12 ms·

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.

213 points by rblion 15y ago

diN0bot 15y ago
"Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours." "Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime."
- bobo888 15y ago
  And the proof is...? How about, more crime might mean less marriage? I know it's not about Asia, but: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-productivity-idUSTRE6744A620100805 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-pr... "London School of Economics sociologist Catherine Hakim's research shows that when both paid work and unpaid duties such as housework, care and voluntary work are taken into account, men do pull their own weight."
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Now hold on there. Just because the employed member of the family puts in 60+ hours per week at the office doesn't mean they should do any less work around the house...
    - bobo888 15y ago
      Whaaat? So are you basically saying that one shold do half of the house chores no matter how much he/she works at their job? If one spouse is unemployed, and the other spouse works 60 hrs you consider it fair only when each does 50% of the house work?
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - bobo888 15y ago
        Sorry, but sarcasm doesn't really work over the web.
  - tsotha 15y ago
    The "women do more housework" thing has been debunked over and over, at least in the west. You can only arrive at that conclusion by excluding traditional "man's work" jobs like yard work and car repair. On the other hand, I have heard Japanese and Chinese men say they expect their wives to do all the housework, so maybe there really is a difference.
burgerbrain 15y ago
Good for them. More people need to reject this archaic sexist tradition. Legal enforcement of the fantasy notion of "true love for life" is damn near barbaric. If you and your partner can swing it, more power to you, but social pressure on others to place themselves into legally binding situations revolving around this notion is something that need to die. In the west (at least the states) these are legally binding arrangements that are heavily biased against males, but if women are rejecting that in Asia then all the better.
- aik 15y ago
  Just curious -- how does this mindset handle having kids that grow up in a loving and positive environment?
  - r00fus 15y ago
    Do what they do in other civilized countries like France... allow non-marriage unions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacte_civil_de_solidarité http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacte_civil_de_solidarité The union isn't just for same-sex couples, but also for non-standard families like say siblings w.o parents and such... it would be perfect as it eschews traditional mores and keeps the good part of marriages.
    - aik 15y ago
      Sorry let me explain -- I'm not talking about a lack of marriage, but lack of a stable union. The incentive to "give up" is so much stronger when you can just leave when (not "if") life's ubiquitous unpredictable and uncontrollable difficulties arise. So naturally there's a much greater chance of not having that positive environment...
      - r00fus 15y ago
        And what I'm saying is that the PACS (the french civil union) is actually a very strong contract, just not bound up with traditional titles and roles like {husband=breadwinner,wife=homemaker}. In fact today, over 95% of civil unions in France are heterosexual couples: "Although originally intended for same-sex couples, currently in France the majority of couples taking advantage of its law are now heterosexual couples who for one reason or another choose civil union rather than marriage, and that more heterosexual couples are opting for civil union rather than marriage. In fact, this trend was already in place in 2000, with 75% of unions between heterosexual couples (42% the previous years) and 95% in 2009." If these folks didn't have the stability of an enforceable social contract (and tax benefits), most probably wouldn't marry either.
Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago
Good thing. But being gay this never bothers me.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- rednaught 15y ago
  Maybe the Philippines and Indonesia don't represent most of Asia, but illegitimacy has become a very obvious problem in the last decade there. The only reason divorce is not more common is because an annulment in the Philippines represents an astronomically prohibitive barrier for most citizens.
  - wyclif 15y ago
    Divorce and annulment are not the same things in legal terms. Filipino law does not provide for divorce. I'd also suggest that legalities are hardly "the only reason" divorce isn't more prevalent. As the OP suggests, tradition, societal expectations, and welfare have a lot to do with it as well.
bennesvig 15y ago
George Gilder's "Naked Nomad's" is a great book studying single men in America. Unmarried men own the majority of bad statistical categories to be in. Higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates. No society wants that burden.
- bobo888 15y ago
  This could also mean that women avoid getting married to men who are prone to "higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates". For example, how many women would really get married to a hobo?
  - tsotha 15y ago
    Yeah, selection bias. Not just shiftless hobos, either. As a man you're going to have a harder time finding a wife if you're sick or have unhealthy habits (like obesity or heavy drinking). Edit: I expect the same is true for single women, too. I doubt single women live as long as their married counterparts on a statistical basis.
- notahacker 15y ago
  On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either, yet the Economist article paints them as some kind of Western demographic advantage. I haven't read the book so I wouldn't know whether the Gilder successfully separates cause from effect when examining unmarried men, but extrapolating his conclusions to Asia may be difficult anyway. On the one hand it may be rather more socially unacceptable to be unmarried over a certain age in Asia but on the other, unmarried men at the bottom of the social pile will perhaps be heartened by the relative prevalence and social acceptability of the sex industry. Then you have the vast differences between crime and suicide rates in general.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either,... True, but the crude statistical basis fails to account for wealth (and to a lesser extent race). In the US, marriage is for rich people. Since the children of rich people fare well in general, the bias here is obvious. I'd love to see stats comparing children born out of wedlock holding income and race fixed.
