9 ms·

The government and the media keep freaking out about birth rate declining but made no attempts in fixing the poor working conditions in Japan. Who wants to dat

by didip 4y ago

The government and the media keep freaking out about birth rate declining but made no attempts in fixing the poor working conditions in Japan. Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life?

natly 4y ago
Even elon strangely dismissed that obvious cause when it was pointed out under his pinned tweet https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1529125347148455937 https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1529125347148455937 (elons explanation doesn't make any sense).
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  These are fairly different arguments. Japan's working hours are traditionally brutal - 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Plus mandatory "happy" hours. It's often a financially comfortable life; but there's 0 flexibility to find an employer that allows a 9-5 workday, even if you're willing to take a pay cut. Elon is saying that high-paid professionals in the US have fewer children than the lower-middle class, which is absolutely true. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are far below replacement fertility.
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    That seems to be missing that many of those highly-paid professionals were not highly paid in their peak fertile years. Engineers maybe, but doctors and lawyers tend to spend many years in school and then interning. If you start having kids at 30, you'll usually end up with fewer total kids than if you had started at 20. The most highly paid engineers are likely those willing and able to relocate frequently, too, which brings its own challenges. Money is needed to feel secure enough to start a family, but so are stable living arrangements and social structures.
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      Having known many people who went through medical school and residency, I'm confident almost none of them would have accelerated their family plans with more money. Medical residents who work 80 hour weeks simply have less than 0 time to start a family. (And in fact, of the very few who did, it is always when the husband was a resident and the wife stay-at-home or a different career. In these cases, the finances were not a huge constraint; if nothing else, it is extremely easy to take on cheap debt as a resident.) I can't speak as confidently to lawyers and interning, but I'd be surprised if the dynamic was different.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Even if starting at 30, that doesn't explain it being < 2. There are medical interventions on both sides of the equation (birth controls and fertility treatments). Preferences are the main drivers in my opinion.
  - kurthr 4y ago
    In my experience Japan's working hours haven't been 12hr or 6-7 days a week for more than a decade due to government regulation and cultural consensus (although commutes are still very long). China's 996 work culture was still close to this, but it has died in the last couple of years and has been replaced in pop culture with "laying flat" = tang ping 007... or even "bai lan".
  - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    > Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are far below replacement fertility. If you really want a "fun" way to look at it, find an IQ vs. fertility rate chart. Only IQs of 80 and lower are above replacement.
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      Obviously true, but I had a chat with Kolmogorov and he gave some tips on how to reframe it into a politically acceptable version.
    - prirun 4y ago
      Idiocracy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Ideology gets in the way of truth on this one. One side doesn't want to admit that a lot of poor people have a good bit of free time available to them, particularly those who receive social services. The other side doesn't want to admit that middle class and up folks have been working long hours at a cost to their personal lives and development, that isn't new, but now both mom and dad are doing it and households aren't really any better off. This results in poor people with the time to make and raise children, doing so and receiving government subsidies to provide for them. The problem is the government can't give you time or your youth back so the well off just stopped having kids.
  - sbf501 4y ago
    You get the award for most subtle attempt at rephrasing the "welfare queen" myth I've heard in a few years.
    - doliveira 4y ago
      I mean, it wasn't that subtle, but yeah, subtle enough just for distraction. I don't know how the situation is in the USA, but in Brazil we have the myth of mothers having 10 children just to get more money for each child.
      - sbf501 4y ago
        Similar. It is very common to hear the right side of US politics claim poor minority women have multiple children just to get "free stuff" from the government, yet the same folks also want to make abortion illegal. Some people even claim the government will pay for your child if you are completely poor. The lies are astonishing, but the racism is necessary for their populist political message to work.
        giantg2 4y ago
        "Some people even claim the government will pay for your child if you are completely poor." Is this not mostly true? It seems government does pick up the tab for impoverished children. School, school lunch, Medicaid, SNAP/WIC, and easier to get housing as a woman with kids (both through charities and HUD housing and grants).
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Well more and more lately he has just glommed onto some popular maga/republican talking point and not thought through about how ignorant/fake they usually are.
lurquer 4y ago
> Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently most of humanity for most of recorded history. 20-something males (in Japan and, to an increasing degree in the US) are not foregoing dating and marriage due to ‘working conditions.’ The reasons are, regrettably, more complex. Indeed, in the current state we’re in, giving young men more leisure time and money would undoubtedly result in more hours spent playing with their new phones.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  ^ This guy gets it. The widespread idea that too little material wealth, and lousy working condition is what prevents family formation and procreation is one of those things that the people who inherit the earth from us (should there still be any) will be laughing in a few hundred years, just like we find it unfathomable that our ancestors honestly believed in witches and the reality of curses and magic spells.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    Consider that it's more expensive to have children have children as well. It's not so much too little material wealth as it is too little wealth to sustain the "normal" childhood. Not so long ago, kids existed as cheap labor and a retirement account. One didn't need to treat them like human beings much less provide literacy or schooling to them. Whatever functional uses they had before have been replaced by machines and and markets. Today, unless one is passing down the family company, having a kid serves no functional purpose except as a "fun" activity or cultural performance. Anyone who is having children today is choosing to invest in/burden themselves with a more expensive responsibility than previous generations had.
    - burntoutfire 4y ago
      My grandparents had 2 and 4 children respectively in communist Poland in the fifties in sixties, while living in what nowadays would be classified as abject poverty (e.g. a 6-person family living in 400 sq ft flat). Being very, very poor and having to work 6 days a week didn't stop them from starting families. It's all about what you value in live and for them children were top priority, so they made it happen, even though they came with huge sacrifices. Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.
csomar 4y ago
> The government and the media keep freaking out about birth rate declining but made no attempts in fixing the poor working conditions in Japan. I think the next century revelation will be that you should focus on individual growth rather than population growth. In our tech-oriented economy, it matters more that you have quality technology rather than quantitative production. > Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently, most of Africa.
- sct202 4y ago
  I think it's different in undeveloped countries where if you were raised with nothing, it doesn't seem bad to raise kids that way. But in developed countries, I think a lot of people would refuse to raise kids if the conditions were worse than the ones they grew up in.
- rokhayakebe 4y ago
  I am from Africa, that is changing. I dare say it has already changed. I know maybe 2 people under 50 who have more than 2 kids. Almost every first-time mother has a family plan created for her with the help of health care professionals.
  - csomar 4y ago
    Africa is big -and not a country- (where I am from, we are actually going the modern-world ageing way, even though it's still under-developed); so an anecdote-approach is not appropriate. The biggest country in Africa is still showing high birth rates: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-popul... Although it's slightly declining, but still a long way from reducing population sizes. Niger for example is population-booming: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/niger-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/niger-populat... All of Africa: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-popula...
    - bergenty 4y ago
SapporoChris 4y ago
I cannot find any sources where the government is freaking out. Can you provide some sources? I did find instances of working condition reforms and incentives. https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-things-to-know-about-Japan-s-work-reform-law https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-things-to-know-about-Ja... https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%80%99s-latest-plan-to-boost-birth-rate-Pay-people-100-000-yen-per-baby-they-give-birth-to https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%... https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf/expert/24/Policy_Briefs/PB_Japan.pdf https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf... As to your question: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birt... The current birth rate for U.S. in 2022 is 12.012 births per 1000 people https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate The current birth rate for Japan in 2022 is 7.109 births per 1000 people I'd say the number of people who date, marry or have kids is not so different from other countries.
- dymk 4y ago
  JP governments are exploring drastic options to incentivize people settling down and having kids. Tokyo is considering 100k JPY per year per kid. I’d say that looks like the government version of “freaking out”. Approx ~10k~ 1k USD per year is ~probably~ deffo not going to be enough, though.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    >100k JPY per year per kid >Approx 10k USD per year 100k JPY is 742 dollars. Which of the two numbers did you fuddle?
    - GauntletWizard 4y ago
      The first; It's 100k/Mo/kid, though other numbers have been floated[1] and the current subsidy is already 40kJPY for low-income families[2], where "low-income" is below the average[3]. [1] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220420/p2a/00m/0na/003000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220420/p2a/00m/0na/00... [2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/11/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-expand-rent-aid-families-kids/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/11/national/politi... [3] https://wagaya-japan.com/en/journal_detail.php?id=5866 https://wagaya-japan.com/en/journal_detail.php?id=5866
conscion 4y ago
My pet theory is that people don't spend much time around babies and young children when they're growing up so have less comfort around the idea of themselves being parents. This tracks with the "wealthier" pattern also because as people become wealthier, they're able to become more socially isolated. My guess is that in pre-modern times, a lot of child care would happen by various neighbors so everyone would have some experience being around small kids. Now childcare is largely a business where specific people spend everyday, all day caring for kids (daycare, pre-K, kindergarten, etc).

