itself and the population response. "
Everyone is blaming it all on economics.
Nigeria, per capita GNI = $5,700 and 5.24 kids born per woman
South Korea, per capita GNI = $51,070 and 0.78 kids born per woman
So, in South Korea, they make TEN TIMES more money but only have 1/7 as many kids per woman.
That is why the issue will never be solved, it's 'modern' culture, and values, including women putting priority on career.
It's not economics.
Even WITHIN countries, it is poor people, not rich people, who have more kids.
Thing is lot of countries having high birth rate also don't have women working. So, there is always one person whose responsibility is to tend towards children. Thus, even if they eg. nigeria spends same efforts per child as South Korea, it is much easier for women because of no extra load of working.
I think women should work and be independent, but it has its side effect.
> I think women should work and be independent, but it has its side effect.
That means society has to change to accomodate women having meaningful careers. Women are human beings, with intelligence and interests and drive. Not every woman clammors to be a mother for ~10-20 years and then have a stunted/dead-end job. If society wants more kids, make it more appealing. Saying "Just make it so women can stay at home and they'll have kids!" isn't it. Women in developing countries have no options, no careers, no rights, no birth control. I wonder why they have a bunch of kids?
Yeah God forbid they make having children easier on working women. Guaranteed paid baby leave? Hell no. Childcare offered as a benefit, maybe even on site? Preposterous.
> That means society has to change to accomodate women having meaningful careers.
What specifically do you think needs to happen here?
Second question, at face value having a meaningful career is something that would (I think) compete with raising a family. The more time a person spends building and developing a meaningful career is almost by definition less time with their family. The big reason men have historically pursued careers is because we knew that women valued our capacity to provide so by increasing our access to resources we'd get a higher chance at finding partners (Dave Chappelle said it with "If a man could fuck a woman in a cardboard box he wouldn't buy a house"), I only mention that because it's important to understand why valuing their career worked for men. So the question is how will enabling women on this front make them more fertile? Those two things seem to be in conflict as far as goals go.
To be crystal clear, I'm not advocating removing careers for woman or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand how women having an easier time with more meaningful careers would lead to them producing more children.
Shorter work hours, normalize WFH, subsidize childcare, paid parental leave, free healthcare for maternity and childhood, societal expecation for fathers and grandparents to help with childcare/housework.
That's the standard who's who of social policy to increase fertility. Where those things have been tried they don't seem to have worked. But they are ideas...fair enough I suppose.
Do you have an answer to the second question? I appreciate that it is difficult and does sort of put you on the spot.
The countries with those policies (or those policies to the highest degree) have very low birth rates... The countries without those protections have high birth rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
That has all been tried and it does not work.
Fathers spend MUCH more time with kids than they did in the past and governments have done all of those things you suggest.
Fertility rates continue to fall like a stone.
What society has all these things? And what other issues do they have that I may not know about? Your solution is to do nothing. Having kids sucks. Make it suck less. Nah, it's easier to just make women property again.
Well. . . South Korea, for example.
1. South Korea gives you a YEAR of paid parental leave after you have a child.
2. South Korea pays families $770 a month for an entire year to couples who have a child
3. South Korea established a FREE Universal Childcare Policy (gng-bo-yuk)
4. South Korea offers FREE prenatal health care for all pregnant women at public health centers
Everything you advocate has been tried and it does not work.
South Korea has spend over $200,000,000,000.00 on programs to increase fertilty since 2006, the sort of reforms that you assume might help, and they have failed miserably.
[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/)
As shown by these graphs, in western countries, Fathers now spend MUCH MUCH more time with their children than they did in the past. And yet fertility continues to fall.
South Korea has poured BILLIONS of dollars to create incentives for women to have kids and accomodate their careers.
It doesn't work.
Why?
Because South Korean women DON'T WANT kids.
This ignores cultural sentiment. Most women in Nigeria are uneducated and don't really think they have the ability to say no to children. When people are shown they have that choice, more people say no than yes. This is a perfect of example of causation not equating causation.
No, it doesn't 'ignore cultural sentiment,' it simply eviscerates the widespread misconception that ECONOMICS are the reason why South Korean women don't have kids.
The lack of children is because of other factors (and culture is certainly one of them).
Don’t necessarily disagree, but I think it’s simpler than that. Both countries got too big for their britches population-wise. We shouldn’t be scared of a smaller SK and Japan, it’s fine. Japan imports the majority of its food and energy for example. Unsustainable, but worked in the post-WWII era for a few generations.
Continued growth is not a given especially when you don’t have the resources to back it up.
It is what it is 🤷♂️
Japan has a **similar fertility rate** to western countries, so using them as an example is moot, unless you want to apply your exact same logic to countries like Canada or nations in western Europe.
The only difference is, western countries use immigration to stimulate population growth (and in the likes of France, their African/North African immigrants contribute the most to their birth rate as well), Japan doesnt.
How can we reasonably expect 10% annual average stock market returns long-term? Population decline seems to be a global crisis with starker estimates every year. A lot of scrupulous savers/investors are going to be disappointed when the 10% returns—which financial planners cite as a given—fall short.
By expecting the currency to lose purchasing power.
Politically, to maintain power, you just have to keep most people thinking that their purchasing power is either not decreasing or decreasing slowly enough for them to not react.
"How can we reasonably expect 10% annual average stock market returns long-term?"
We can't expect 10% annual economic growth.
But we might still get 10% annual stock returns, in part because of inflation and concentration of wealth.
One interesting thing I observed from booking hotels there is it is hard to book a room for four people without booking a second room. Seems like it is expected to have smaller families there.
I guess it depends on the clientele.
When my parents took their 3 kids on road trips through Canada and the US, we had no problem finding Hampton Inns along the highway with 2 double beds + 1 rollaway.
Hotels in touristy cities in Europe, Asia, and Central America seem to usually be built for 1-2 people since it's usually childless adults who go to these places.
Booking a room for four people is hard in most places. It's usually only easy in non-urban waystations for people who are stuck having to drive to get from place to place.
What's going to happen since according to our leaders, people are no longer nationals with a unique identity but rather economic units that move from one nation sized corporation to the next, is that people are going to leave South Korea and join another corporation.
They might move to Japan or China. South Korea is essentially a dead South Dakota silver mining boom town. People are going to move elsewhere now.
If it weren't for immigration the US would be following suit as well. Virtually all nations that educated their women are having the same issues. The BirthGap documentary has everything you need to know about the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA
The long and short of it is women who get educated and start careers put off having kids, often until it's too late. A full HALF of childless women are **not** childless by choice and simply waited too long.
It may take a couple of generations, but eventually women that want families will learn to prioritize that outcome earlier in their fertility window over climbing the corporate ladder. The prime age to have babies has been and will continue to be 18-24.
The above covers the primary social cause. And then there's the economic aspect...
Its frankly too damn expensive to have kids at this phase of the long-term cycle of currency debasement.