thevivekpandey 15y ago
"So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India." It is not fair to label a trend as "Asian" when you need to exclude China and India.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  What would you label it as then? SingaJapaTaiwaVietnian? Besides, you can always argue that the trend simply hasn't penetrated the larger entities yet, but will in the future.
  - idiopathic 15y ago
    East Asian would do just fine. Just because the largest land mass in the world contains lots of people does not mean we have to label them together.
- g123g 15y ago
  Actually the first trend of delayed marriage age is now very much evidence in India. Working professionals are marrying at quite a late age - 35 for boys and 30 for girls is now very common. This is very quickly going to turn into the rejection of marriage trend mentioned in the article. So in case of India it is only a question of when not if.
  - fullmoon 15y ago
    Makes me wonder of the biological implications for the children to-be-born
  - gnufied 15y ago
    Where are you pulling that data from? The Article makes no mention of average marrying age for Indians. Anecdotally,as a middle class Indian - I see average marrying age for Males around 27-30 and for females 25-28. And again, Indian values are quite different from Japanese, Chinese or Thai values.
EGreg 15y ago
Yes, an aging population might be worrisome on the surface, but I find overpopulation more worrying. Therefore, I am happy that people in really populated countries are having less babies overall! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE Longer (but more boring) version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=relat...
bobo888 15y ago
Is it really the women who are avoiding marriage? Do this experiment: go to a newspaper stand and look for magazines about weddings. Look for books about marriage. I have never ever seen one addressed to men (there are ones which seem to be, but on a quick glance I actually think they were written to feed the women's ego), which means IMHO that men wouldn't spend money on subjects like these. Meanwhile you sholdn't be surprised to find at least half a dozen for women. So I really really doubt that men are more willing to marry EITHER. I would actually dare to say that men were (and still are) the ones who don't really care about marriage.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  If someone likes marriage as a concept and a form of art, doesn't mean they want to be married themselves, now and with all the implications. By analogy: many women enjoy and write slash stories about male homosexuality, which they obviously can't participate in. Same for wedding stories, dresses and shots.
lionhearted 15y ago
I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions that require a geography suitable to isolationism, long term peace has historically been achieved through your country or one of your ally's having military supremacy over the rest of your neighbors. Obviously, diplomacy can keep the peace for long periods of time, even human lifetimes, but eventually incidents happen when there's a hothead in one government, and then that's when the military supremacy determines whether you get attacked or not. Anyways, I've found the more a country renounces war and gets further away from it, the more birth rates go down. You get an explosion of commerce and art for ~30 to ~70 years, and then the society self-destructs. No longer forced to confront mortality and with no externally unifying cause, people start living for luxury, pleasure, and consumption. They stop having children. Birth rates fall off. Eventually, this destroys a country's economy, the military supremacy fades, and one of their neighbors comes in and cleans house, and the cycle begins anew. This has happened many times through history. It's happening in Japan right now. If I became an advisor to anyone in the Japanese government, I'd advocate two things as chief priorities - (1) exceedingly good relations with China, and (2) re-militarize. Then join the next war they can on America's or China's side. Combined with some standard messages of nationalism/strength/growth/unity, birth rates would almost certainly increase.
- amitutk 15y ago
  Your theory fits with continued economic growth of United States.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  I actually really agree with you. But- I don't think Japan can re-militarize without essentially declaring war on America. Part of the treaty we set up at the end of WWII and all. Wait... Maybe that means the reason they are declining is because we neutered them...? P.S. I suspect the reason your theory has not been explored much in public writings is because it has an implied support of continued military activity, funding and dominance, which is a very unpopular position in the US today. Ironically, probably because we reside exactly in the part of your described cycle corresponding with military decline!
Shenglong 15y ago
I smell a business opportunity.
- nazgulnarsil 15y ago
  its called human trafficking and organized crime is way ahead of you.
gamble 15y ago
A friend of mine has lived in Japan teaching one-on-one English lessons for a number of years. A good chunk of his customers are recently married women. Their husbands don't want them to work, but with nothing to do at home they end up taking English lessons out of a desperate need to find something mentally stimulating to pass the hours.
wyclif 15y ago
It would have been useful if this article had taken into account the fact that the laws of certain SE Asian countries (i.e., the Philippines) do not provide for divorce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Philippines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Ph...
- patrickgzill 15y ago
  However annulments are increasingly easier to get. Cost about $4K USD from what I understand and a lot of paperwork.
emanuer 15y ago
