5 ms·

There's just a lump in the population vs. age graph and you're fixating on the back side of the lump as if it's inevitably going towards zero. After the lump p

There's just a lump in the population vs. age graph and you're fixating on the back side of the lump as if it's inevitably going towards zero. After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. Wanna guess what happens in that welcoming environment? My guess is people feel inclined to make some babies. I don't understand why people tend to treat these low fertility rates as some kind of invariable biological dysfunction. These aren't infertile masses of people; they're perfectly capable of multiplying like rabbits. The planet has shitloads of people, maybe we're finally reeling things in from an overshoot and are on the inevitably pendulum-like path towards population stability. There's no reason to panic unless you've got substantial evidence these people are physically incapable of having children. Edit: How about some DATA: go to https://population.io https://population.io, select Rep. of Korea, plug in some age/gender b.s. and scroll down to "Age Distribution" at the left column. Now look to the left of ~20yo (younger than 20), it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? There's a uniform rate of Korean babies per year under 20 years old. To the right of this, there's a massive lump of elderly people with a slightly smaller lump of middle-aged people. There's no reason to believe this horizontal line left of 20yo won't just continue into the future; it looks quite stable for the last ~20 years.

rednerrus 4y ago
It'll be too late by then. You need to make these choices 35 years ago in order for their population to continue.
- pengaru 4y ago
  > It'll be too late by then. You need to make these choices 35 years ago in order for their population to continue. Well look at the bright side of your unrealistic South Korea extinction scenario; no more DMZ and North Koreans will spread southward! Of course this will never happen, there is no likely scenario for South Korea to have zero inhabitants. Y'all are High-larious.
- alcover 4y ago
  I fear I agree with you. Grossly, south korean couples each makes 1 child. So its population is going 1/2. To correct that and return to previous level, every couple formed among those children would have to bear 4 children. I think they won't and it looks grim.
  - labster 4y ago
    Why do you assume the current population is the correct one? There’s a reasonable argument to be made that humans are over the Earth’s carrying capacity nearly everywhere, and are causing environmental and social damage to maintain the current size. It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation. If we assume humans are biological organisms, it all seems pretty normal.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      Except unlike the foxes which eat their rabbits to near extinction, and therefore soon join them, humans can change the rules of the system they're in. Calculating the carrying capacity of the world before agriculture would have given you a much different number than after it.
      - labster 4y ago
        Okay, sure, but none of that changes what I wrote. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Nor that improvements to Earth’s habitability will be timely, nor whether incentive structures will line up to implement the changes needed.
        _aavaa_ 4y ago
        > Past performance is no guarantee of future results By that logic we shouldn't be applying arguments like "It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation".
        4y ago
tuatoru 4y ago
Wow, that site is difficult to understand. I prefer the UN's World Population Prospects 2022 website. Choose your country, chooose Probabilistic Projections, Fertility, then Births.[1] 1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/Births/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/Birt...
adverbly 4y ago
> After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. It will take 90 years for this lump to pass, and another 20 years for the newborns to grow up... you're talking about a recovery that will take a century... A century of decline seems like a pretty good reason to panic to me...
- pengaru 4y ago
  > It will take 90 years for this lump to pass, and another 20 years for the newborns to grow up... you're talking about a recovery that will take a century... More like ~53 years for all the current lumps to pass given a life expectancy of ~86.
thunderbird120 4y ago
>Wanna guess what happens in that welcoming environment? My guess is people feel inclined to make some babies. I would assume the exact opposite given that this will probably probably crank up pressure on working-aged people as more and more old people need to be supported by fewer and fewer young. I would also assume a significant exodus of the young to places with actual opportunities rather than a country sized retirement home where no one wants to invest in the future because anything built to fit the needs of the population at any given moment will be massively overbuilt in the near future.
- irrational 4y ago
  This was my exact same though while reading OP's comment. Taxes will go way up since the number of people having to support all the old people will be fewer and fewer. The increased taxes will cause people to have fewer and fewer children. It's a vicious cycle.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    Fortunately tax policy can be adjusted to encourage things you want to happen within a society. If taxes are punitive, tax credits for having children would lead to a baby boom based on the same logic.
    - nomay 4y ago
      I don't think it's the case, old folks will outvote the young, same as the property speculators are doing.
      - collegeburner 4y ago
        i don't think a society that allows old people to vote themselves young people's money just because there's more of them is a good one.
    - ck425 4y ago
      I'm not sure encouraging more children will help long term though. Eventually we need to figure out how to make society work without population growth.
yongjik 4y ago
> How about some DATA: go to https://population.io https://population.io, select Rep. of Korea, plug in some age/gender b.s. and scroll down to "Age Distribution" at the left column. Now look to the left of ~20yo (younger than 20), it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? Yeah, something is definitely wrong with the site because actual population pyramid data looks much more alarming: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019%EB%85%84_%ED%95%9C%EA%B5%AD%EC%9D%98_%EC%9D%B8%EA%B5%AC_%ED%94%BC%EB%9D%BC%EB%AF%B8%EB%93%9C.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019%EB%85%84_%ED%95... Or https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr... as mentioned by a sibling comment.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  Exactly. This one looks even more alarming: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/South_Korea_Population_Pyramid.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/South_Ko... Also it matches up with the article, which says 261k babies were born last year. wikimedia show about that, with ~130k male and ~130k female. population.io says 454k which is way off.
- pengaru 4y ago
  Nice catch! It looks like population.io's UN data is only real estimates up to 2010 then projections according to the Methodology pop-up. Which looks pretty divergent for the last 5 years specifically, judging from https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...
ralfd 4y ago
> it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? That the data must be wrong, there should be some small variation and it doesn't pass the sanity check of declining birth rates. > After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. I like your optimism, but do we see anything like that in the real word after depopulation? There are many shrinking cities or areas, eg Detroit in the US or East Germany (people moving to the west), and the results are hugely negative and a downward spiral. Instead of people enjoying lack of traffic congestion, shrinking cities can't afford their oversized infrastructure anymore, which begins to deteriorate from lack of upkeep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_city
lr4444lr 4y ago
After that lump passes through, you may have suffered a huge drain of adults expected squeezed so hard for child and elder care that they've since taken their productivity elsewhere.
rr888 4y ago
> After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see ... millions of Pakistanis, Egyptians and Nigerians moving there to escape their overheated, overcrowded countries.