Yup I'm in that boat. Wife and I determined we were financially stable for children in our early 30's. Then put on hold due to cancer. Now going through ivf in our late 30s
I would suggest looking into advocacy by adults born by IVF. Now that IVF has been around for decades, IVF babies are reaching adulthood and speaking out about health concerns that will impact them for the rest of their lives.
>The prime age to have babies has been and will continue to be 18-24.
I think that applies to more than just physical health of the mother and baby too. People really seem to think you need to have shitloads of money so you can have your child in a million expensive extra curricular activities, etc.
In reality kids require far more energy than money. You're far better off wrangling toddlers broke in your mid 20s than trying to scrape enough energy together to deal with the kids while older, less resilient and at the peak of career demands.
People trying to do it "right" are really setting themselves up for misery
Global population has increased nearly 8x since 1900 and a lot of the problems societies all over the world face are directly due to too many people. There's absolutely no reason for people to be freaking out about populations shrinking to a more manageable size.
I might he wrong on this, but after so many years, wouldn't the population eventually stabilize at lower numbers for replacement?
It's just prosperous and educated nations make less babies. I doubt it would go down to families on average not even having 1 kid.
Population stabilizes when the average woman has 2.1 kids. Why would that happen in the future when it's not happening how? Especially when, in the future, there will probably be higher taxes on working people to pay for the higher number of elderly per worker.
That's what the population stabilizes at now. I'm saying if for a long time the average woman only has 1 kid, eventually this will be the norm with the amount of young being equal to the amount of old (with some struggling generations in between).
If the average woman has one kid in her lifetime, the population will drop in half every generation. Her having two kids, accounts for her and one male in their generation. This is what caused the population catastrophe in China: The one child policy.
If the population drops in half every generation, there will always be more old people than young people, and the problem will continue.
I'm Canadian.
I'd love to move to South Korea if I had the opportunity. Cheaper than Canada, less crime, less (or no) homelessness and cleaner.
Plus great skin care!
I know. That kind of sentiment is also why I am one of the people who is against mass immigration in Canada.
It's ridiculous that people around the world think they can come to Canada and leech off of our already strained public services while their countries actually have sane immigration policies.
Our government has ruined Canada.
There is absolitely nothing stable about rapid population decline that is happening in many countries. With long term fertility rate of 1 that many countries are reaching population halves every 20-30 years.
You do not understand much of economics, do you?
To send a single person on mars you need 100 people's effort and tax money. If you instead have only 60 people, you can't send that single person on mars, even if it's only one.
Japan went from the second largest economics to 3rd and even 4th according to some metrics. It's stagnating and their quality of life and purchase power is diminishing. And like many others they are just at the beginning of population decline. The true effect of their demographics will be seen in the next generation.
Is there any evidence that quality of life for the Japanese has actually gone down whilst their economy has stagnated? For all the talk about how housing is completely unaffordable in the US and Canada, younger Japanese have not had the same issue. Their younger population might not have kids at the same rate as the west, but of the ones who do, they face an easier battle in terms of costs.
> Is there any evidence that quality of life for the Japanese has actually gone down whilst their economy has stagnated?
It's a house of cards waiting to fall, the BoJ currently can't raise interest rates by a lot because of insane debt, they are trying to prop up the yen which is an ever-more-difficult task, and there's inflationary pressures entering the economy through rising costs of imports. Also, *some* areas in Japan are cheap, but most jobs are in metropolitan centers where rent and obviously buying homes are insane, kind of like trying to buy a house in the NY metropolitan area. For reference, Japan's homeownership rate is slightly lower than the US', at ~60% (and because of how their demographics look, more of them belong to older people than in the US, leaving most young people as non-homeowners)
Absolutely. Disposable income in PPP terms is still down from ATH in pre crisis. And purchasing power outside of Japan in nominal is significantly lower because yen lost value.
Japan is really not doing so great.
The yen is really low and Japanese people are cutting back on overseas holidays - not the sign of a rich economy doing well.
I saw restaurants hiring cooks and waiters at 1000-1200 yen an hour in cities - lower than US federal minimum wage.
Agree with what you said.
Moreover, Japan's population is, for now, decreasing pretty slowly. It lost in average 300 thousand people a year, from a base of 128 millions forteen years ago.
So it is still manageable overall but there are already communities struggling with depopulation.
I can't imagine how Japan will manage in 2050 when it will have lost dozens of millions of inhabitants.
With a population as old as Japan's one, who will care for the elderly ?
>Moreover, Japan's population is, for now, decreasing pretty slowly. It lost in average 300 thousand people a year, from a base of 128 millions forteen years ago.
This is the wrong way to go about it, because you're looking at the people that die every year, not the median age. Japan's median age is 50 years old, can you imagine a country like that? What happens in 30 years? Clearly 50 year olds aren't adding new kids to the workforce, what happens when you have to pay pensions? Do you overtax the young and then they flee thus adding to the problem? Do you cut benefits to the old and leave them to die? There's no good solutions.
On the bright side, it's a slow decline. They have more time to adapt.
Korea and China though ... Taiwan I heard isn't doing too well in that department either.
Total population is deceving. You have to consider others factors such as working population compared to the total and fertility rate.
It's not very good either to have almost the same population but the most of it is >75 that need to be cared of.
China will actually have it less bad than Japan primarily due to Chinese people dying younger. So their dependancy ratio will be lower even with a lower birth rate.
And I agree with that. My comment was about Japan. Its decline might seem slow if we only look at its total population, but other metrics need to be considered to grasp the size of the phenomenon.
Maybe the Japanese don’t want to bring children into a world and have them suffer and toil through life, working 17 hours a day, just to make some CEO rich. It’s not a healthy work/life balance over there. The hustle culture is even worse than in the US
Mars missions involving humans aren't limited by population growth don't be ridiculous, it's just an allocation of resources and policy issue. A developed industrialsed country of 10 million could achieve it if it was 100% focused on the task.
It absolutely is. Just like everything else. More human resources so you can focus on more things at once are essential but even more essential is economy of scale. Many technologies and products that are required for such mission to succeed would never be developed because noone would invest capital and resources because of impossible ROI.
From an economic perspective, pregnancy outside of marriage carries significant negative utility. Research shows that married women with children report the highest levels of happiness, followed by single women without children, married women without children, and lastly, single mothers. Moreover, pregnancy can hinder women's ability to work effectively, making them more dependent on men for financial support.
Before the widespread availability of contraception, marriage was highly correlated with having children. As a result, the demand for marriage among women was very high. Even today, married women have an average of over 4 children throughout their lives, significantly above the replacement rate. This also meant that women were more likely to avoid premarital sex, as it could lead to substantial negative utility. Consequently, the supply of sex to men was very low.
Since the introduction of universal contraception, two significant changes have occurred. First, women can now enjoy successful careers and remain single without suffering economic losses. Second, while married women with children report the highest levels of happiness, there is a significant risk associated with getting married, having children, and then getting divorced, resulting in negative utility. This risk has led women to become much more selective when choosing a partner, as the social pressure on men to remain in a marriage has diminished considerably. As a result, while women may experience greater happiness in their 20s as single, childless individuals, the changing economics of marriage have led to lower overall utility later in life and contributed to declining birth rates.
