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What can a country do to get birth rates up? I'm sure there are analyses out there about why Japan's is low, but what can they (or other countries) do to pump b
by chimineycricket 4y ago
What can a country do to get birth rates up? I'm sure there are analyses out there about why Japan's is low, but what can they (or other countries) do to pump birth rates up?
- akg_67 4y agoIs there any developed country that has been able to increase birth rate? Declining birth rate is a feature of developed countries with large middle class, only very rich or very poor people want to have more kids in such countries.
- hotpotamus 4y agoIsrael. https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-many-children-in-israel/ https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-m...
- sph 4y agoIs that a trend or a blip?
- twelve40 4y agoit seems consistent and steady for a few decades (consistently high, not growing), but it's a small country that developed under very special conditions
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThat special condition being a decent size population of Haredi Jews and Muslims who have much higher fertility rates than other groups.
- throwuxiytayq 4y agoI’m not sure; it sure seems like women statistically aren’t too eager to make tons of babies when actually given a choice. Not a cat you’d want back in the bag either. Perhaps we really are screwed on that front.
- GFlaneur 4y agoAllow immigration.
- hsn915 4y agoThat's not a solution.
- namdnay 4y agoMaybe not, but at least It delays the issue for another 30-40 years, until every country in the world is as developed as we are now
- raddan 4y agoWhy not?
- rayiner 4y agoJapan is completely unequipped to take immigrants at any significant scale. It’s a delicately balanced society that depends heavily on people being socialized into the same rules from birth. Even if Japan could socially and economically integrate those immigrants, which is doubtful, it wouldn’t be Japan anymore. Tokyo would become like London or New York or Toronto, chaotic places where nobody knows the rules because they just got there five minutes ago. Indeed, it’s doubtful to me that immigration is a fix even for Western Europe. Most European countries have failed to integrate their growing Muslim populations. They’ve imported an underclass, one that’s going to be increasingly furious that they’re stuck in socioeconomic ghettos. For whatever reason, European countries are starkly different from the United States, where immigrant groups have long enjoyed similar economic mobility to the native born (which continues to be true for the contemporary wave of Latin American immigrants). More generally, it just outsources the problem to immigrants. You’re compensating for a culture that has become broken in a key respect by importing people from a culture that isn’t b
- Apocryphon 4y agoHow chaotic is Toronto?
- astrange 4y agoBecome poorer, more religious, and get people to work less. I don't believe there's any examples of modern countries doing it. Providing lots of childcare benefits doesn't seem to help, though it does make the children you do get healthier.
- ImHereToVote 4y agoChildcare benefits don't work for the same reason steep prison sentences don't work. Nobody does a cost benefit analysis of "years lost"/"benefit of murdering someone". I'm sure there is a positive correlation with "home ownership, and low debt" with children however. Because that would make you feel secure about your future.
- satvikpendem 4y agoMaybe not true for criminals, but many people don't have kids precisely because they did a cost benefit analysis on having them and decided it was too expensive to do so.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThat correlation is due to people doing the cost benefit analysis. Do I want to deal with the costs of raising a child in an apartment? Do I want my child to bear the costs of having to change schools? Do I want my child and I to bear the costs of losing income while still paying lots of education/auto/home debt? Unfortunately, at some point the benefits to not having a child at the individual level become costs at the societal level once enough opt out, and that becomes costs again at the individual level, on a sufficiently long timeline. Of course, these net costs/benefits can flip from being costs at 10 years to benefits at 30 years and back to costs at 150 years. Maybe excess population leads to excess resource consumption and entropy generation. Maybe some of the excess population figures out how to mitigate excess consumption, and buys a little more time. Who knows?
- walkhour 4y agoIncidentally what Afghanistan has done, with the claim that it will raise the birth rate. Women are banned from universities.
- hsn915 4y agoLegalize polygyny for rich men who can financially support multiple wives. Japan's population decline appears to be caused not by women giving birth to fewer children, but by an increase in the number of childless women. It appears that 1 in 3 women remain childless into their forties, compared to 1 in 20 in prior decades. Women remain childless for several reasons, but my guess is they can't find a man who can support them financially and/or who they find themselves attracted to.
- WJW 4y agoIs "we don't want to" not a valid reason anymore?
- hsn915 4y agoWhat is it that you don't want to? Give birth?
- WJW 4y agoChildren. Edit to make it a more substantive point: me and my spouse are currently 35 and 36 years old and after much deliberation together (as well as observations of friends who did have children) we don't think our lives would be substantially improved by having children.