I am married to a Japanese and live here right now, so I can only comment on the situation of the country. I will try to give an economical assessment of the situation. As you might be aware Japan had a “lost decade” during the 90s. It experienced almost no growth of the GDP. There are many theories as to why, but the most convincing one is: The Japanese “Baby Boomers” retired during this decade. In fact the percentage of workers in the population (age 15-64) decreased by 5.6% during this time, as the number of retirees increased by 10.7%. http://goo.gl/kVZxB http://goo.gl/kVZxB What does this have to do with anything? / What happens when you have fewer people in the expected working age? 2 things happen: 1. More people have to work 2. People have to work longer The official retirement age for Japanese is 63/61 (M/W), the effective retirement age is 69.5/66.5 http://goo.gl/s9slK http://goo.gl/s9slK (very interesting graph) My wife held a managerial position before our son was born, amongst her friends hardly any of them want to stay single, they simply don’t have a choice. If they want to sustain their current life standard, marriage would be impossible. One man working has a hard time providing for his wife, kids, paying for a decent home & the mandatory elderly taxes. The taxes are almost 2000 USD per person / year, no matter if employed, or not. And those are just to pay for the pensions; insurances, social etc. come on top of that. Many women still life / moved back in with their parents, even in their late 40es. It is not because they want to, or cannot find a partner (many of them look quite stunning). The pensions simply don’t suffice and they feel obliged to support their parents. The same holds true for many men. I very much disagree with the statement that women in Japan enjoy their single life so much, as they choose not to marry. I have yet to meet a Japanese woman, who will state this. Compared to Europe, where this kind of ideology is quite common. Edit: Japanese women are expected to do 90% of the housework, where as American women will “only” do 60% of the work. http://goo.gl/qj64W http://goo.gl/qj64W This fact and the very big distance Japanese develop for their spouses are certainly not helping. http://goo.gl/QlAfx http://goo.gl/QlAfx Surprisingly no women I ever conversed with, complained about this lack of love between a married couple, on the contrary it is expected by the women. And it often leads to problems in marriages with foreigners. Edit #2: If my experience with the Japanese Culture is in any way representative employing more men in the military will be the worst thing imaginable. The country has a deficit of 180% /GDP and every person in the army is one person less doing productive work to keep country afloat. Edit #3: When the "Baby Boom" generation will retire in the United states, do you expect the country to sustain a positive GDP? This would mean that every person working will have to work harder and produce more just to reach 0 growth. Something the Japanese managed to do. The only solution to this is immigration, something Japan is battling against.
peteretep 15y ago
> in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married In Bangkok, 20% of the women you see in couple on streets are part of a woman-woman couple, holding hands - usually one with short hair and a shirt, and one with long hair and a dress - something I've never seen as prevalent anywhere else in the world, and something the locals don't look twice at.
dramaticus3 15y ago
> English riots ... whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect stop reading there
deleted 15y ago
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NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago
Seems to me that the article missed the most central point. Let's start with a little, simple, relevant background: (1) In the past, e.g., in tribal or agricultural communities, women had children whether they really 'wanted' to or not. (2) Now in more industrialized countries, a significant fraction of women have some options. Some women still have children but some women do not want to have children and do not. (3) The change in number of children per woman is a 900 pound gorilla in the room: The article mentioned numbers under 2 children per women with a rate a low as 1 child per woman. There is some recent data that Finland is at 1.5 children per woman. Of course, for any rate much under 2, each 20 years or so the population will be going down significantly. "Get your old houses, furniture, dishes, baby clothes, etc. cheap, cheap, cheap!". So, net, heavily women who don't want to have children won't. These women will be 'weak, sick, dead limbs on the tree' and will be pruning their genes from the tree. What will be left are women who, given the choice, actually, effectively WANT to have children. The big point: After a few such generations, we will be left with a much smaller population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have children. Then the population will start growing again. One more big, surprising point: We are now, in much of the world, in the most rapid change in the gene pool of the last 40,000 or so years. Where did the 40,000 come from? Humans walked out of Africa back there somewhere. At one point, ballpark 40,000 years ago, they reached, say, India. One branch went west to Western Europe, and another branch went east to China and Japan. Mostly the two branches haven't much mixed since then. Okay, at the common branch, ballpark 40,000 years ago, what were women like? Well, take women from Japan and women from Western Europe. Take some 'characteristic' in common, say, desire of a major fraction of the women, given an economic opportunity, not to have children. Now, start in either Japan or Western Europe and count genetic 'changes' on this 'characteristic' going backwards in the tree to the common branch, about 40,000 years ago, and, then, continuing to count changes, going forward in the other branch of the tree to the present. So, if on this characteristic the women in Japan and Western Europe are close, that is, have few changes, then on this characteristic the common ancestor 40,000 years ago has still fewer, that is, is closer to the women in both Japan and Western Europe than they are to each other. Net, since a significant fraction of women in both Japan and Western Europe will, given an economic opportunity, choose not to have children, that is, these women are close to each other, both are still closer to their common ancestor 40,000 years ago. So, for 40,000 years, many women had children not really because they 'wanted' to but because of economic necessity. So, now that women who don't really want to have children are being pruned from the tree, we are, on this characteristic, in the most rapid change in the human gene pool of the past 40,000 years. And, the change is VERY rapid, should have a huge effect in just a few generations, say, just 100 years, which on the scale of 40,000 years, is FAST.
known 15y ago
I believe marriage and career are mutually exclusive for women in Asia