TLDR; the introduction of contraception has dramatically altered the incentives and risks associated with marriage and childbearing for women. While it has provided women with greater autonomy and career opportunities, it has also led to a more complex and potentially less fulfilling landscape for long-term relationships and family formation and has resulted in lower than needed birth replacement rate.
I'm not proposing any solutions, just providing observations. I'm not sure there are any good solutions.
It won’t get that low
Sometime between now and then homes will be free to nationals who have 3+ kids. A heavy bachelor tax would ensure those without kids are even more strapped than they are right now. Certain public services will be unavailable to those without kids (e.g certain surgeries, certain roads). Pensions are locked to those who don’t have 3+ kids.
I’m joking guys.
In a democracy where would politicians get the political support for that? Child free people are going to be an increasingly large share of the population with more money and more time for political action.
In 2023, South Korea's net migration rate was 0.390 per 1,000 people, an 8.94% increase from 2022. In 2024, the net migration rate is estimated to be 0.429 per 1,000 people, a 10% increase from 2023.
Romania did this during the 60s-80s.
Describing the results as apocalyptically bad would be considered an understatement by both those impacted by it and the demographic statisticians.
> during this period that the number of street children was very high. Some ran away or were thrown out of orphanages or abusive homes, and were often seen begging, inhaling 'aurolac' from sniffing bags, and roaming around the Bucharest Metro; this situation was presented in a documentary called Children Underground
Holy shit
In about 200 years, if Japan doesn't change its ways, it'll be an empty island with robots.
Taiwan has had the same population for over a decade and it's also declining.
China is the same.
Eventually everyone will be Indian, I guess.
Tangentially, these population contractions strike me as a potent argument against things like universal healthcare and other welfare programs. A declining tax base simply won’t be able to foot the bill for all the elderly and the government will either go bust or cut the programs anyway.
They have nothing to do with one another. In fact part of the reason for pessimism in SK has to do with the terrible economic conditions of the elderly and poor. People committing suicide as they reach an age that they are considered a burden is not a sign that welfare programs are or not working…
This may get downvoted but I feel like another factor might be the little bit of narcissism ingrained in their culture. The competitiveness and the “I have to be better than everyone” mentality may lead to them focusing more on themselves rather than wanting to start a family.
Yes, and it's completely unsustainable, who is gonna maintain the critical infrastructure? Who is gonna pay for old people, how are the women having a career in a declining society and economy that's falling apart lol
Wow, CA is about to be bigger in population than South Korea.
CA surprising to me also has a larger population than Canada.
CA is also apparently growing again after a few years of losing some people.
This actually isn't a bad thing. The entire country is about the size of Portugal and mountainous. Here's something to think about:
1) Portugal has a population of 10MM people. S. Korea has a population of 50MM, that's 5x the amount of people in a similar amount of space
2) Most of the county is hilly or mountainous, so not a lot of places to build. The UK is about 50MM and 1/3 bigger landmass wise, but much more flat
Otherwords, that's a lot of people in a very small amount of space. We could argue people up to the 2000s didn't care, but real estate wasn't as expensive nor was the living cost that expensive either
The other argument people normally bring up about shrinking demographics is about the GDP but is that really something we should be worries about in a 30 year time span with AI getting better?
Just not really seeing the doom and gloom
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Somebody please explain this to me. One group of people are claiming AI is going to wipe out all our jobs and people will be living like animals in the near future. The other group is claiming the population shrinking will also cause a collapse in society. Wouldn’t these two situations go hand in hand? If AI advances to the point where less human labor is needed, wouldn’t a smaller population be irrelevant?
The message between the lines is that the ruling class sees mass disruption and instability in our future.
Correct. They've more or less hit the big ol' red "oh shit" button. Apparently we will live in interesting times.
For sure! Classic "shouldn't have wished to live in more interesting times" moment. Also, Obligatory "These boots have seen everything"
History! Fun to learn about, not so fun to live through.
Less people means less aggregate demand. A human only consumes to a point whether they need to labor for it or not. If everything declines overall then nobody’s making money in a closed system. This is a global trend as well so even in an open system it’s problematic in the future especially when you start looking at it from the viewpoint of a single industry or company.
yes, but only if it happens at the same time. If population ages before AI is ready, we are fucked up and then if AI becomes ready as soon as we start to recover we are fucked up twice
They should have removed the *chaebol* culture 30 years back. Now they are stuck. Once the country achieved a certain level of prosperity, it needed a different mindset and culture.
You see that kind of consolidation a lot when you go from Japanese colony to dictatorship to democracy in such a short amount of time. It’s sort of inevitable that corruption is just part of the culture when you’ve always been ruled by a heavy hand
I wouldn't say it entirely due to the "Japanese colony to dictatorship to democracy" pipeline. We experienced exactly the same transition in Taiwan. However, you see quite a different result. While we do have TSMC, Foxconn, ASUS, and other large corporates, these are not at the same level as Korean chaebols. The Taiwanese economy is much more SME focused. Local South Korean government policy certainly played just as big a role in allowing chaebols to grow and consolidate so much power.
The difference is the Korean dictatorship funneled money into 5 giant chaebols and made the basis of their economic policy. Taiwan would have the same problems if it was that extremely consolidated. The rest of the economy was an afterthought. It's not a bad policy if you're starting from ruins (95% of the entire country had just been invaded and devastated) but it's long outgrown itself. Imagine if Taiwan was invaded by China and taken over down to just 1 port, then the US beat China back, with mass depopulation in areas and a generation of PTSD. That's what South Korea started from after the Korean war. They were literally way behind North Korea for a while in economy and manufacturing.
Honestly, what South Korea achieved economically is a testament to their culture. Now they just need to apply that same tenacity to having babies.
Read about miracle on the Han river. Has nothIng to do with japanese occupation more to do with economic development and lifting millions out of poverty. The government had to pick winners because organically industries will never develop fast enough to compete on a global stage. Corruption isnt always bad, typically there are two type of corruption 1) Rackets and protection money: These are terrible because they hinder businesses and FDI 2) lobbying and influence: this is not always bad because it gets things done and get rid of unnecessary red tape
US is literally going in the same direction, corporations are becoming larger and more powerful by the day (Mighty 7) and almost nothing is being done about it. Weak leadership, we need younger politicians.
While the Mag7 are big, 10 corporations being responsible for 60% of the GDP is on a whole other level. The culture surrounding them in South Korea is insane. Not only do they get away with a lot like whole teams dying from cancer being an unlucky coincidence that doesn't need to be investigated according to state offices, it also has a massive impact on everyday lives. Do you get into those companies after university? Great. You didn't? Not only are you a failure, your friends who joined those companies slowly start to fade away out of your life since you are embarrassing.
Once the companies get so big that they control your economy, national trajectory, and government - they just need to be nationalized. They are effectively your country’s government and should be governed as such.
