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South Korea – A cautionary tale for the rest of humanity
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- barry-cotter 10mo ago> South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Its population is (optimistically) projected to shrink by over two thirds over the next 100 years. If current fertility rates persist, every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them. > This disaster has sources that will sound eerily familiar to Western readers, including harsh tradeoffs between careers and motherhood, an arms race of intensive parenting, a breakdown in the relations between men and women, and falling marriage rates. In all these cases, what distinguishes South Korea is that these factors occur in a particularly extreme form. The only factor that has little parallel in Western societies is the legacy of highly successful antinatalist campaigns by the South Korean government in previous decades.
- miroljub 10mo agoThere's nothing wrong with a sinking population as long as the following is true: - no replacement brought from outside to combat the decline - no obligation for the "society" to take care of non-ancestral elderly
- jasonpeacock 10mo agoGrowing up (born in late 70s), all I heard was “OMG OVER POPULATION” and how the planet can’t support the projected N billion people who will be living on it. Now the birth rate actually slows down to correct itself and we’re not all breeding like rabbits, that’s a bad thing? This feels like a capitalist concern, “we won’t have enough workers to produce goods and then consume them!”
- MSFT_Edging 10mo agoThe system at large hasn't been great at forward planning so the whole pyramid shape might collapse. Elderly care is basically going to wipe generational savings from the 20th century off the map and all that wealth will be reallocated to PE.
- ForHackernews 10mo agoIs AI going to take all the jobs, or isn't it?
- antisthenes 10mo ago> Elderly care is basically going to wipe generational savings from the 20th century off the map Probably for the best. Currently most of that wealth is being hoarded by the top 0.1%, at the expense of 8 billion people having to deal with global warming for the foreseeable future (e.g. - centuries). If that's the best humanity can do with wealth, then burn it all down. As long as we keep some advances from medicine (vaccines, dentistry) and technology which aren't as energy intensive, it should all work itself out in the end.
- BobaFloutist 10mo agoI mean elder care is unlikely to wipe out billionaires as much as low-single-digit-millionaires
- antisthenes 10mo agoWhat's going to wipe out billionaires is lack of a highly-educated workforce, because no one is having babies. And no, you can't completely solve this by immigration (because the demographic crisis is global). They might still stay billionaires in absolute terms, but a lot of their wealth will be wiped out as companies struggle to sell their goods to a population with reduced purchasing power (since we're too busy taking care of elderly folks)
- dmm 10mo agoIt's possible to have both overpopulation(too large of a population for a given metric like water, energy, pollution, etc) and demographic collapse(too many old people, not enough young workers). It's not intuitive but they are separate phenomenon. The reaction to overpopulation concerns probably discouraged people from having kids but it's unlikely to be the main cause.
- croes 10mo agoOne is a problem of humanity, the other of capitalism. Capitalism needs constant growth
- lan321 10mo agoNot even capitalism. Every economic system has pensions and healthcare costs rising with age, coupled with a decreased productivity.
- croes 10mo agoYou decreased productivity of the elder, as a society we are getting more and more productive. We create more and more billionaires. Productivity isn’t our problem, distribution is.
- lan321 10mo agoI see these as separate issues. On a macro scale you want to see country wide economic statistic numbers go up, regardless of who the money gets to in the end. When your population's age isn't evenly distributed it causes spikes in productivity and costs associated with the elderly which makes the metrics go down. Combined with short term politics that are not incentivized to prepare for it, but rather to play hot potato with it, it makes for interesting situations. If, in the worst case, the country is functioning paycheck to paycheck, you have every member of the workforce supporting multiple elderly and children via taxes, since their taxes were already spent on X or stolen long ago during the productivity boom.
- HDThoreaun 10mo agoCapitalism needs private property and free markets. Everything beyond that is cultural
- dragonwriter 10mo agoCapitalism does not need and has never had free markets, though some arguments for capitalism being ideal rest on the assumption of free markets, along with a stack of other idealized assumptions, like human behavior conforming to rational choice theory.