213 points by rblion 15y ago

"Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours." "Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime."

bobo888 15y ago
And the proof is...? How about, more crime might mean less marriage? I know it's not about Asia, but: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-productivity-idUSTRE6744A620100805 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-pr... "London School of Economics sociologist Catherine Hakim's research shows that when both paid work and unpaid duties such as housework, care and voluntary work are taken into account, men do pull their own weight."
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Now hold on there. Just because the employed member of the family puts in 60+ hours per week at the office doesn't mean they should do any less work around the house...
  - bobo888 15y ago
    Whaaat? So are you basically saying that one shold do half of the house chores no matter how much he/she works at their job? If one spouse is unemployed, and the other spouse works 60 hrs you consider it fair only when each does 50% of the house work?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - bobo888 15y ago
      Sorry, but sarcasm doesn't really work over the web.
- tsotha 15y ago
  The "women do more housework" thing has been debunked over and over, at least in the west. You can only arrive at that conclusion by excluding traditional "man's work" jobs like yard work and car repair. On the other hand, I have heard Japanese and Chinese men say they expect their wives to do all the housework, so maybe there really is a difference.

burgerbrain 15y ago

Good for them. More people need to reject this archaic sexist tradition. Legal enforcement of the fantasy notion of "true love for life" is damn near barbaric. If you and your partner can swing it, more power to you, but social pressure on others to place themselves into legally binding situations revolving around this notion is something that need to die. In the west (at least the states) these are legally binding arrangements that are heavily biased against males, but if women are rejecting that in Asia then all the better.