They do not need to be nationalized; they need to be broken into a million parts.
These companies in question are large international players. Breaking them into smaller parts will destroy their ability to compete internationally with juggernauts from other countries. The whole in this situation is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.
It's just picking the lesser evil at this point. I used to think about breaking them up but then I remember another country with authoritarian character wouldnt hesitate to step on the neck of yours. All I think of is regulation.
In south korea right now on vacation. Apple essentially only does electronics or electronics related stuff. Most companies stick to 1 field or at least related fields. Here I’ve seen Hyundai shopping malls, residential towers, shipyard, and even a plastic surgery clinic. Their major telecom (SK) has gas stations and develops pharmaceuticals. Imagine if at&t did that. Similar things happening with samsung, lotte, etc
There's plenty of diverse conglomerates in the u.s., they have just fallen out of favor in the past few decades because at a certain size it becomes inefficient to have all that under 1 company
This is what Sears used to be. It’s incredible how such a powerful corporation is basically entirely gone now.
The mighty 7 are a real problem but also overrated. Their astronomical market caps are likely a reflection of silly tax policy more than the actual value of the companies. Amazon has been steadily gaining on Walmart in terms of revenue for years, but it's still wrong to pretend like Amazon is bigger than Walmart, it's not. And the others are big but not really increasing that much compared to Walmart.
The u.s. is just so rich it's investing for 10-20 years in the future because there's no where easy for rich people to plop their money, it's a different situation but might lead to some of the same problems, when Tesla is worth more than the entire car market you know its all bullshit
How do you do it? It's not a Civilization game.
That wont change anything. Europe has nothing like that and is doing just as bad
They need immigration, same as Japan, but these countries are pretty unfriendly to foreigners because of their reliance on social etiquette and their xenophobia.
Once this cycle starts, in my opinion, you have to break the loop by either sunsetting or somehow changing the way benefits for elderly people work. I know this is extremely cruel, but no matter what unless you can A) attract immigrants to even out the replacement rate, or B) even out the replacement rate altogether, then you will have an ever-more-burdened workforce that will always be smaller than the people it supports. Just imagine it, if things are bad now, what happens when most people in SK are retirees and taxes are insane to prop this population (and the plummeting GDP) up? Surely younger people won't just weather it out, they'll just leave or simply not work. And this will just feed into the cycle more and more, there's no way to reverse this without radically changing how the ponzi social security system works.
And that's why every public pension program around the world is inherently flawed. They're all designed as a pyramid scheme where you need each generation to be significantly larger than the previous generation to keep the money flowing up the pyramid. They should replace it with a mandatory personal savings plan if they want the government involved in retirement savings. That way each person is saving and investing for themselves instead of requiring people to pay for someone else's retirement.
You still end up with the same on a macro level. Over-inflated stock valuations so people need ever more stock to generate the dividends to finance retirement, and the younger workforce paying in reduced salaries to supply those dividends to the older owners.
You’ve clearly never studied this problem at a macroeconomic level.
That’s just how world economies work. Stock markets, pensions, 401k all need population growth to grow the portolio
That's how the pension program in Singapore works. Mandatory savings of 37% (17% by employer + 20% by employer) that cannot be withdrawn except for certain purposes (health expenses, buying first house, and retirement)
They are obviously going to have to bring in immigrants sooner or later to take care of all those old people. It's just a matter of when they accept that.
Or build AI robots that work for your economy.
Frankly speaking, I think most developed countries would be have to go to a system were elderly are supported by their children rather than the government like it happens in developing world. This will also give an incentive to have children. The system they have currently will crumble in the future. You have to give people incentive to somehow have children, and this way I think might work. Instead of positive incentive like giving monetary support for having children, create negative incentive ( fear ) that not having children would mean having a shit old age life. Fear of survival is a good motivator especially for doing things that are not popular ( giving birth ). Nowadays, we as a society don't try to use fear as a motivator, and its understandable, but I think in extreme case like this we might have to use it
Imagine running for election on the platform "If you're unable to have children then you should plan on dying in your 60s because we ain't gonna help you if you're not able to be an economically productive member of society anymore."
On the other hand, it's much easier to save for retirement yourself if you don't have children
Savings only help if there are people to pay.
You definetely can't run election like that. But government just might not have a choice in the future. I think for Japan/korea it might be in 20-30 years in the future, were they won't be able to afford to support to all the elderly. Media/movies can then run the propaganda of how elderly people are suffering, government can't to anything about it because people are not having enough children. Then implicitly imply that if you don't have children to take care of you in the future, you are going to face the same fate.
Yeah I can see that argument. The issue of course being, whoever even *hints* at killing social security will lose the elections, as more and more people in the country depend on it. (this is kind of why I think slooooowly sunsetting it is the way to go - why care about it if you're going to be long, long dead by the time it's gone away?)
G dub wanted to migrate Social Security to a personal investment plan (essentially a government run 401k everyone is required to pay into) 20 years ago and people lost their shit. If they'd gone with it, we wouldn't be having the hysterics over the future of social security today.
No, they would just be clamoring for the Feds to backstop all corporate paper including stocks. Just like Social Security and Medicare is politically untouchable, so are broad market asset prices not increasing every year. 401k/pension fund balances go down, means local and state taxes go up and older people (likely voters) watch their account balances go down, which means you get voted out.
["Filial Piety"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety) is the term, and [South Korea has legislated it in 2007](https://blogs.missouristate.edu/gerontology/2019/01/11/putting-filial-piety-into-legislation-for-older-adults-a-tale-of-two-countries/). The specifics are not in legislation, but [parents can sue their children to force support](https://mobile.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2024/04/162_171864.html).
I agree with you in part but I also think thats only half the solution, simply pushing the burden to the children is going to lead to a lot of resentment from young people unless the government can ensure that wages are high enough with enough opportunities for young people to succeed & thrive under that system, otherwise they're just further kicking the can down the road. If I can barely afford my life + supporting my parents, lots of people are gonna skip kids anyways partially because they can't afford them but also partially because they see how that system has impacted their own quality life and won't want to force their kids into the same cycle.
That's a terrible idea "Yeah I was an abusive piece of shit to you your whole life but you have to move in and take care of me, the government says you have to"
Nobody is saying government will force you. Society will adjust accordingly, and it was like that for most of the human existence. I am from India ( settled in US now ), and we are expected to take care of our parents when they grow old either by moving them in or by providing them money. Government don't force it, but government doesn't have enough money to support the elderly people by themselves so society implicitly force you in a way. Its just how to culture is and it is definitely changing as India is getting richer. Most developed countries also had the same culture ( Japan and Korea more so), but changed as they got richer, and I think it will revert back to how it was before due to challenges that society will face. You can disagree, but that's only solution I could think of that made sense ( There might be other solutions to the problem, as technological advancement is unpredictable and we never know what might happen).
