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I contend that across the developed world, everything just got too expensive. In the two places I ‘live’, Sydney and Tokyo, young people are putting off the usu

I contend that across the developed world, everything just got too expensive. In the two places I ‘live’, Sydney and Tokyo, young people are putting off the usual life events such as getting married, having kids etc. because of unstable housing and insecure employment. 50 years ago, a dwelling was around 3-4x annual salary, now it’s 15-20x salary. You aren’t paying that off early and growing the family, even with both parents working. To even get both parents working, you need child care, which for many people costs more than one parent just staying home. Your family lives in the more established suburbs because they bought when it was affordable, so you’re miles away from them and they can’t just come around and mind the grandkids, so you’re a bit stuck. Some serious consideration needs to be made about the growing trend of wealth percolating towards the older and established parts of society in a way that didn’t used to happen, personally I believe the financialisation of housing (and basically everything else, have you seen the prices of used games lately…) is a major contributor. Nonetheless, this will all slowly grind to a halt as our major cities die out due to lack of young people when they're forced out. Sydney is already becoming a retirement village, give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it.

lethologica 4y ago
> give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it. The problem has already begun. Politicians will only begin to look at the problem in 10 years time. Then the political power will shift from Labor to Liberal, or Liberal to Labor, (and back again), and any plans to fix the issue will be blown out by billions of dollars and another decade. By then, it’s too late.
riffraff 4y ago
I think the "it's too expensive" part is a very minor part of the issue. People had way less opportunities one or two generations ago, and my parents generation in Italy bought their house with a mortgage and payed it in decades just like their kids did. What changed is expectations: you feel like you should travel before getting a kid. You should have plenty of sexual experiences before picking a partner. You should give priority to your career before settling in a given city, etc. Empowerment of women made "get married and out of your parents house" a less interesting option, education and options for people added up, and cultural shifts happened. Having children is just another bucket list item these days.
- toxik 4y ago
  Then why doesn’t the birth numbers in for example Sweden sit lower than Japan? To be clear, I take offense to explaining stagnation with women’s rights. You have made an absurd claim and backed it up with a weak argument.
  - lmm 4y ago
    > Then why doesn’t the birth numbers in for example Sweden sit lower than Japan? Once you adjust for immigration, they do.
    - brabel 4y ago
      Even with plenty of incentives for families to have children, this is correct. Practically, all of the population growth Sweden has been experiencing in the last decades is due to immigration and immigrants having kids after moving to Sweden. > Idag föds i snitt 1,88 barn per vuxen kvinna. Det betyder att Sveriges befolkning skulle minska utan invandring. (Today, an adult woman has on average 1.88 children. This means the population would decrease if not for immigration) > Idag (2023) har Sverige 10,5 miljoner invånare ... År 1950 var bara en procent av den svenska befolkningen född utomlands. 1980 hade andelen ökat till drygt sju procent. 2020 var nästan 20 procent av Sveriges befolkning födda utomlands (Today, Sweden has 10.5 million inhabitants... in 1950, only one percent of the population was born overseas. In 1980, the amount had grown to 7%. In 2020, almost 20% of the population was born overseas). > Sedan 1980-talet har mer än två miljoner människor fått tillstånd att bo i Sverige, kortare tid eller permanent. (Since the 1980's, more than 2 million people have received permission to live in Sweden, including short-term and permanently. A lot of people think that Sweden is still an homogenous country, ethnically, like Japan, which couldn't be further from the truth. If I am not mistaken, Sweden is, today, about as "mixed race" (for lack of a better word) as countries like the USA and Australia. Source: https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/samhallskunskap/individers-och-gruppers-identitet-och-relationer/sveriges-befolkning-migration-och-integration# https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/samhallskunskap/individe...