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- seltzered_ 10mo agoOverpopulation is still a concern when considering biodiversity, groundwater loss, etc. The latest UNEP report includes it - see page 37 from https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7 https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7 -> https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/902187bf-eac4-41a0-b19c-2e3b4ef6ba34/content https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/902187bf-ea... "Among the major global environmental crises – climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, and pollution and waste – population growth is most evidently a key factor in biodiversity decline. This is largely due to increased demand for food production, which leads to agricultural expansion and land degradation (Cafaro, Hansson and Götmark 2022). As the population grows and consumption rises, fewer resources and less habitat are available for non-human species (Crist 2019). Overpopulation occurs when the total human population multiplied by per capita consumption surpasses the capacity of sustainable ecosystems and resources. Although the global human population continues to grow, per capita consumption is increasing at a faster rate. To the extent that people are disrupting natural habitats and degrading ecosystem services for future generations, despite regional heterogeneity, some research suggests that most of the world’s nations may be considered overpopulated (Lianos and Pseiridis 2016; Tucker 2019)" Specifically going back to 70s overpopulation concerns, thing shifted with the Green Revolution / Norman Borlaug but it came at the cost of reducing groundwater supply and reducing agricultural diversity. See 'The Globalization of Wheat' and https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/groundwater-and-climate-crisis-solutions https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/groundwater-and-c...
- swat535 10mo agoWithout enough children, who will be taking care of you when you are older? All of society and industrial functions require young people.
- yongjik 10mo agoLess consumer demand means fewer jobs. When people can't find good well-paying jobs, they become pretty unhappy, and they won't be magically enlightened and out of misery by being told it's the capitalist wheel turning. Capitalist concern is human concern.
- mangodrunk 10mo agoI see slowing birth rates as a net positive. People in these comments are considering to enslave women like The Handmaid's Tale before even asking if it’s a problem.
- koakuma-chan 10mo ago> Career-motherhood conflict Anyone tried to move away from this model where there is two people of opposite gender, living together as a family, working, and raising child(ren) at the same time? Why not have dedicated facilities that handle raising children professionally?
- justonceokay 10mo agoLike an orphanage? I think people like raising their children
- koakuma-chan 10mo agoYes, like an orphanage. I understand that some people may like raising children, but that ignores the fact that most people don’t receive education how to do that properly.
- justonceokay 10mo agoI suppose in this facility they would have special access to the knowledge and practice of how to raise a child
- nomdep 10mo agoMaybe they could go there only half of the day and we could call those places "Schools"
- Yossarrian22 10mo agoThe word “some” is doing some heavy lifting there
- nake89 10mo agoThis sounds completely dystopian.
- stephen_g 10mo agoAs bad as that sometimes is, have you heard the stories of people who grew up in orphanages? In general it was worse than having below-average parents… That’s a big part of why a lot of the world has moved from institutional care to foster systems.
- FridayoLeary 10mo agoNorth Korea may well win by simply waiting. Don't flag me for this, i'm just playing devils advocate here. One of the main arguments i've heard against the narrative that the feminist movement freed women to do whatever they want is that instead they are now expected to work for a living. Many women want to have a career and don't want a family, so fine. But many that do find themselves unable to do so. The fact is that once only one member of the family had to go out to work now it's both. I know you can poke holes in that argument, but i feel it has some substance. Of course one comment can't cover any nuance, you would need a book for that. The article even touches onto this effect i described but fails to investigate it at all. If you want women to raise families you can't also want them to have careers. You can probably draw a venn diagram of how those 2 things can overlap.
- beepbooptheory 10mo agoWhy is this particularly a problem for women? Seems like this would apply to both genders?
- echelon_musk 10mo agoMen can't have children.
- iamflimflam1 10mo agoMen can care for and raise children.
- bsowl 10mo agoMen and women play two different, complementary, and equally necessary roles when rearing children. Still, rearing children is more time-consuming for the woman than it is for the man.
- pseudalopex 10mo ago> Men and women play two different, complementary, and equally necessary roles when rearing children. Numerous studies and several meta analyses found no significant differences between children raised by 1 man and 1 woman, 2 men, or 2 women. Studies or interpretations which found differences made errors such as not controlling for divorce.[1] [1] https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-wellbeing-of-children-with-gay-or-lesbian-parents/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali...
- brutus1213 10mo agoI fear SK is a harbinger of what's to come in other developed western countries. Companies seem to follow each other in getting more out of workers. When jobs and career become the most important thing (for survival, professional satisfaction or lifestyle), then family life suffers. Even with superb (albeit costly) child care that I avail, my wife has to throttle down her career to put taking care of the kids first, while I prioritize income generation. I have to put considerable thought into how I spend quality time with my kids (including taking a risk that a delayed email response will have professional costs for me). But I feel far more fortunate than my wife (who has to pay a heavy toll forgoing her professional aspirations). Society needs to evolve to do better to support working parents and caregivers. I think small scale entrepreneurship might be a solution to the current corp craziness. Also, need to ensure lifestyle creep doesn't occur. Easier said then done.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoCould you share, if only for reference and comparison, where you live? I'm assuming, because of the missing work/life balance, that you live in the US? It always seemed crazy to me that there still are societies and countries out there not offering more support to new parents, and even existing parents. It's literally what makes the country survive long-term, and without new children, you'll obviously end up in stagnation. So why not make it really easy and worry-free?