aik 15y ago
Just curious -- how does this mindset handle having kids that grow up in a loving and positive environment?
- r00fus 15y ago
  Do what they do in other civilized countries like France... allow non-marriage unions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacte_civil_de_solidarité http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacte_civil_de_solidarité The union isn't just for same-sex couples, but also for non-standard families like say siblings w.o parents and such... it would be perfect as it eschews traditional mores and keeps the good part of marriages.
  - aik 15y ago
    Sorry let me explain -- I'm not talking about a lack of marriage, but lack of a stable union. The incentive to "give up" is so much stronger when you can just leave when (not "if") life's ubiquitous unpredictable and uncontrollable difficulties arise. So naturally there's a much greater chance of not having that positive environment...
    - r00fus 15y ago
      And what I'm saying is that the PACS (the french civil union) is actually a very strong contract, just not bound up with traditional titles and roles like {husband=breadwinner,wife=homemaker}. In fact today, over 95% of civil unions in France are heterosexual couples: "Although originally intended for same-sex couples, currently in France the majority of couples taking advantage of its law are now heterosexual couples who for one reason or another choose civil union rather than marriage, and that more heterosexual couples are opting for civil union rather than marriage. In fact, this trend was already in place in 2000, with 75% of unions between heterosexual couples (42% the previous years) and 95% in 2009." If these folks didn't have the stability of an enforceable social contract (and tax benefits), most probably wouldn't marry either.

Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago

Good thing. But being gay this never bothers me.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

rednaught 15y ago
Maybe the Philippines and Indonesia don't represent most of Asia, but illegitimacy has become a very obvious problem in the last decade there. The only reason divorce is not more common is because an annulment in the Philippines represents an astronomically prohibitive barrier for most citizens.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Divorce and annulment are not the same things in legal terms. Filipino law does not provide for divorce. I'd also suggest that legalities are hardly "the only reason" divorce isn't more prevalent. As the OP suggests, tradition, societal expectations, and welfare have a lot to do with it as well.

bennesvig 15y ago

George Gilder's "Naked Nomad's" is a great book studying single men in America. Unmarried men own the majority of bad statistical categories to be in. Higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates. No society wants that burden.

bobo888 15y ago
This could also mean that women avoid getting married to men who are prone to "higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates". For example, how many women would really get married to a hobo?
- tsotha 15y ago
  Yeah, selection bias. Not just shiftless hobos, either. As a man you're going to have a harder time finding a wife if you're sick or have unhealthy habits (like obesity or heavy drinking). Edit: I expect the same is true for single women, too. I doubt single women live as long as their married counterparts on a statistical basis.
notahacker 15y ago
On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either, yet the Economist article paints them as some kind of Western demographic advantage. I haven't read the book so I wouldn't know whether the Gilder successfully separates cause from effect when examining unmarried men, but extrapolating his conclusions to Asia may be difficult anyway. On the one hand it may be rather more socially unacceptable to be unmarried over a certain age in Asia but on the other, unmarried men at the bottom of the social pile will perhaps be heartened by the relative prevalence and social acceptability of the sex industry. Then you have the vast differences between crime and suicide rates in general.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either,... True, but the crude statistical basis fails to account for wealth (and to a lesser extent race). In the US, marriage is for rich people. Since the children of rich people fare well in general, the bias here is obvious. I'd love to see stats comparing children born out of wedlock holding income and race fixed.

thevivekpandey 15y ago

"So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India." It is not fair to label a trend as "Asian" when you need to exclude China and India.

sliverstorm 15y ago
What would you label it as then? SingaJapaTaiwaVietnian? Besides, you can always argue that the trend simply hasn't penetrated the larger entities yet, but will in the future.
- idiopathic 15y ago
  East Asian would do just fine. Just because the largest land mass in the world contains lots of people does not mean we have to label them together.
g123g 15y ago
Actually the first trend of delayed marriage age is now very much evidence in India. Working professionals are marrying at quite a late age - 35 for boys and 30 for girls is now very common. This is very quickly going to turn into the rejection of marriage trend mentioned in the article. So in case of India it is only a question of when not if.
- fullmoon 15y ago
  Makes me wonder of the biological implications for the children to-be-born
- gnufied 15y ago
  Where are you pulling that data from? The Article makes no mention of average marrying age for Indians. Anecdotally,as a middle class Indian - I see average marrying age for Males around 27-30 and for females 25-28. And again, Indian values are quite different from Japanese, Chinese or Thai values.