by didip 4y ago

natly 4y ago

Even elon strangely dismissed that obvious cause when it was pointed out under his pinned tweet https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1529125347148455937 https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1529125347148455937 (elons explanation doesn't make any sense).

bpodgursky 4y ago
These are fairly different arguments. Japan's working hours are traditionally brutal - 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Plus mandatory "happy" hours. It's often a financially comfortable life; but there's 0 flexibility to find an employer that allows a 9-5 workday, even if you're willing to take a pay cut. Elon is saying that high-paid professionals in the US have fewer children than the lower-middle class, which is absolutely true. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are far below replacement fertility.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  That seems to be missing that many of those highly-paid professionals were not highly paid in their peak fertile years. Engineers maybe, but doctors and lawyers tend to spend many years in school and then interning. If you start having kids at 30, you'll usually end up with fewer total kids than if you had started at 20. The most highly paid engineers are likely those willing and able to relocate frequently, too, which brings its own challenges. Money is needed to feel secure enough to start a family, but so are stable living arrangements and social structures.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    Having known many people who went through medical school and residency, I'm confident almost none of them would have accelerated their family plans with more money. Medical residents who work 80 hour weeks simply have less than 0 time to start a family. (And in fact, of the very few who did, it is always when the husband was a resident and the wife stay-at-home or a different career. In these cases, the finances were not a huge constraint; if nothing else, it is extremely easy to take on cheap debt as a resident.) I can't speak as confidently to lawyers and interning, but I'd be surprised if the dynamic was different.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Even if starting at 30, that doesn't explain it being < 2. There are medical interventions on both sides of the equation (birth controls and fertility treatments). Preferences are the main drivers in my opinion.
- kurthr 4y ago
  In my experience Japan's working hours haven't been 12hr or 6-7 days a week for more than a decade due to government regulation and cultural consensus (although commutes are still very long). China's 996 work culture was still close to this, but it has died in the last couple of years and has been replaced in pop culture with "laying flat" = tang ping 007... or even "bai lan".
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
  > Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are far below replacement fertility. If you really want a "fun" way to look at it, find an IQ vs. fertility rate chart. Only IQs of 80 and lower are above replacement.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    Obviously true, but I had a chat with Kolmogorov and he gave some tips on how to reframe it into a politically acceptable version.
  - prirun 4y ago
    Idiocracy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
willcipriano 4y ago
Ideology gets in the way of truth on this one. One side doesn't want to admit that a lot of poor people have a good bit of free time available to them, particularly those who receive social services. The other side doesn't want to admit that middle class and up folks have been working long hours at a cost to their personal lives and development, that isn't new, but now both mom and dad are doing it and households aren't really any better off. This results in poor people with the time to make and raise children, doing so and receiving government subsidies to provide for them. The problem is the government can't give you time or your youth back so the well off just stopped having kids.
- sbf501 4y ago
  You get the award for most subtle attempt at rephrasing the "welfare queen" myth I've heard in a few years.
  - doliveira 4y ago
    I mean, it wasn't that subtle, but yeah, subtle enough just for distraction. I don't know how the situation is in the USA, but in Brazil we have the myth of mothers having 10 children just to get more money for each child.
    - sbf501 4y ago
      Similar. It is very common to hear the right side of US politics claim poor minority women have multiple children just to get "free stuff" from the government, yet the same folks also want to make abortion illegal. Some people even claim the government will pay for your child if you are completely poor. The lies are astonishing, but the racism is necessary for their populist political message to work.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "Some people even claim the government will pay for your child if you are completely poor." Is this not mostly true? It seems government does pick up the tab for impoverished children. School, school lunch, Medicaid, SNAP/WIC, and easier to get housing as a woman with kids (both through charities and HUD housing and grants).
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Well more and more lately he has just glommed onto some popular maga/republican talking point and not thought through about how ignorant/fake they usually are.

lurquer 4y ago

> Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently most of humanity for most of recorded history. 20-something males (in Japan and, to an increasing degree in the US) are not foregoing dating and marriage due to ‘working conditions.’ The reasons are, regrettably, more complex. Indeed, in the current state we’re in, giving young men more leisure time and money would undoubtedly result in more hours spent playing with their new phones.