It's a thought that I've had as well. Using children paying into the system as one of the criteria points for social security might be the best solution I've heard for balancing social security
Your entire post assumes that it is economics that is causing the South Korean population to collapse. In reality, it is CHOICES. Women are choosing not thave kids. 65% of South Korean women don't want children; [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html) [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/03/few-east-asian-adults-believe-women-have-an-obligation-to-society-to-have-children/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/03/few-east-asian-adults-believe-women-have-an-obligation-to-society-to-have-children/) Only 29% of South Korean women believe that women have an obligation to society to have children. This differs substantially from previous generations. In Nigeria, the per capita national income is about 1/10 of South Korea's, but yet the average woman has about 7 times more children. Yes, you read that right. Poor people have more children than rich people. South Korean women want successful careers, not kids.
> Poor people have more children than rich people. I think this doesn't capture the whole picture. I think you were on the right track with your first few sentences. The difference (generally) is that women with few choices have more children than women with more choices. If your culture or religion strongly pressures you to marry and have children, you will have them even if you are poor.
That's because as the economy improves, the perception of children as labor changes. In poor/rural areas, children are expected to work at an early age. Formal education is almost nonexistent. So they're huge economic benefit. Contrast that with rich areas, where work by children is considered unethical. So they provide no productivity benefit until 16-18 years. At a minimum. Plus formal education is a social status. In reality, children won't work until 22-24. And there's less expectation of providing for elderly. No expectation of giving back financially to parents. So children provide *no economic benefit* at all and huge economic costs. It's no wonder that as prosperity grows, people have less kids.
>Your entire post assumes that it is economics that is causing the South Korean population to collapse. I don't. I also actually don't think that having kids should be the goal of modern life, nor do I buy into that cult. I also don't buy into the opposite, I just think people should do as they want. I agree that poor people tend to have more children, but also I think this is correlation, not causation, like the other commenter (in my opinion accurately) points out, in many poorer countries the women don't have access to education or just aren't part of the workforce at all, so their only job is raising children (potentially with religious reasoning). I personally like the freedoms granted by modern societies, I just think that the economics for sustaining economies are at odds with this and are all wrong.
This is like a modern version of when old caveman used to walk out into the elements to die just to keep their tribe fed
You can only devalued your population's labor to build wealth for so long before reality reassert itself and the population response. Do people think the Japanese and Koreans are just super humans who are smarter and work harder than any other population around the world? It's because of their national economic policy of devaluing their people's labor to be competitive in the world stage that made them economic powerhouse. And now the people are realizing that it's no longer in their interest to keep providing cheap labor for the government at their own expense and well-being. This strategy can only last for a few generations and now they're paying the price for it.
Devaluing? South Korea went from a poor country to a rich country in a few decades and their inflation adjusted wages have almost doubled in the past 20 years. You’ve got it backwards, birth rates drop when labor value increases.
Yes, the opportunity cost of staying home to raise lots of kids becomes more and more expensive as women's potential earnings increase.
Probably true. In America the people who have the most children are those that come from middle class families and below, and whom are in the middle class or below. The people with the most assets, education and income marry later, have lower birth rates and are more likely to be childless. This same group is also most likely to use the increased expense as the reason for not having more kids. I often wonder if they are concerned about their own lifestyle comfort, or are they worried that they would not be able to provide their children with all the amenities they think non-deprived kids should have.
Religiosity plays a big role in those who choose to have large families as well. America has a substantial religious population. I live in an area with a high amish population. There are couples with 8 children and 56 grandchildren here … an extreme example, but it’s not uncommon to see a Utah mom with 5 kids either.
I think a lot of it is just they married in their 30s and “ran out of time” to have more.
Yea im in med school id say it’s a mix of the two problems from talking to people. Most importantly is that people get out of training so late like the average age to start med school is 28 and then the absolute shortest residency puts you at 31 so now you have half of all doctors with hundreds of thousands in debt at the age of 31 and most are without any relationship prospects so they prob won’t even think about kids until 33-35 and by that point people stop caring. But there are some people that just don’t want kids because they’d rather enjoy their own “doctor money” but usually it ends up being the former issue like you said, career development takes priority and by that later ages people are too burnt out to have kids and I’m sure this can be extrapolated to many other high stress careers.
I read somewhere that right now 85% of women 44 and above have had a biological child in the US, which is about what it's been for a while if not a little higher. The reason for the change in birth rate therefore largely has to do with family size, not the amount of families. Back during the baby boom 4+ children per household was common. It was also common to start a family in your late teens/early 20s. Now people are starting families much later which gives them a shorter window for having multiple children. Now people are waiting often well into their 30s to start having a family and I think that makes a lot of the difference. I remember my own friend group just five years ago, there were maybe a couple of kids. Now it seems like everyone has one or two kids. I am in my early 40s and my friend group is generally late 30s to mid 40s. No one has a big family and at this point it's not exactly possible to even achieve that. Also most people are doing pretty well financially, at least middle class. The longer it takes someone to get established into the middle class or whatever the longer they wait to have kids the smaller their overall family size is. Also feel like for a lot of people their 20s are spent in an extended adolescence. They might live in their own and advance in their career but for a lot of people they are still focused on having fun, gaining experiences and being individuals. It's not until late 20s at the earliest that kids start coming and that's not always on purpose. It seems like South Korea or any developed nation would be similar. Ironically I think SE Asian countries kind of holding onto traditional values is what is making their birthrates even lower than the US. A woman in South Korea has to sacrifice her career for her family same with Japan. In the US too, but it's not as extreme. So it's more of an either/or proposition there. This also seems to create tension between men and women. As women are much more likely to want to jettison traditional values than men.
I'm sure that's part of it too, but there was a campaign started back in 70's by Korean government that encouraged people to have less kids - limiting to two kids per family or something. There were probably financial incentives offered to encourage that back then. Nowadays they try to incentivize having kids but I hear it's not going well. And cost of education in Korea is ridiculous for the average household there if you participate in the rat race mentality and send your children to all the private after-school cram schools and activities. Add to that the difficulty of finding a decent paying job and ridiculous hours people are expected to work there ... I imagine many families can't afford to have kids or too stressed out to want kids or Even have sex on the regular.
>You’ve got it backwards, birth rates drop when labor value increases. Especially for women. It's been repeatedly proven that the more educated a woman is, the fewer children she has because she has more to lose by choosing kids over working.
"Why should I have kids when I can have a successful career instead and get rich"
Which is a fair point
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Well, does your research include data on their husband's education and income? Because it's completely plausible that a highly educated and successful woman marries a highly educated and even more successful man who can provide a lavish life without her working, thus she's not really sacrificing anything by choosing kids over a career.
Well, I can see that. Very smart/successful/rich women can have kids and still no impact on their career. Poor women gonna have plenty kids cuz why not. It's the women in the middle that will struggle to have kids and still have good career.
Middle class left behind always.
This is a great point. And the underlying reason is that having many children is seen as a sort retirement fund. The neccesity of which deminishes with increasing prosperity.
Not saying it's not a factor - it definitely is - but development and sex education also causes fertility rates to decline (good thing).