      - 4y ago
ActorNightly 4y ago
I think its more to do with less societal pressure. People at higher income levels are having less kids as well.
diceduckmonk 4y ago
> developed world There are four types of economies. Developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina. Japan has so many unique sociocultural idiosyncrasies that shape economic decisions. > Tokyo, young people... because of unstable housing and insecure employment. This couldn't be more wrong. People on minimum wage jobs in Tokyo can afford a standalone 1 bedroom apartment in the suburbs. White collar workers can pay off a house in less than 5 years if they wanted, too. The Google engineers can do it in 2, a manager probably 1. My rent's barely 5% of my income versus 30%+ of income being commonplace for young people in Bay Area / New York. Japan's labor laws are exceedingly protective of employees, and it is nearly impossible to fire a full time employee. This is why you don't hear about layoffs happening in Japan. There is still widespread expectation that employees will stay at a job for decades, if not their entire life. Unlike America where 401ks replaced pensions and workers have to take more responsibility in their retirement, pensions are still the de factor employee perk in Japan. That said, pensions are part of the problem. With demographic collapse, the pension system is growingly unsustainable and the likely solution is significant taxes increases over the next few decades. Other reasons for declining birthrates is social media. For dating, people are exposed to a lot more options which leads to decision paralysis. It's been known that people less populated areas are more likely to marry their high school sweetheart. (Accessible) travel has made less people want to settle down in their 20s and 30s. As evidence that young people have different different economic priorities, consider the prevalence of fashion consumption in Japan. There's literally a Louis Vuitton store at every major train station around Tokyo. While not at rates similar to China, the luxury goods market is continuing to grow in Japan, despite inflation and economic repercussions of COVID-19. There's 4 Celine stores in Ginza alone, which is an obscure brand to most Americans, but most young Japanese would recognize this. On any given train car in Japan, you will find a young person sporting a garment that's $500+ which is the average rent for a studio in Tokyo.
fxtentacle 4y ago
I believe the issue is not the price, but that the distribution of wealth has become highly unequal. We now have 90% who cannot afford to raise kids well. And 10% who can. But no matter how wealthy, each couple can only get pregnant once at a time. One solution would be to allow extremely rich people to marry multiple times so that they can produce more kids in parallel. But that's going to cause a lot of societal issues when marriable women become sparse for the majority of the population (see China).
cameldrv 4y ago
Not sure about Japan, but I think that there are some less talked about structural factors that contribute to the housing problems we're seeing today. 1. Housing tends to be extremely expensive in large (mostly coastal) metros. 2. College educated professionals tend to move to these cities. 3. Many small and medium sized towns and cities are experiencing depopulation, and so housing tends to be very inexpensive, but no one is buying it. So, why is this happening? The company town is dead. It used to be that someone would go to work at a company for their entire career. If that company was the main employer in town, you'd move there after college, work your career, and maybe retire to some place sunny. If you lost/quit your job, you'd probably have to move to a new town. Jobs used to be more stable, so this didn't happen often enough to be too big of a problem. The other huge issue is that two income households are now the norm. In the past, if the breadwinner needed to pick up stakes for a new job, there was the logistics of moving to a new town, but there wasn't a second job to consider. Now, if both partners are doing specialized work, they're going to need to find a city that has jobs available for both of their two different specialties. This is much easier in a city. The end result of this is that we get these huge aglomerations of people, because people need to live places where there are a huge variety of jobs within commuting distance. Less stable work and two income households turbocharge this phenomenon.

