Why South Korean women aren't having babies
bbc.co.ukThere is no mystery to declining birthrate - it correlates universally to economic development at state level, which in turn is dependent on increasing women labour force participation. Economic development does not happen without women entering the market economy, yet when this happens women stop having enough children to replace those in the population who die. This is the same phenomenon everywhere, we are only seeing the most acute manifestation in East Asia first because they never had mass immigration to temporarily fix the numbers.
> There is no mystery to declining birthrate - it correlates universally to economic development at state level
Observably true.
> which in turn is dependent on increasing women labour force participation. Economic development does not happen without women entering the market economy
I think you have your causation reversed there. Economic development allows women to enter the market economy. It does not require it.
Modern economies differ significantly in fertility rates. France’s fertility rate among native-born French is more than double south Korea’s.
Moreover, government policy can have a significant impact. Hungary increased its fertility rate by 1/3 in the last decade through straightforward benefits to people having families. Hungary’s female labor force participation rate is the same as Korea’s.
Knowing about South Korean work culture and years of cramming required to join it, what is the purpose of bringing kids there?
If a culture claims to be so hard-working, so smart, but fails to construct an environment where people would like to bring new people, it's absolutely normal that it is going to die out together with the carriers of the culture.
Such a good point.
For all the pride that South Korea has around its successes, how good of a society can it be, if it is an abject failure when it comes to repopulation?
"Yejin works a traditional 9-6 job (the Korean equivalent of a 9-5) but says she usually doesn't leave the office until 8pm and there is overtime on top of that. Once she gets home, she only has time to clean the house or exercise before bed. " I mean, that seems pretty clear. My wife and I have two kids and fairly reasonable work hours but that still means pretty much all my time is work, spending time with kids, and chores. If I got home 3 hours later it would mean I'd basically never spend any time with my children.
Folks overlook the obvious explanation for the especially low fertility rates in East Asia: government policy. These are more collectivist societies where people are relatively receptive to government messaging and social norms. For two generations, Korea had anti-natal government policy: https://www.prb.org/resources/did-south-koreas-population-po.... It was a “soft” one-child policy that sought the same results as China’s, though with less draconian means.
Two generations of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese were raised with the idea that having more than one or two kids is a bad thing, why the surprise that they act accordingly?
Birth rates drop as countries become wealthier. There's no need to reach for culture essentialist nonsense.
There’s a large and meaningful difference between places based on culture and government policy. Utah’s gross state product per capita is over $75,000. South Korea’s is about $35,000. But Utah has a fertility rate 2.5 times higher. And Utah’s fertility rate is about the same as that of Bangladesh, which is one of the poorest countries. The US fertility rate in 1970 was 2.5, at a time when (adjusted for inflation) it was about as rich per capita as South Korea is today.
Sub-replacement fertility is not some inevitability, where we must choose between having running water and a stable population.
I think the reason behind declining birthrates is simple.
Men are totally on-board with having more children and tend to report a happiness increase afterwards. Women are not because it will reduce their self-reported happiness. Before in the past getting married and having kids would give women access to financial security and social acceptance. Now you’ll likely end up poorer than single women and there’s no social benefit, and contraception also exists. The constraint here is mothers.
I hear lower birthrate blamed vague on “economic development” or “wealth” but the main factor is really just the utilization of both genders for salary labour combined with the increased dependence and non-productivity of the young. An increasing focus on and the suicidal subsidization of education only makes this more extreme, given we’re directly economcially incentivizing to now have kids when they’re most reproductively fit. I honestly think education is lowering the IQ by causing increasing amounts of birth defects among the kids who are getting born due to advanced maternal age, while education has simultaneously become more and more performative signalling. We’ve had a reverse Flynn effect for decades, epigenetics are a huge part of why.
I hear a ton of comments from feminists is the problem is men don’t contribute their fair share to childrearing. I absolutely agree, women DO (on average) work harder, the men who ARE having kids are frequently either phoning it in or being total deadbeats, but having dealt with a deadbeat dad before, liberal society cannot effectively force them to contribute. If men equally contributed it honestly might be enough alone to spike the birthrate like 0.5 or something absurd like that but even if you instituted a social credit system I don’t know how you could actually accomplish this. It is simply evolutionarily incentivized for women to invest more parental effort than men. Maybe just tax all men (not just fathers) harder for the sake of ease of tax collection.
Governments should give financial incentives for women to have kids, although emigration is a concern for many countries, the US should at least be able to do this. I’m not talking about subsidizing the childrearing - which I think misses the issue - I’m talking about giving women money they could spend on themselves OR their children. I’m saying the incentive should exist even if the kids get adopted.
> Now you’ll likely end up poorer than single women and there’s no social benefit
how about the having a child part and being a parent and maybe grandparent? Why do people think having a child isnt supposed to be a burden?
I suppose my concern is the sheer drop in fertility either is imposing or will soon impose significant burdens on all men and women. Especially as we rapidly approach the point where GLOBAL fertility is below replacement so replacement migration won’t be an option to bail us out. It’s not even the fact that the population is going down that concerns me as much as how fast that it’s happening.
I think this problem threatens democracy and liberalism. If a country like North Korea can maintain twice the fertility as the South, having double the workforce and number of intellectuals is going to allow it to catch up quick.
If SK’s TFR was say 1.22 instead of 0.89 you end up with a 37% larger workforce and only need to convince 1 in 3 women to have an extra child. There’s more enough women who would WANT to have children if it were less of a burden.
> There’s more enough women who would WANT to have children if it were less of a burden.
source?
Where are these men who want children?
Yep. I’ll be more willing to take a risk and have a child with someone if they won’t get de facto custody and financially ruin me for life if we divorce. Which is statically more probable than us staying together.
Since this has not been mentioned in the comments yet, this article is asserting that it is a failing of the men in societies where women are highly educated that keeps the birthrate down. The women want to contribute to the workforce after having children, but without their spouses stepping up to contribute to childcare and housework, it is not an option. Women without children see this among the women with children and realize they must make a choice between the two options, and they cannot have both.
Does the world really need that many people?
Yeah there are old people and there’ll be a generation of some pain, economic output may go down.
However if per capita affordability is rising in real income that is a beautiful thing.
That means less but happier people.
We should celebrate fhat.
Human cattle we call "workers" happen to know their own offsprings will have to sacrifice most of their lives making powerful men even richer. Of course it's rational to not have children if you know they will become slaves themselves.
Is not it just to expensive?
While having a child you must pay for daycare, school, evening baby sitting. Next to that if the family splits the woman is doing most of the child care alone. Sounds like to much risk.
Rich people have less kids than poor people and countries with the best social safety nets in the world also have low birth rates. so no. its not too expensive
That's a huge logical fallacy.
It's like telling Americans, "Bill Gates has less operations than poor people, and countries with the best healthcare in the world, their people also have less operations, so no, medical operations in America are not too expensive". You've wildly mixed up cause and effect, and are comparing non-like things.
The people in America who want to have children are routinely priced out of having children, "kids are too expensive" is absolutely true. The existence of rich people in America who do not want children despite their wealth, in no way disproves this.
> The people in America who want to have children are routinely priced out of having children
Pretending that income and fertility are not negatively correlated is being willfully ignorant:
And assuming an income correlation is the same as affordability, is also being willfully ignorant…
Because the government does not provide (they "provide" for "announcements") any resources to help (or support) families. (Both man and women)
But the fun thing is, they've supported to cut the bulls to stop making babies in 70s. Because they've thought there are too much.
Why developed country women aren't having babies
Why developed country people aren't having babie.
If women ain't having babies, I doubt the men are getting any on their own.