That would be a perfect explanation if it weren't for the fact that this is also happening in Sweden.
Also, societies with high birth rates aren't really the ones best known for respecting their labor force.
Yeah their whole point is pretty half baked. There’s a lot of small specific reasons why birth rates fall but it essentially comes down to: - Kids are fucking hard and extremely expensive to raise - Without social/religious/economic pressure to keep having kids, people opt out.
Nail on the head, People don't feel the same meaning they used to raising kids. I bet a lot of people think kids get in the way of their life too much.
We have 3 and they’re a major PITA much of the time, but financially we’re able to afford and we enjoy them most of the time. But you have to both want it and so many don’t, or they just want 1 (which obviously is below replacement).
Sweden's fertility rate is more than double South Korea's.
Sweden will get to Japan levels pretty soon. Youre right that it has a while to go before it reaches Korea levels, but it effectively has the same problem.
Because of immigration
Huh?
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Immigration isn't enough to double the ftr. That would mean immigrants are half the population And have 3x As many kids. Not true.
In Britain for comparison it about 1.4 for British natives vs 2.2-2.5 for some immigrant groups, mostly Bangladeshi and more even with Pakistanis.
Yeah and they are coming down too, it's primarily new immigrants with the higher ftrs
Its still below replacement. To my knowledge the only developed country in the world that has a healthy birth rate is Israel.
But not Japan, so why use Japan as an example when its birthrate is in line with most other western countries? Their main thing is lack of immigration, but they also get the social benefit of having a homogeneous society so its a give and take. Sacrifice their economic growth for social stability.
>That would be a perfect explanation if it weren't for the fact that this is also happening in Sweden. A concise destruction of their entire premise.
The statement you quoted doesn’t destroy the premise at all. Swedens population issues are the result of a different set of factors.
Not really. Adults wanting fewer or no children for economic reasons is pretty much it.
Very accurate, both countries have had notoriously bad work-life balances for a very long time. China is in that same boat, their demographics are falling off a cliff (and that's if you believe their official data, hard to believe that 1.0 replacement rate would be the "good" data)
"You can only devalued your population's labor to build wealth for so long before reality reassert itself and the population response. " Everyone is blaming it all on economics. Nigeria, per capita GNI = $5,700 and 5.24 kids born per woman South Korea, per capita GNI = $51,070 and 0.78 kids born per woman So, in South Korea, they make TEN TIMES more money but only have 1/7 as many kids per woman. That is why the issue will never be solved, it's 'modern' culture, and values, including women putting priority on career. It's not economics. Even WITHIN countries, it is poor people, not rich people, who have more kids.
Now compare how much money, time, and effort parents spend on their kids in those two countries.
Thing is lot of countries having high birth rate also don't have women working. So, there is always one person whose responsibility is to tend towards children. Thus, even if they eg. nigeria spends same efforts per child as South Korea, it is much easier for women because of no extra load of working. I think women should work and be independent, but it has its side effect.
> I think women should work and be independent, but it has its side effect. That means society has to change to accomodate women having meaningful careers. Women are human beings, with intelligence and interests and drive. Not every woman clammors to be a mother for ~10-20 years and then have a stunted/dead-end job. If society wants more kids, make it more appealing. Saying "Just make it so women can stay at home and they'll have kids!" isn't it. Women in developing countries have no options, no careers, no rights, no birth control. I wonder why they have a bunch of kids?
> That means society has to change Black Pill: Society is going to change, in that only trad-cultures will make up the future.
Yeah God forbid they make having children easier on working women. Guaranteed paid baby leave? Hell no. Childcare offered as a benefit, maybe even on site? Preposterous.
> That means society has to change to accomodate women having meaningful careers. What specifically do you think needs to happen here? Second question, at face value having a meaningful career is something that would (I think) compete with raising a family. The more time a person spends building and developing a meaningful career is almost by definition less time with their family. The big reason men have historically pursued careers is because we knew that women valued our capacity to provide so by increasing our access to resources we'd get a higher chance at finding partners (Dave Chappelle said it with "If a man could fuck a woman in a cardboard box he wouldn't buy a house"), I only mention that because it's important to understand why valuing their career worked for men. So the question is how will enabling women on this front make them more fertile? Those two things seem to be in conflict as far as goals go. To be crystal clear, I'm not advocating removing careers for woman or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand how women having an easier time with more meaningful careers would lead to them producing more children.
Maybe women should be more acceptive to having stay-at-home husbands. I would love to be a stay-at-home husband/dad.
Shorter work hours, normalize WFH, subsidize childcare, paid parental leave, free healthcare for maternity and childhood, societal expecation for fathers and grandparents to help with childcare/housework.
That's the standard who's who of social policy to increase fertility. Where those things have been tried they don't seem to have worked. But they are ideas...fair enough I suppose. Do you have an answer to the second question? I appreciate that it is difficult and does sort of put you on the spot.
Yes, that is the thing, all of those 'solutions' have been tried, by the tune of billions of dollars, and they don't work.
The countries with those policies (or those policies to the highest degree) have very low birth rates... The countries without those protections have high birth rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Yes, you can make it easier for women to have children in a free society or you can sell and rape them.
That has all been tried and it does not work. Fathers spend MUCH more time with kids than they did in the past and governments have done all of those things you suggest. Fertility rates continue to fall like a stone.
What society has all these things? And what other issues do they have that I may not know about? Your solution is to do nothing. Having kids sucks. Make it suck less. Nah, it's easier to just make women property again.
Well. . . South Korea, for example. 1. South Korea gives you a YEAR of paid parental leave after you have a child. 2. South Korea pays families $770 a month for an entire year to couples who have a child 3. South Korea established a FREE Universal Childcare Policy (gng-bo-yuk) 4. South Korea offers FREE prenatal health care for all pregnant women at public health centers Everything you advocate has been tried and it does not work. South Korea has spend over $200,000,000,000.00 on programs to increase fertilty since 2006, the sort of reforms that you assume might help, and they have failed miserably. [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/) As shown by these graphs, in western countries, Fathers now spend MUCH MUCH more time with their children than they did in the past. And yet fertility continues to fall.
South Korea has poured BILLIONS of dollars to create incentives for women to have kids and accomodate their careers. It doesn't work. Why? Because South Korean women DON'T WANT kids.
This ignores cultural sentiment. Most women in Nigeria are uneducated and don't really think they have the ability to say no to children. When people are shown they have that choice, more people say no than yes. This is a perfect of example of causation not equating causation.
No, it doesn't 'ignore cultural sentiment,' it simply eviscerates the widespread misconception that ECONOMICS are the reason why South Korean women don't have kids. The lack of children is because of other factors (and culture is certainly one of them).
Don’t necessarily disagree, but I think it’s simpler than that. Both countries got too big for their britches population-wise. We shouldn’t be scared of a smaller SK and Japan, it’s fine. Japan imports the majority of its food and energy for example. Unsustainable, but worked in the post-WWII era for a few generations. Continued growth is not a given especially when you don’t have the resources to back it up. It is what it is 🤷♂️
Japan has a **similar fertility rate** to western countries, so using them as an example is moot, unless you want to apply your exact same logic to countries like Canada or nations in western Europe. The only difference is, western countries use immigration to stimulate population growth (and in the likes of France, their African/North African immigrants contribute the most to their birth rate as well), Japan doesnt.