- hsn915 4y agoThe vast majority of women who end up single and childless into their forties don't do it by choice. At least not directly. They _want_ to find a partner and have children; they just didn't succeed at making the right decisions in their life to end up in that desired destination.
- Dalewyn 4y agoArranged marriages, known as "omiai", are still a thing in Japan, especially if someone is desperate for a marriage. If a man or woman doesn't marry, that is in the vast majority of cases by choice.
- atemerev 4y agoSurvive in the next world war; baby booms are usually what happens next.
- ThalesX 4y agoProbably create a culture that promotes family values, makes housing, food and healtcare affordable, and denounces individualism and consumerism. Something that won't be very popular with modern audiences.
- astrange 4y agoNo, we have those and they also have low birth rates. It doesn't appear to work. It's like how the countries with the least sexism have even fewer women in STEM.
- ThalesX 4y agoCan you give me some examples of where we already have this?
- astrange 4y agoFinland? Japan? South Korea but they're pretty consumerist.
- therealdrag0 4y agoDoesn’t Japan check most of those boxes?
- hsn915 4y agoJapan already does a lot of that. Housing, food, and healthcare are not only affordable but taken for granted by most people. Individualism is a problem but the culture as a whole is not very individualistic.
- bytehowl 4y agoIs housing in Japan affordable? From what I have heard, it might be OK outside major cities, but the most desirable jobs seem to be overwhelmingly centralized in those cities.
- deleted 4y ago
- sho_hn 4y agoWe discuss this issue a lot, be it about Japan, Korea, Germany or even stretches of the US. I wonder about a more global perspective on this, and whether it's actually truly a problem in the long run. I assume the unspoken assumption of many who worry about population decline in the developed countries is that it will cause the world to regress in some way (either via instability or without) as the rest pick over the bones and important infrastructure and knowledge get lost. But must this happen? Can't the developed countries perhaps pass their developed traits on to other up-and-coming countries to also stabilize and then slow their growth, and eventually we arrive at a stable and peaked, or perhaps smaller global pop the planet can actually more easily sustain with a sensible energy mix? Population decline often seems like a hopeful opportunity to me, if we'd stop obsessing about the fortune and minmax of single nations and start putting humanity first.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago>But must this happen? Can't the developed countries perhaps pass their developed traits on to other up-and-coming countries to also stabilize and then slow their growth, and eventually we arrive at a stable and peaked, or perhaps smaller global pop the planet can actually more easily sustain with a sensible energy mix? Not if you promise the productivity of people in future generations to the current generation, but then find out the productivity of people in future generations falls short (perhaps due to insufficient people).
- nervousvarun 4y agoThis isn't just a Japan problem...this is a worldwide problem. Testosterone/sperm levels are declining everywhere (and not just in humans). https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/news/a47476/dog-sperm-unhealthy-pet-food/ https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/news/a47476/dog-spe... https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-steady-decrease-among-young-us-men https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-s... https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-debate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-d...
- astrange 4y agoHuman birth rates aren't declining because men are infertile now. You got millions of those things and you only need one of them to make it. Take a zinc pill if you care.
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoThis is like saying you only need one particle in the accelerator.
- Apocryphon 4y agoAs Wheeler considered, you need only one electron.
- shlant 4y agowhat evidence do you have that population decline has anything to do with T levels? it's a pretty well known and established phenomenon that as societies modernize, people choose to have less children. I have not seen evidence to suggest the same amount of people are trying to have children and just can't (especially as fertility technology becomes more accessible)
- felix_n 4y agoI think focusing on birth rates puts attention on the wrong thing when it comes to talking about Japan or other post-industrialized countries. Even the replacement birth rate (i.e. keeping the current population) is at best just-barely sustainable from an environmental and quality of life perspective. Having too many retirees is indeed an issue, so I think the solution is to have fewer retirees. Realistically, a good amount of people could work well past the typical pension age without much of a sweat. They may not want to, but the cold fiscal reality is what it is.
- petodo 4y agoI don't really understand why is declining population problem in any country and needs some solution. If you have properly set pension system population decline is completely irrelevant and beneficial for everyone.
- namdnay 4y agoA significant part of economic growth is the assumption that there will be more consumers tomorrow. If that goes, general growth goes, and with it the investments that usually fuel retirement
- moogly 4y ago> If you have properly set pension system In large parts of Western Europe, at least, these systems were robbed and then slaughtered in the 90s.
- rowanajmarshall 4y agoYou can't have a proper pension system if you don't have enough young and middle-aged workers to pay for it, and to work all the jobs necessary to keep a society running.
