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> ...revive a flagging birth rate. Just about every developed nation has this problem today and no one has an answer. It seems no amount of money can be thrown

> ...revive a flagging birth rate. Just about every developed nation has this problem today and no one has an answer. It seems no amount of money can be thrown at the problem as people just don't want as many kids as they used to. And I'm not sure they wanted so many of them back then either but rather lived with the consequences of their actions as birth control wasn't nearly as available. To face the problem we need to really consider how to make people far more productive in the fields where it really matters and we face a logjam. That's healthcare and hospitality/services for aging and end of life people. Today's methods and approaches will obviously not work down the road since the human capital simply won't be there. The current solution of desperately importing human capital, almost exclusively low value human capital, in the hopes that enough of them and/or their offspring will be able to and willing to change adult diapers, go shopping, and cook meals for the resident elderly is clearly causing social issues of their own right now and appears destabilizing and unsustainable. Governments need to open up innovation in the healthcare industry especially as it pertains to elderly and aging people. We need automation in the elderly care industries.

bobthepanda 2y ago
with Japan the problem is well known; women can have career progression or kids but rarely both, due to both cultural factors like sexism as well as the general long working hours. Spreading the parental burden is not popular; the environment minister a few years ago got in controversy for taking his paternal leave for two weeks, despite the fact that on paper he is legally entitled to an entire year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world/asia/japan-koizumi-paternity-leave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world/asia/japan-koizumi-... Japan has had the lowest labor-hour productivity of any G7 nation for five decades: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ In such a system it is no wonder that people are not having kids, especially since Japanese wage growth is stagnant because of the poor productivity.
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  The "women can have career progression or kids but rarely both" problem is not just a problem in Japan. It is probably unavoidable if all real work is done in offices or factories. Things are getting better with work from home; and it may be that progressively more advanced virtual office technologies are what can actually help us turn the corner here.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    In the case of Japan there is active, heavy discrimination against women, particularly pregnant women. The very first ruling that firing a woman for pregnancy was discriminatory only happened in 2017. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170203/p2a/00m/0na/011000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170203/p2a/00m/0na/01... 20% of women have reported maternity harassment in Japan. https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/ https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/
    - solidsnack9000 2y ago
      In countries where this does not happen, the TFR has nevertheless fallen. I believe this is a case where people are overindexing on something specific to Japan in order to explain an effect that is far more general.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        The effect is far more severe in Japan. Japan ranks at 192 out of 204 according to the UN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate?wprov=sfti1#Country_ranking_by_international_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
        solidsnack9000 2y ago
        While the absolute difference in rank of course occurs in steps of 1, the difference in TFR between the ranks is much smaller. Replacement is a TFR of about 2.1 and few modernized countries reach that. France has a relatively high value for a modernized country -- its TFR for 2022 is listed as 1.79 (rank 124) at the source you cite. Japan's TFR in 2022 is listed as 1.26 (rank 199), while we have 1.46 for Germany (rank 172), 1.41 for Norway, 1.33 for Canada and 1.32 for Finland. If progressive policy in the area of women's employment were a significant factor in TFR, the relatively large difference between France and Finland or Canada (both quite progressive countries) and the relatively small difference between Japan and Finland are both hard to explain. If we look at the 2024 figures, which seem to be what you pulled for the ranking (Japan's ranking is higher in 2024 than in 2022, interestingly), then we have 1.8 for France, 1.6 for the UK, 1.5 for Germany, 1.5 for Canada, 1.5 for Norway, 1.4 for Finland and 1.3 for Japan. These seem to be provisional figures, though -- 2024 is not over -- I'm not sure we should take them as the basis for our discussion.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>no one has an answer. We all know what the answer is, we just don't want to admit it: Poverty. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to see that the poorer countries have higher birth rates. The richer you become the less babies you will have; Japan is the 4th largest economy in the world and they have the cratering birth rate to match. The problem is rightfully nobody wants to live in poverty.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  The problem isn't poverty but hyper competition. Everyone can see the cost/benefit of everything needed to give their child the best shot. They compare their resources to the resources needed to compete in the top~5%. In Asia it's tutors, after school school etc. In America it's funding the kind of hobby that looks good on a college application. A century of propaganda is that there is no place for average people anymore, which is statistically ignorant at best.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > We all know what the answer is, we just don't want to admit it: Poverty. So close, yet so far. The actual solution is to allow children to be a tangible benefit to parents. Those in impoverished countries have more children, not because of poverty itself, but because poverty means they have strong incentive to put the children to work and reap the benefits of that labour. Children make them richer (not rich, but richer than they would be without children). In our society, children generally make the parents poorer. To the point that "think tanks" love to make it known exactly how much poorer a family can expect to be. Forcing the first world into poverty, but without changing laws and other social norms, wouldn't make much difference as the children would still be left to be useless lumps who do nothing but sit around in a school all day. Who wants to produce a useless lump? And if you do for some reason, your backyard woodworking shop is just as good at producing useless lumps at a fraction of the cost.
  - kredd 2y ago
    I agree about making children to be a net benefit for parents, but at the same time it’s hard to make it net benefit. It’s a biological problem - limited time window when you can have children and socially accepted (let’s randomly say 20-35). If you want above replacement level, a couple needs to have 3 children, so have to sacrifice 6 years (pregnancy + 1st year). I’m just spitballing numbers here, so that’s about 40% of your younger years that are gone. In every single rich country, you have so many more opportunities to find fulfilment. To make it a net benefit you have to convince people having 3 children is better than 0, 1, or 2. And it’s very tough when you know the amount of sacrifices one has to make. In our countries we obviously don’t have the cultural or religious push to have my kids anymore. And younger generation wants it even less. The easiest way is to switch to “you have to have” children society, which sucks, and I wouldn’t want that either. I do think this problem will escalate in the next 10 years and people will take it more seriously since it’s starting to impact everyone economically.
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
Structuring the economy to depend on an ever increasing birthrate feels like a ponzi scheme to me. Obviously there is an upper limit. We don't know what it is, but someday we'll hit it and the scheme will come crashing down. It's painful in the short term, but in the long term maybe it makes more sense to let the population level off to a stable point that's somewhat short of the maximum number of humans we can squeeze onto Earth.
- rayiner 2y ago
  We don’t need an “ever increasing birth rate.” But definitionally any sustainable society needs a birth rate that is, on average, around 2.1. Which is a figure that no developed society is currently attaining. It would be one thing if societies were trying to temporarily reduce birth rates to shrink the population, but that’s not what’s happening. There’s no reason to believe the rates will just bounce back once the population hits whatever you think is a sustainable number.
creer 2y ago
> Just about every developed nation has this problem today and no one has an answer. Perhaps no developed nation has the problem to a degree extremely urgent to fix. Certainly some people think it's urgent. Certainly also I don't see it as top priority anywhere. Certainly the third, some people are gleeful about what they see as a necessary anti-growth factor.
AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
[dead]
solidsnack9000 2y ago
I suspect that what will really make the difference is work-from-home. We know it's not resources -- we are much better off than preceding generations. It may be that without a sense of a home and being in the home, it's hard for people to feel like taking the next step of having children, so they don't. People who have children today are looking at a deal along these lines: - Send your kids away early in the morning to be looked after by strangers. - Go somewhere else to be looked after by strangers yourself. - After 10 hours (including commuting), come home to talk to your kids. - Wonder about what's really going on in their lives. - Do this for 20 or so years for each kid; maybe thirty years in total. I can see why people who consider this reflectively -- whose parents did this and whose grandparents did this -- might simply opt out.