rednerrus 4y ago

It'll be too late by then. You need to make these choices 35 years ago in order for their population to continue.

pengaru 4y ago
> It'll be too late by then. You need to make these choices 35 years ago in order for their population to continue. Well look at the bright side of your unrealistic South Korea extinction scenario; no more DMZ and North Koreans will spread southward! Of course this will never happen, there is no likely scenario for South Korea to have zero inhabitants. Y'all are High-larious.
alcover 4y ago
I fear I agree with you. Grossly, south korean couples each makes 1 child. So its population is going 1/2. To correct that and return to previous level, every couple formed among those children would have to bear 4 children. I think they won't and it looks grim.
- labster 4y ago
  Why do you assume the current population is the correct one? There’s a reasonable argument to be made that humans are over the Earth’s carrying capacity nearly everywhere, and are causing environmental and social damage to maintain the current size. It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation. If we assume humans are biological organisms, it all seems pretty normal.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    Except unlike the foxes which eat their rabbits to near extinction, and therefore soon join them, humans can change the rules of the system they're in. Calculating the carrying capacity of the world before agriculture would have given you a much different number than after it.
    - labster 4y ago
      Okay, sure, but none of that changes what I wrote. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Nor that improvements to Earth’s habitability will be timely, nor whether incentive structures will line up to implement the changes needed.
      - _aavaa_ 4y ago
        > Past performance is no guarantee of future results By that logic we shouldn't be applying arguments like "It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation".
        4y ago

tuatoru 4y ago

Wow, that site is difficult to understand. I prefer the UN's World Population Prospects 2022 website. Choose your country, chooose Probabilistic Projections, Fertility, then Births.[1] 1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/Births/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/Birt...