- rwmj 4y agoBut you're allowed to invest worldwide, and across the whole world the population is still growing.
- petodo 4y agoyou can, you can have your pension in savings investments without anyone's else financial contribution it's just that most of the world is using archaic thorough/continuous model for pension system which is basically pyramid scheme everyone would avoid if it were used in any other area, but somehow is acceptable for pensions if you really worry about pensions, you could start with children contributing to their parents pension and nobody contributing to childless people, that should solve declining population very fast, your can combine it with raising retirement age and raising fees everyone pays towards their own retirement
- ISL 4y agoWait. It is my perpetual guess that evolutionary pressure alone will be sufficient in the long run. Our society is now strongly selecting for parents who want kids. That choice has only been a choice for a few generations. Ten generations from now, I think there will be a much larger fraction of the human population who strongly prioritize having kids.
- raffraffraff 4y agoNot sure I agree. I don't think there are selection pressures on humans any more. I come from an extremely long line of organisms that had offspring. In fact, it goes back to the beginning of life forms that could sexually reproduce. Are you saying that many of my sentient ancestors who understood where babies came from didn't actually want kids? It's possible I suppose. But I think my reasons for not wanting kids are less to do with my DNA and more to do with experiences I had during my life. Also, if you're taking about modern changes and their effects on human behavior, what traits do paid sperm donation / surrogacy select for? Maybe the concept of having that choice is new, but lots of people technically have the choice but don't "know it". They follow cultural norms. All of their friends have babies, so they have babies. Has something happened to the DNA of all these Japanese people who don't want kids? Or is it a cultural shift? I'm betting on the latter.
- twelve40 4y agothe only question is, does "wanting kids" get passed down or needs to be re-acquired every time
- xeromal 4y agoIt might be self-balancing?
- phyphy 4y agoRelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution
- jackothy 4y ago
- ilyt 4y agoWhen you can't afford getting a house/apartment big enough to have kids comfortably, and the job eats most of your life getting kids just looks like massive problem. So fixing that would be a good start.
- satvikpendem 4y agoNothing (that aligns with classically liberal values). Offering child rearing incentives like free childcare, education, outright money, etc does not seem to work, such as in the Nordic countries. People who grow and experience wealth simply don't want to have kids. If you truly want to raise the birth rate, at any cost, you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, raise religiosity, and ban contraception and abortive services for not just women but everyone. But your country's economy would suffer over and above the slowed birth rate you'd otherwise have. In the future though, with artificial wombs, I'd imagine we'd go through a Brave New World type scenario where the government grows children themselves (and maybe has the bright idea to stratify the children's gender, race and intellectual capacity as well, but the latter is unlikely if we have AI and robots that do the jobs instead of needing perpetually content Street cleaners).
- lotsofpulp 4y ago>you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, and raise religiosity. The important part of this is making sure women lose their agency over having children by both removing access to effective contraception and their financial independence.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago>Offering child rearing incentives like free childcare, education, outright money, etc does not seem to work, such as in the Nordic countries. People who grow and experience wealth simply don't want to have kids. Pay large sums of money to promising young intelligent couple to have kids. (and no, the govt should not do it)
- satvikpendem 4y agoThat still doesn't work unless the sum of money is quite large, over and above the cost of raising the child. And even then, there are many wealthy families, millionaires and billionaires, who still don't have kids. Having children is simply not as elastic of a good as people imagine it to be.
- 4y ago
- slothtrop 4y agoAll 1st world countries have a stagnant fertility rate, some just make up for it with immigration. In fact global population is projected to stagnate in 100 years. Why would you want to pump birth rates up?
- kerpotgh 4y ago[dead]
- lvass 4y agoSharia, coverture et al.
- bemmu 4y agoFor Japan, one practical thing would be the wider availability and acceptance of epidural anesthesia. Only ~5% use it here vs. 60+% in USA.
- midoridensha 4y agoIt couldn't hurt (pun intended). The problem is that insurance doesn't cover it for some bizarre reason. And some people seem indoctrinated to believe that they shouldn't avoid the pain of childbirth.
- gadders 4y agoHungary has a plan. Given that one of the big problems with large families is their affordability, this could work: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-hungary-and-youll-pay-no-income-tax-for-life.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-...
- anon291 4y agoThey ought to embrace one of a myriad of cultures and belief systems that have historically proven to have proper birth rates. Instead, most modern 'developed' countries are running large-scale social experiments with never-before-tried social policies.