bobthepanda 2y ago

with Japan the problem is well known; women can have career progression or kids but rarely both, due to both cultural factors like sexism as well as the general long working hours. Spreading the parental burden is not popular; the environment minister a few years ago got in controversy for taking his paternal leave for two weeks, despite the fact that on paper he is legally entitled to an entire year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world/asia/japan-koizumi-paternity-leave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/world/asia/japan-koizumi-... Japan has had the lowest labor-hour productivity of any G7 nation for five decades: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ In such a system it is no wonder that people are not having kids, especially since Japanese wage growth is stagnant because of the poor productivity.

solidsnack9000 2y ago
The "women can have career progression or kids but rarely both" problem is not just a problem in Japan. It is probably unavoidable if all real work is done in offices or factories. Things are getting better with work from home; and it may be that progressively more advanced virtual office technologies are what can actually help us turn the corner here.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  In the case of Japan there is active, heavy discrimination against women, particularly pregnant women. The very first ruling that firing a woman for pregnancy was discriminatory only happened in 2017. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170203/p2a/00m/0na/011000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170203/p2a/00m/0na/01... 20% of women have reported maternity harassment in Japan. https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/ https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/
  - solidsnack9000 2y ago
    In countries where this does not happen, the TFR has nevertheless fallen. I believe this is a case where people are overindexing on something specific to Japan in order to explain an effect that is far more general.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      The effect is far more severe in Japan. Japan ranks at 192 out of 204 according to the UN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate?wprov=sfti1#Country_ranking_by_international_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
      - solidsnack9000 2y ago
        While the absolute difference in rank of course occurs in steps of 1, the difference in TFR between the ranks is much smaller. Replacement is a TFR of about 2.1 and few modernized countries reach that. France has a relatively high value for a modernized country -- its TFR for 2022 is listed as 1.79 (rank 124) at the source you cite. Japan's TFR in 2022 is listed as 1.26 (rank 199), while we have 1.46 for Germany (rank 172), 1.41 for Norway, 1.33 for Canada and 1.32 for Finland. If progressive policy in the area of women's employment were a significant factor in TFR, the relatively large difference between France and Finland or Canada (both quite progressive countries) and the relatively small difference between Japan and Finland are both hard to explain. If we look at the 2024 figures, which seem to be what you pulled for the ranking (Japan's ranking is higher in 2024 than in 2022, interestingly), then we have 1.8 for France, 1.6 for the UK, 1.5 for Germany, 1.5 for Canada, 1.5 for Norway, 1.4 for Finland and 1.3 for Japan. These seem to be provisional figures, though -- 2024 is not over -- I'm not sure we should take them as the basis for our discussion.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>no one has an answer. We all know what the answer is, we just don't want to admit it: Poverty. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to see that the poorer countries have higher birth rates. The richer you become the less babies you will have; Japan is the 4th largest economy in the world and they have the cratering birth rate to match. The problem is rightfully nobody wants to live in poverty.