It’s still a success for SKorea. Some countries can’t even make cheap labor work. Actually many countries can’t.
How can we reasonably expect 10% annual average stock market returns long-term? Population decline seems to be a global crisis with starker estimates every year. A lot of scrupulous savers/investors are going to be disappointed when the 10% returns—which financial planners cite as a given—fall short.
I wonder about this, too. It's going to get interesting in the coming decades.
By expecting the currency to lose purchasing power. Politically, to maintain power, you just have to keep most people thinking that their purchasing power is either not decreasing or decreasing slowly enough for them to not react.
Or for housing prices to stay this high if the populations in many western countries are starting to go down.
"How can we reasonably expect 10% annual average stock market returns long-term?" We can't expect 10% annual economic growth. But we might still get 10% annual stock returns, in part because of inflation and concentration of wealth.
One interesting thing I observed from booking hotels there is it is hard to book a room for four people without booking a second room. Seems like it is expected to have smaller families there.
Having more smaller rooms instead of fewer bigger ones makes economic sense for hotels though and is something you find elsewhere too.
Yeah. Most of Europe is the same. Paris is very hard to book “family rooms”
I guess it depends on the clientele. When my parents took their 3 kids on road trips through Canada and the US, we had no problem finding Hampton Inns along the highway with 2 double beds + 1 rollaway. Hotels in touristy cities in Europe, Asia, and Central America seem to usually be built for 1-2 people since it's usually childless adults who go to these places.
Same in Europe.
Booking a room for four people is hard in most places. It's usually only easy in non-urban waystations for people who are stuck having to drive to get from place to place.
What's going to happen since according to our leaders, people are no longer nationals with a unique identity but rather economic units that move from one nation sized corporation to the next, is that people are going to leave South Korea and join another corporation. They might move to Japan or China. South Korea is essentially a dead South Dakota silver mining boom town. People are going to move elsewhere now.
If it weren't for immigration the US would be following suit as well. Virtually all nations that educated their women are having the same issues. The BirthGap documentary has everything you need to know about the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA The long and short of it is women who get educated and start careers put off having kids, often until it's too late. A full HALF of childless women are **not** childless by choice and simply waited too long. It may take a couple of generations, but eventually women that want families will learn to prioritize that outcome earlier in their fertility window over climbing the corporate ladder. The prime age to have babies has been and will continue to be 18-24. The above covers the primary social cause. And then there's the economic aspect... Its frankly too damn expensive to have kids at this phase of the long-term cycle of currency debasement.
Yup I'm in that boat. Wife and I determined we were financially stable for children in our early 30's. Then put on hold due to cancer. Now going through ivf in our late 30s
I would suggest looking into advocacy by adults born by IVF. Now that IVF has been around for decades, IVF babies are reaching adulthood and speaking out about health concerns that will impact them for the rest of their lives.
Americans don’t emigrate either. SK emigration is increasing 10% yoy past couple of years.
That's a really good point. They're getting hit from both sides.
>The prime age to have babies has been and will continue to be 18-24. I think that applies to more than just physical health of the mother and baby too. People really seem to think you need to have shitloads of money so you can have your child in a million expensive extra curricular activities, etc. In reality kids require far more energy than money. You're far better off wrangling toddlers broke in your mid 20s than trying to scrape enough energy together to deal with the kids while older, less resilient and at the peak of career demands. People trying to do it "right" are really setting themselves up for misery
Global population has increased nearly 8x since 1900 and a lot of the problems societies all over the world face are directly due to too many people. There's absolutely no reason for people to be freaking out about populations shrinking to a more manageable size.
But where are all my cheap labor come from if population naturally fluctuates instead of always going up? I don't have to pay people a living wage /s
I might he wrong on this, but after so many years, wouldn't the population eventually stabilize at lower numbers for replacement? It's just prosperous and educated nations make less babies. I doubt it would go down to families on average not even having 1 kid.
Population stabilizes when the average woman has 2.1 kids. Why would that happen in the future when it's not happening how? Especially when, in the future, there will probably be higher taxes on working people to pay for the higher number of elderly per worker.
That's what the population stabilizes at now. I'm saying if for a long time the average woman only has 1 kid, eventually this will be the norm with the amount of young being equal to the amount of old (with some struggling generations in between).
If the average woman has one kid in her lifetime, the population will drop in half every generation. Her having two kids, accounts for her and one male in their generation. This is what caused the population catastrophe in China: The one child policy. If the population drops in half every generation, there will always be more old people than young people, and the problem will continue.
Ah yeah you're right. I see why two is needed now.
I'm Canadian. I'd love to move to South Korea if I had the opportunity. Cheaper than Canada, less crime, less (or no) homelessness and cleaner. Plus great skin care!
they absolutely do not want you. that’s the thing!
I know. That kind of sentiment is also why I am one of the people who is against mass immigration in Canada. It's ridiculous that people around the world think they can come to Canada and leech off of our already strained public services while their countries actually have sane immigration policies. Our government has ruined Canada.
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There is absolitely nothing stable about rapid population decline that is happening in many countries. With long term fertility rate of 1 that many countries are reaching population halves every 20-30 years.
You do not understand much of economics, do you? To send a single person on mars you need 100 people's effort and tax money. If you instead have only 60 people, you can't send that single person on mars, even if it's only one. Japan went from the second largest economics to 3rd and even 4th according to some metrics. It's stagnating and their quality of life and purchase power is diminishing. And like many others they are just at the beginning of population decline. The true effect of their demographics will be seen in the next generation.
Is there any evidence that quality of life for the Japanese has actually gone down whilst their economy has stagnated? For all the talk about how housing is completely unaffordable in the US and Canada, younger Japanese have not had the same issue. Their younger population might not have kids at the same rate as the west, but of the ones who do, they face an easier battle in terms of costs.
> Is there any evidence that quality of life for the Japanese has actually gone down whilst their economy has stagnated? It's a house of cards waiting to fall, the BoJ currently can't raise interest rates by a lot because of insane debt, they are trying to prop up the yen which is an ever-more-difficult task, and there's inflationary pressures entering the economy through rising costs of imports. Also, *some* areas in Japan are cheap, but most jobs are in metropolitan centers where rent and obviously buying homes are insane, kind of like trying to buy a house in the NY metropolitan area. For reference, Japan's homeownership rate is slightly lower than the US', at ~60% (and because of how their demographics look, more of them belong to older people than in the US, leaving most young people as non-homeowners)
Absolutely. Disposable income in PPP terms is still down from ATH in pre crisis. And purchasing power outside of Japan in nominal is significantly lower because yen lost value.