lethologica 4y ago

> give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it. The problem has already begun. Politicians will only begin to look at the problem in 10 years time. Then the political power will shift from Labor to Liberal, or Liberal to Labor, (and back again), and any plans to fix the issue will be blown out by billions of dollars and another decade. By then, it’s too late.

riffraff 4y ago

I think the "it's too expensive" part is a very minor part of the issue. People had way less opportunities one or two generations ago, and my parents generation in Italy bought their house with a mortgage and payed it in decades just like their kids did. What changed is expectations: you feel like you should travel before getting a kid. You should have plenty of sexual experiences before picking a partner. You should give priority to your career before settling in a given city, etc. Empowerment of women made "get married and out of your parents house" a less interesting option, education and options for people added up, and cultural shifts happened. Having children is just another bucket list item these days.

toxik 4y ago
Then why doesn’t the birth numbers in for example Sweden sit lower than Japan? To be clear, I take offense to explaining stagnation with women’s rights. You have made an absurd claim and backed it up with a weak argument.
- lmm 4y ago
  > Then why doesn’t the birth numbers in for example Sweden sit lower than Japan? Once you adjust for immigration, they do.
  - brabel 4y ago
    Even with plenty of incentives for families to have children, this is correct. Practically, all of the population growth Sweden has been experiencing in the last decades is due to immigration and immigrants having kids after moving to Sweden. > Idag föds i snitt 1,88 barn per vuxen kvinna. Det betyder att Sveriges befolkning skulle minska utan invandring. (Today, an adult woman has on average 1.88 children. This means the population would decrease if not for immigration) > Idag (2023) har Sverige 10,5 miljoner invånare ... År 1950 var bara en procent av den svenska befolkningen född utomlands. 1980 hade andelen ökat till drygt sju procent. 2020 var nästan 20 procent av Sveriges befolkning födda utomlands (Today, Sweden has 10.5 million inhabitants... in 1950, only one percent of the population was born overseas. In 1980, the amount had grown to 7%. In 2020, almost 20% of the population was born overseas). > Sedan 1980-talet har mer än två miljoner människor fått tillstånd att bo i Sverige, kortare tid eller permanent. (Since the 1980's, more than 2 million people have received permission to live in Sweden, including short-term and permanently. A lot of people think that Sweden is still an homogenous country, ethnically, like Japan, which couldn't be further from the truth. If I am not mistaken, Sweden is, today, about as "mixed race" (for lack of a better word) as countries like the USA and Australia. Source: https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/samhallskunskap/individers-och-gruppers-identitet-och-relationer/sveriges-befolkning-migration-och-integration# https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/samhallskunskap/individe...
    - 4y ago

ActorNightly 4y ago

I think its more to do with less societal pressure. People at higher income levels are having less kids as well.

diceduckmonk 4y ago

> developed world There are four types of economies. Developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina. Japan has so many unique sociocultural idiosyncrasies that shape economic decisions. > Tokyo, young people... because of unstable housing and insecure employment. This couldn't be more wrong. People on minimum wage jobs in Tokyo can afford a standalone 1 bedroom apartment in the suburbs. White collar workers can pay off a house in less than 5 years if they wanted, too. The Google engineers can do it in 2, a manager probably 1. My rent's barely 5% of my income versus 30%+ of income being commonplace for young people in Bay Area / New York. Japan's labor laws are exceedingly protective of employees, and it is nearly impossible to fire a full time employee. This is why you don't hear about layoffs happening in Japan. There is still widespread expectation that employees will stay at a job for decades, if not their entire life. Unlike America where 401ks replaced pensions and workers have to take more responsibility in their retirement, pensions are still the de factor employee perk in Japan. That said, pensions are part of the problem. With demographic collapse, the pension system is growingly unsustainable and the likely solution is significant taxes increases over the next few decades. Other reasons for declining birthrates is social media. For dating, people are exposed to a lot more options which leads to decision paralysis. It's been known that people less populated areas are more likely to marry their high school sweetheart. (Accessible) travel has made less people want to settle down in their 20s and 30s. As evidence that young people have different different economic priorities, consider the prevalence of fashion consumption in Japan. There's literally a Louis Vuitton store at every major train station around Tokyo. While not at rates similar to China, the luxury goods market is continuing to grow in Japan, despite inflation and economic repercussions of COVID-19. There's 4 Celine stores in Ginza alone, which is an obscure brand to most Americans, but most young Japanese would recognize this. On any given train car in Japan, you will find a young person sporting a garment that's $500+ which is the average rent for a studio in Tokyo.

fxtentacle 4y ago

I believe the issue is not the price, but that the distribution of wealth has become highly unequal. We now have 90% who cannot afford to raise kids well. And 10% who can. But no matter how wealthy, each couple can only get pregnant once at a time. One solution would be to allow extremely rich people to marry multiple times so that they can produce more kids in parallel. But that's going to cause a lot of societal issues when marriable women become sparse for the majority of the population (see China).

cameldrv 4y ago

Not sure about Japan, but I think that there are some less talked about structural factors that contribute to the housing problems we're seeing today. 1. Housing tends to be extremely expensive in large (mostly coastal) metros. 2. College educated professionals tend to move to these cities. 3. Many small and medium sized towns and cities are experiencing depopulation, and so housing tends to be very inexpensive, but no one is buying it. So, why is this happening? The company town is dead. It used to be that someone would go to work at a company for their entire career. If that company was the main employer in town, you'd move there after college, work your career, and maybe retire to some place sunny. If you lost/quit your job, you'd probably have to move to a new town. Jobs used to be more stable, so this didn't happen often enough to be too big of a problem. The other huge issue is that two income households are now the norm. In the past, if the breadwinner needed to pick up stakes for a new job, there was the logistics of moving to a new town, but there wasn't a second job to consider. Now, if both partners are doing specialized work, they're going to need to find a city that has jobs available for both of their two different specialties. This is much easier in a city. The end result of this is that we get these huge aglomerations of people, because people need to live places where there are a huge variety of jobs within commuting distance. Less stable work and two income households turbocharge this phenomenon.