EGreg 15y ago

Yes, an aging population might be worrisome on the surface, but I find overpopulation more worrying. Therefore, I am happy that people in really populated countries are having less babies overall! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE Longer (but more boring) version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=relat...

bobo888 15y ago

Is it really the women who are avoiding marriage? Do this experiment: go to a newspaper stand and look for magazines about weddings. Look for books about marriage. I have never ever seen one addressed to men (there are ones which seem to be, but on a quick glance I actually think they were written to feed the women's ego), which means IMHO that men wouldn't spend money on subjects like these. Meanwhile you sholdn't be surprised to find at least half a dozen for women. So I really really doubt that men are more willing to marry EITHER. I would actually dare to say that men were (and still are) the ones who don't really care about marriage.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
If someone likes marriage as a concept and a form of art, doesn't mean they want to be married themselves, now and with all the implications. By analogy: many women enjoy and write slash stories about male homosexuality, which they obviously can't participate in. Same for wedding stories, dresses and shots.

lionhearted 15y ago

I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions that require a geography suitable to isolationism, long term peace has historically been achieved through your country or one of your ally's having military supremacy over the rest of your neighbors. Obviously, diplomacy can keep the peace for long periods of time, even human lifetimes, but eventually incidents happen when there's a hothead in one government, and then that's when the military supremacy determines whether you get attacked or not. Anyways, I've found the more a country renounces war and gets further away from it, the more birth rates go down. You get an explosion of commerce and art for ~30 to ~70 years, and then the society self-destructs. No longer forced to confront mortality and with no externally unifying cause, people start living for luxury, pleasure, and consumption. They stop having children. Birth rates fall off. Eventually, this destroys a country's economy, the military supremacy fades, and one of their neighbors comes in and cleans house, and the cycle begins anew. This has happened many times through history. It's happening in Japan right now. If I became an advisor to anyone in the Japanese government, I'd advocate two things as chief priorities - (1) exceedingly good relations with China, and (2) re-militarize. Then join the next war they can on America's or China's side. Combined with some standard messages of nationalism/strength/growth/unity, birth rates would almost certainly increase.

amitutk 15y ago
Your theory fits with continued economic growth of United States.
sliverstorm 15y ago
I actually really agree with you. But- I don't think Japan can re-militarize without essentially declaring war on America. Part of the treaty we set up at the end of WWII and all. Wait... Maybe that means the reason they are declining is because we neutered them...? P.S. I suspect the reason your theory has not been explored much in public writings is because it has an implied support of continued military activity, funding and dominance, which is a very unpopular position in the US today. Ironically, probably because we reside exactly in the part of your described cycle corresponding with military decline!

Shenglong 15y ago

I smell a business opportunity.

nazgulnarsil 15y ago
its called human trafficking and organized crime is way ahead of you.

gamble 15y ago

A friend of mine has lived in Japan teaching one-on-one English lessons for a number of years. A good chunk of his customers are recently married women. Their husbands don't want them to work, but with nothing to do at home they end up taking English lessons out of a desperate need to find something mentally stimulating to pass the hours.

wyclif 15y ago

It would have been useful if this article had taken into account the fact that the laws of certain SE Asian countries (i.e., the Philippines) do not provide for divorce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Philippines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Ph...

patrickgzill 15y ago
However annulments are increasingly easier to get. Cost about $4K USD from what I understand and a lot of paperwork.