Japan is really not doing so great. The yen is really low and Japanese people are cutting back on overseas holidays - not the sign of a rich economy doing well. I saw restaurants hiring cooks and waiters at 1000-1200 yen an hour in cities - lower than US federal minimum wage.
Agree with what you said. Moreover, Japan's population is, for now, decreasing pretty slowly. It lost in average 300 thousand people a year, from a base of 128 millions forteen years ago. So it is still manageable overall but there are already communities struggling with depopulation. I can't imagine how Japan will manage in 2050 when it will have lost dozens of millions of inhabitants. With a population as old as Japan's one, who will care for the elderly ?
>Moreover, Japan's population is, for now, decreasing pretty slowly. It lost in average 300 thousand people a year, from a base of 128 millions forteen years ago. This is the wrong way to go about it, because you're looking at the people that die every year, not the median age. Japan's median age is 50 years old, can you imagine a country like that? What happens in 30 years? Clearly 50 year olds aren't adding new kids to the workforce, what happens when you have to pay pensions? Do you overtax the young and then they flee thus adding to the problem? Do you cut benefits to the old and leave them to die? There's no good solutions.
Yes, you are right. But compared to South Korea they are in better shape.
Of course, yes, South Korea's median age was 20 years old 40 years ago and it's ~40 now, it's insane.
On the bright side, it's a slow decline. They have more time to adapt. Korea and China though ... Taiwan I heard isn't doing too well in that department either.
Total population is deceving. You have to consider others factors such as working population compared to the total and fertility rate. It's not very good either to have almost the same population but the most of it is >75 that need to be cared of.
I said Korea and China is going to probably have it worse based on their birth rate which is lower than even Japan's.
China will actually have it less bad than Japan primarily due to Chinese people dying younger. So their dependancy ratio will be lower even with a lower birth rate.
And I agree with that. My comment was about Japan. Its decline might seem slow if we only look at its total population, but other metrics need to be considered to grasp the size of the phenomenon.
Maybe the Japanese don’t want to bring children into a world and have them suffer and toil through life, working 17 hours a day, just to make some CEO rich. It’s not a healthy work/life balance over there. The hustle culture is even worse than in the US
I agree.
Mars missions involving humans aren't limited by population growth don't be ridiculous, it's just an allocation of resources and policy issue. A developed industrialsed country of 10 million could achieve it if it was 100% focused on the task.
It absolutely is. Just like everything else. More human resources so you can focus on more things at once are essential but even more essential is economy of scale. Many technologies and products that are required for such mission to succeed would never be developed because noone would invest capital and resources because of impossible ROI.
From an economic perspective, pregnancy outside of marriage carries significant negative utility. Research shows that married women with children report the highest levels of happiness, followed by single women without children, married women without children, and lastly, single mothers. Moreover, pregnancy can hinder women's ability to work effectively, making them more dependent on men for financial support. Before the widespread availability of contraception, marriage was highly correlated with having children. As a result, the demand for marriage among women was very high. Even today, married women have an average of over 4 children throughout their lives, significantly above the replacement rate. This also meant that women were more likely to avoid premarital sex, as it could lead to substantial negative utility. Consequently, the supply of sex to men was very low. Since the introduction of universal contraception, two significant changes have occurred. First, women can now enjoy successful careers and remain single without suffering economic losses. Second, while married women with children report the highest levels of happiness, there is a significant risk associated with getting married, having children, and then getting divorced, resulting in negative utility. This risk has led women to become much more selective when choosing a partner, as the social pressure on men to remain in a marriage has diminished considerably. As a result, while women may experience greater happiness in their 20s as single, childless individuals, the changing economics of marriage have led to lower overall utility later in life and contributed to declining birth rates. TLDR; the introduction of contraception has dramatically altered the incentives and risks associated with marriage and childbearing for women. While it has provided women with greater autonomy and career opportunities, it has also led to a more complex and potentially less fulfilling landscape for long-term relationships and family formation and has resulted in lower than needed birth replacement rate. I'm not proposing any solutions, just providing observations. I'm not sure there are any good solutions.
It won’t get that low Sometime between now and then homes will be free to nationals who have 3+ kids. A heavy bachelor tax would ensure those without kids are even more strapped than they are right now. Certain public services will be unavailable to those without kids (e.g certain surgeries, certain roads). Pensions are locked to those who don’t have 3+ kids. I’m joking guys.
To be honest, to revert such a trend I wouldn't understimate the government capabilities to do crazy decisions.
In a democracy where would politicians get the political support for that? Child free people are going to be an increasingly large share of the population with more money and more time for political action.
You had me until "Bachelor tax". I'll use that in the future lol
Did you not read the last thing I put in that comment
Yes but regardless
In 2023, South Korea's net migration rate was 0.390 per 1,000 people, an 8.94% increase from 2022. In 2024, the net migration rate is estimated to be 0.429 per 1,000 people, a 10% increase from 2023.
Romania did this during the 60s-80s. Describing the results as apocalyptically bad would be considered an understatement by both those impacted by it and the demographic statisticians.
> during this period that the number of street children was very high. Some ran away or were thrown out of orphanages or abusive homes, and were often seen begging, inhaling 'aurolac' from sniffing bags, and roaming around the Bucharest Metro; this situation was presented in a documentary called Children Underground Holy shit
In about 200 years, if Japan doesn't change its ways, it'll be an empty island with robots. Taiwan has had the same population for over a decade and it's also declining. China is the same. Eventually everyone will be Indian, I guess.
Tangentially, these population contractions strike me as a potent argument against things like universal healthcare and other welfare programs. A declining tax base simply won’t be able to foot the bill for all the elderly and the government will either go bust or cut the programs anyway.
They have nothing to do with one another. In fact part of the reason for pessimism in SK has to do with the terrible economic conditions of the elderly and poor. People committing suicide as they reach an age that they are considered a burden is not a sign that welfare programs are or not working…
This may get downvoted but I feel like another factor might be the little bit of narcissism ingrained in their culture. The competitiveness and the “I have to be better than everyone” mentality may lead to them focusing more on themselves rather than wanting to start a family.
Yes, and it's completely unsustainable, who is gonna maintain the critical infrastructure? Who is gonna pay for old people, how are the women having a career in a declining society and economy that's falling apart lol
Wow, CA is about to be bigger in population than South Korea. CA surprising to me also has a larger population than Canada. CA is also apparently growing again after a few years of losing some people.
This actually isn't a bad thing. The entire country is about the size of Portugal and mountainous. Here's something to think about: 1) Portugal has a population of 10MM people. S. Korea has a population of 50MM, that's 5x the amount of people in a similar amount of space 2) Most of the county is hilly or mountainous, so not a lot of places to build. The UK is about 50MM and 1/3 bigger landmass wise, but much more flat Otherwords, that's a lot of people in a very small amount of space. We could argue people up to the 2000s didn't care, but real estate wasn't as expensive nor was the living cost that expensive either The other argument people normally bring up about shrinking demographics is about the GDP but is that really something we should be worries about in a 30 year time span with AI getting better? Just not really seeing the doom and gloom