throwaway48476 2y ago
The problem isn't poverty but hyper competition. Everyone can see the cost/benefit of everything needed to give their child the best shot. They compare their resources to the resources needed to compete in the top~5%. In Asia it's tutors, after school school etc. In America it's funding the kind of hobby that looks good on a college application. A century of propaganda is that there is no place for average people anymore, which is statistically ignorant at best.
randomdata 2y ago
> We all know what the answer is, we just don't want to admit it: Poverty. So close, yet so far. The actual solution is to allow children to be a tangible benefit to parents. Those in impoverished countries have more children, not because of poverty itself, but because poverty means they have strong incentive to put the children to work and reap the benefits of that labour. Children make them richer (not rich, but richer than they would be without children). In our society, children generally make the parents poorer. To the point that "think tanks" love to make it known exactly how much poorer a family can expect to be. Forcing the first world into poverty, but without changing laws and other social norms, wouldn't make much difference as the children would still be left to be useless lumps who do nothing but sit around in a school all day. Who wants to produce a useless lump? And if you do for some reason, your backyard woodworking shop is just as good at producing useless lumps at a fraction of the cost.
- kredd 2y ago
  I agree about making children to be a net benefit for parents, but at the same time it’s hard to make it net benefit. It’s a biological problem - limited time window when you can have children and socially accepted (let’s randomly say 20-35). If you want above replacement level, a couple needs to have 3 children, so have to sacrifice 6 years (pregnancy + 1st year). I’m just spitballing numbers here, so that’s about 40% of your younger years that are gone. In every single rich country, you have so many more opportunities to find fulfilment. To make it a net benefit you have to convince people having 3 children is better than 0, 1, or 2. And it’s very tough when you know the amount of sacrifices one has to make. In our countries we obviously don’t have the cultural or religious push to have my kids anymore. And younger generation wants it even less. The easiest way is to switch to “you have to have” children society, which sucks, and I wouldn’t want that either. I do think this problem will escalate in the next 10 years and people will take it more seriously since it’s starting to impact everyone economically.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

Structuring the economy to depend on an ever increasing birthrate feels like a ponzi scheme to me. Obviously there is an upper limit. We don't know what it is, but someday we'll hit it and the scheme will come crashing down. It's painful in the short term, but in the long term maybe it makes more sense to let the population level off to a stable point that's somewhat short of the maximum number of humans we can squeeze onto Earth.

rayiner 2y ago
We don’t need an “ever increasing birth rate.” But definitionally any sustainable society needs a birth rate that is, on average, around 2.1. Which is a figure that no developed society is currently attaining. It would be one thing if societies were trying to temporarily reduce birth rates to shrink the population, but that’s not what’s happening. There’s no reason to believe the rates will just bounce back once the population hits whatever you think is a sustainable number.

creer 2y ago

> Just about every developed nation has this problem today and no one has an answer. Perhaps no developed nation has the problem to a degree extremely urgent to fix. Certainly some people think it's urgent. Certainly also I don't see it as top priority anywhere. Certainly the third, some people are gleeful about what they see as a necessary anti-growth factor.

AlgorithmicTime 2y ago

[dead]

solidsnack9000 2y ago

I suspect that what will really make the difference is work-from-home. We know it's not resources -- we are much better off than preceding generations. It may be that without a sense of a home and being in the home, it's hard for people to feel like taking the next step of having children, so they don't. People who have children today are looking at a deal along these lines: - Send your kids away early in the morning to be looked after by strangers. - Go somewhere else to be looked after by strangers yourself. - After 10 hours (including commuting), come home to talk to your kids. - Wonder about what's really going on in their lives. - Do this for 20 or so years for each kid; maybe thirty years in total. I can see why people who consider this reflectively -- whose parents did this and whose grandparents did this -- might simply opt out.