emanuer 15y ago

I am married to a Japanese and live here right now, so I can only comment on the situation of the country. I will try to give an economical assessment of the situation. As you might be aware Japan had a “lost decade” during the 90s. It experienced almost no growth of the GDP. There are many theories as to why, but the most convincing one is: The Japanese “Baby Boomers” retired during this decade. In fact the percentage of workers in the population (age 15-64) decreased by 5.6% during this time, as the number of retirees increased by 10.7%. http://goo.gl/kVZxB http://goo.gl/kVZxB What does this have to do with anything? / What happens when you have fewer people in the expected working age? 2 things happen: 1. More people have to work 2. People have to work longer The official retirement age for Japanese is 63/61 (M/W), the effective retirement age is 69.5/66.5 http://goo.gl/s9slK http://goo.gl/s9slK (very interesting graph) My wife held a managerial position before our son was born, amongst her friends hardly any of them want to stay single, they simply don’t have a choice. If they want to sustain their current life standard, marriage would be impossible. One man working has a hard time providing for his wife, kids, paying for a decent home & the mandatory elderly taxes. The taxes are almost 2000 USD per person / year, no matter if employed, or not. And those are just to pay for the pensions; insurances, social etc. come on top of that. Many women still life / moved back in with their parents, even in their late 40es. It is not because they want to, or cannot find a partner (many of them look quite stunning). The pensions simply don’t suffice and they feel obliged to support their parents. The same holds true for many men. I very much disagree with the statement that women in Japan enjoy their single life so much, as they choose not to marry. I have yet to meet a Japanese woman, who will state this. Compared to Europe, where this kind of ideology is quite common. Edit: Japanese women are expected to do 90% of the housework, where as American women will “only” do 60% of the work. http://goo.gl/qj64W http://goo.gl/qj64W This fact and the very big distance Japanese develop for their spouses are certainly not helping. http://goo.gl/QlAfx http://goo.gl/QlAfx Surprisingly no women I ever conversed with, complained about this lack of love between a married couple, on the contrary it is expected by the women. And it often leads to problems in marriages with foreigners. Edit #2: If my experience with the Japanese Culture is in any way representative employing more men in the military will be the worst thing imaginable. The country has a deficit of 180% /GDP and every person in the army is one person less doing productive work to keep country afloat. Edit #3: When the "Baby Boom" generation will retire in the United states, do you expect the country to sustain a positive GDP? This would mean that every person working will have to work harder and produce more just to reach 0 growth. Something the Japanese managed to do. The only solution to this is immigration, something Japan is battling against.

peteretep 15y ago

> in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married In Bangkok, 20% of the women you see in couple on streets are part of a woman-woman couple, holding hands - usually one with short hair and a shirt, and one with long hair and a dress - something I've never seen as prevalent anywhere else in the world, and something the locals don't look twice at.

dramaticus3 15y ago

> English riots ... whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect stop reading there

deleted 15y ago

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NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago

Seems to me that the article missed the most central point. Let's start with a little, simple, relevant background: (1) In the past, e.g., in tribal or agricultural communities, women had children whether they really 'wanted' to or not. (2) Now in more industrialized countries, a significant fraction of women have some options. Some women still have children but some women do not want to have children and do not. (3) The change in number of children per woman is a 900 pound gorilla in the room: The article mentioned numbers under 2 children per women with a rate a low as 1 child per woman. There is some recent data that Finland is at 1.5 children per woman. Of course, for any rate much under 2, each 20 years or so the population will be going down significantly. "Get your old houses, furniture, dishes, baby clothes, etc. cheap, cheap, cheap!". So, net, heavily women who don't want to have children won't. These women will be 'weak, sick, dead limbs on the tree' and will be pruning their genes from the tree. What will be left are women who, given the choice, actually, effectively WANT to have children. The big point: After a few such generations, we will be left with a much smaller population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have children. Then the population will start growing again. One more big, surprising point: We are now, in much of the world, in the most rapid change in the gene pool of the last 40,000 or so years. Where did the 40,000 come from? Humans walked out of Africa back there somewhere. At one point, ballpark 40,000 years ago, they reached, say, India. One branch went west to Western Europe, and another branch went east to China and Japan. Mostly the two branches haven't much mixed since then. Okay, at the common branch, ballpark 40,000 years ago, what were women like? Well, take women from Japan and women from Western Europe. Take some 'characteristic' in common, say, desire of a major fraction of the women, given an economic opportunity, not to have children. Now, start in either Japan or Western Europe and count genetic 'changes' on this 'characteristic' going backwards in the tree to the common branch, about 40,000 years ago, and, then, continuing to count changes, going forward in the other branch of the tree to the present. So, if on this characteristic the women in Japan and Western Europe are close, that is, have few changes, then on this characteristic the common ancestor 40,000 years ago has still fewer, that is, is closer to the women in both Japan and Western Europe than they are to each other. Net, since a significant fraction of women in both Japan and Western Europe will, given an economic opportunity, choose not to have children, that is, these women are close to each other, both are still closer to their common ancestor 40,000 years ago. So, for 40,000 years, many women had children not really because they 'wanted' to but because of economic necessity. So, now that women who don't really want to have children are being pruned from the tree, we are, on this characteristic, in the most rapid change in the human gene pool of the past 40,000 years. And, the change is VERY rapid, should have a huge effect in just a few generations, say, just 100 years, which on the scale of 40,000 years, is FAST.

known 15y ago

I believe marriage and career are mutually exclusive for women in Asia