xyzzyz 4y ago
^ This guy gets it. The widespread idea that too little material wealth, and lousy working condition is what prevents family formation and procreation is one of those things that the people who inherit the earth from us (should there still be any) will be laughing in a few hundred years, just like we find it unfathomable that our ancestors honestly believed in witches and the reality of curses and magic spells.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Consider that it's more expensive to have children have children as well. It's not so much too little material wealth as it is too little wealth to sustain the "normal" childhood. Not so long ago, kids existed as cheap labor and a retirement account. One didn't need to treat them like human beings much less provide literacy or schooling to them. Whatever functional uses they had before have been replaced by machines and and markets. Today, unless one is passing down the family company, having a kid serves no functional purpose except as a "fun" activity or cultural performance. Anyone who is having children today is choosing to invest in/burden themselves with a more expensive responsibility than previous generations had.
  - burntoutfire 4y ago
    My grandparents had 2 and 4 children respectively in communist Poland in the fifties in sixties, while living in what nowadays would be classified as abject poverty (e.g. a 6-person family living in 400 sq ft flat). Being very, very poor and having to work 6 days a week didn't stop them from starting families. It's all about what you value in live and for them children were top priority, so they made it happen, even though they came with huge sacrifices. Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.

csomar 4y ago

> The government and the media keep freaking out about birth rate declining but made no attempts in fixing the poor working conditions in Japan. I think the next century revelation will be that you should focus on individual growth rather than population growth. In our tech-oriented economy, it matters more that you have quality technology rather than quantitative production. > Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life? Apparently, most of Africa.

sct202 4y ago
I think it's different in undeveloped countries where if you were raised with nothing, it doesn't seem bad to raise kids that way. But in developed countries, I think a lot of people would refuse to raise kids if the conditions were worse than the ones they grew up in.
rokhayakebe 4y ago
I am from Africa, that is changing. I dare say it has already changed. I know maybe 2 people under 50 who have more than 2 kids. Almost every first-time mother has a family plan created for her with the help of health care professionals.
- csomar 4y ago
  Africa is big -and not a country- (where I am from, we are actually going the modern-world ageing way, even though it's still under-developed); so an anecdote-approach is not appropriate. The biggest country in Africa is still showing high birth rates: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-popul... Although it's slightly declining, but still a long way from reducing population sizes. Niger for example is population-booming: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/niger-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/niger-populat... All of Africa: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-popula...
  - bergenty 4y ago

SapporoChris 4y ago

I cannot find any sources where the government is freaking out. Can you provide some sources? I did find instances of working condition reforms and incentives. https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-things-to-know-about-Japan-s-work-reform-law https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-things-to-know-about-Ja... https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%80%99s-latest-plan-to-boost-birth-rate-Pay-people-100-000-yen-per-baby-they-give-birth-to https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%... https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf/expert/24/Policy_Briefs/PB_Japan.pdf https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf... As to your question: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birt... The current birth rate for U.S. in 2022 is 12.012 births per 1000 people https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate The current birth rate for Japan in 2022 is 7.109 births per 1000 people I'd say the number of people who date, marry or have kids is not so different from other countries.

dymk 4y ago
JP governments are exploring drastic options to incentivize people settling down and having kids. Tokyo is considering 100k JPY per year per kid. I’d say that looks like the government version of “freaking out”. Approx ~10k~ 1k USD per year is ~probably~ deffo not going to be enough, though.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >100k JPY per year per kid >Approx 10k USD per year 100k JPY is 742 dollars. Which of the two numbers did you fuddle?
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    The first; It's 100k/Mo/kid, though other numbers have been floated[1] and the current subsidy is already 40kJPY for low-income families[2], where "low-income" is below the average[3]. [1] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220420/p2a/00m/0na/003000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220420/p2a/00m/0na/00... [2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/11/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-expand-rent-aid-families-kids/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/11/national/politi... [3] https://wagaya-japan.com/en/journal_detail.php?id=5866 https://wagaya-japan.com/en/journal_detail.php?id=5866

conscion 4y ago

My pet theory is that people don't spend much time around babies and young children when they're growing up so have less comfort around the idea of themselves being parents. This tracks with the "wealthier" pattern also because as people become wealthier, they're able to become more socially isolated. My guess is that in pre-modern times, a lot of child care would happen by various neighbors so everyone would have some experience being around small kids. Now childcare is largely a business where specific people spend everyday, all day caring for kids (daycare, pre-K, kindergarten, etc).