adverbly 4y ago

> After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. It will take 90 years for this lump to pass, and another 20 years for the newborns to grow up... you're talking about a recovery that will take a century... A century of decline seems like a pretty good reason to panic to me...

pengaru 4y ago
> It will take 90 years for this lump to pass, and another 20 years for the newborns to grow up... you're talking about a recovery that will take a century... More like ~53 years for all the current lumps to pass given a life expectancy of ~86.

thunderbird120 4y ago

>Wanna guess what happens in that welcoming environment? My guess is people feel inclined to make some babies. I would assume the exact opposite given that this will probably probably crank up pressure on working-aged people as more and more old people need to be supported by fewer and fewer young. I would also assume a significant exodus of the young to places with actual opportunities rather than a country sized retirement home where no one wants to invest in the future because anything built to fit the needs of the population at any given moment will be massively overbuilt in the near future.

irrational 4y ago
This was my exact same though while reading OP's comment. Taxes will go way up since the number of people having to support all the old people will be fewer and fewer. The increased taxes will cause people to have fewer and fewer children. It's a vicious cycle.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  Fortunately tax policy can be adjusted to encourage things you want to happen within a society. If taxes are punitive, tax credits for having children would lead to a baby boom based on the same logic.
  - nomay 4y ago
    I don't think it's the case, old folks will outvote the young, same as the property speculators are doing.
    - collegeburner 4y ago
      i don't think a society that allows old people to vote themselves young people's money just because there's more of them is a good one.
  - ck425 4y ago
    I'm not sure encouraging more children will help long term though. Eventually we need to figure out how to make society work without population growth.

yongjik 4y ago

> How about some DATA: go to https://population.io https://population.io, select Rep. of Korea, plug in some age/gender b.s. and scroll down to "Age Distribution" at the left column. Now look to the left of ~20yo (younger than 20), it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? Yeah, something is definitely wrong with the site because actual population pyramid data looks much more alarming: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019%EB%85%84_%ED%95%9C%EA%B5%AD%EC%9D%98_%EC%9D%B8%EA%B5%AC_%ED%94%BC%EB%9D%BC%EB%AF%B8%EB%93%9C.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2019%EB%85%84_%ED%95... Or https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr... as mentioned by a sibling comment.

Thorrez 4y ago
Exactly. This one looks even more alarming: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/South_Korea_Population_Pyramid.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/South_Ko... Also it matches up with the article, which says 261k babies were born last year. wikimedia show about that, with ~130k male and ~130k female. population.io says 454k which is way off.
pengaru 4y ago
Nice catch! It looks like population.io's UN data is only real estimates up to 2010 then projections according to the Methodology pop-up. Which looks pretty divergent for the last 5 years specifically, judging from https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyramid/410 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Pyr...

ralfd 4y ago

> it's a nearly horizontal line. What does that tell you? That the data must be wrong, there should be some small variation and it doesn't pass the sanity check of declining birth rates. > After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. I like your optimism, but do we see anything like that in the real word after depopulation? There are many shrinking cities or areas, eg Detroit in the US or East Germany (people moving to the west), and the results are hugely negative and a downward spiral. Instead of people enjoying lack of traffic congestion, shrinking cities can't afford their oversized infrastructure anymore, which begins to deteriorate from lack of upkeep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinking_city

lr4444lr 4y ago

After that lump passes through, you may have suffered a huge drain of adults expected squeezed so hard for child and elder care that they've since taken their productivity elsewhere.

rr888 4y ago

> After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see ... millions of Pakistanis, Egyptians and Nigerians moving there to escape their overheated, overcrowded countries.