- hollerith 10mo agoThe way the US supports parents is by having an economy that produces high-paying jobs for most young adults willing to work hard. Since the fertility rate in the US is significantly higher than the rate in the Western Europe, I conclude that this works pretty well.
- matthewaveryusa 10mo agoSeems to be working so well all those demographic numbers are going up and to the right! That correlation between wealth and number of children is staggering it's almost causal if only I could prove it. Let's double down on it!
- aurareturn 10mo agoMaybe I don't know enough about human biology or sociology but it seems like at some point, the population will drop low enough that natural resources is high per person and people will start having many more kids again. Am I crazy for thinking this? Our generation might be the generation where resources can't sustain the population. Hence, people naturally have fewer kids. Zoom out to the macro level and it just seems like humanity is adjusting to the amount of available resources per capita.
- cyber_kinetist 10mo agoWe already have an abundance of natural resources (at least... for the developed countries) The problem is that they aren't evenly distributed enough, to the extent that a lower population cannot counter the increasing wealth inequality.
- aurareturn 10mo agoWe already have an abundance of natural resources (at least... for the developed countries) I'm not convinced this is true. You can blame the billionaires who own the vast majority of the wealth but that's mostly due to the stock market giving them that value on paper. Physical resources stay finite.
- logicchains 10mo ago>to the extent that a lower population cannot counter the increasing wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has nothing to do with it; some of the countries with the lowest wealth inequality like Northern Europe have the lowest birthrates. A hundred years ago wealth equality in most countries was much higher than now and people were much poorer, yet they were still having many more children than people today.
- slibhb 10mo agoI don't believe that low birth rates have anything to do with "natural resources". That seems like a crank argument to me.
- delichon 10mo ago
- gethly 10mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 10mo agoI'm sorry... the very feminist South Korea?
- nemomarx 10mo agoSouth Korea has both a fairly active feminist movement (although small - you can look up their 4b push and etc) and a very active anti feminist political wing. A guy was pardoned for stabbing a retail worker who cut her hair short, there's a lot going on over there.
- relaxing 10mo ago“didn’t read article, going to toss off an ill considered remark anyway” at its finest.
- gethly 10mo agohttps://www.amazon.com/Womens-Education-Fertility-Behaviour-Demographic/dp/9211512956 https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Education-Fertility-Behaviour-...
- matthewaveryusa 10mo agoLet's take the beautiful state of Massachusetts where I live. For foreigners: it's a liberal mecca, a pocket of Americans with a yearning for european lifestyle. Let's look at the government from a systems perspective and say that we prioritize individuals based on dollars spent on them, shall we? - How much does the state spend for a pre-k child? <10k/year/child - An incarcerated inmate? >100k/year/inmate - Drug-use rehab? >50k/year/user-seeking-rehab - How much does that leave parents to pay? >30k/year/child (again average, any place where there's a job it's closer to 50k pre-tax) We don't prioritize children and our societies are actively hostile towards them in terms of dollars spent. As simple as that.
- aurareturn 10mo agoDoesn't explain countries like Japan, China, SK where drug use is extremely low and incarceration rates are far lower. Still no babies.
- matthewaveryusa 10mo agoThat's a fine argument, but if we're trying, let's start by spending on it first. We're america, that's what we do when we have a problem.
- binary132 10mo agoActually what America usually does first is prioritize GDP growth over the interests of natural American citizens. I expect that trend to continue.
- HDThoreaun 10mo agoI find it really hard to buy that this is the reason people have 0 kids. Less sure, but if youre worried about cost youll just have 1 instead of 2 or 3. Seems to me that some people are just less interested in having kids now because theyd rather do other stuff.
- jakubmazanec 10mo agoRaising kids is expensive, and today young people can't afford their own home - how can they have children? Sure, other things may also be affecting this, but IMO raising inequality correlates very well with lower birth rates (at national level); anecdotally, all my friends with high income are having at least two kids.
- FBISurveillance 10mo agoSay what you will about Hungary but I think it came up with some great incentives for future parents: income tax cuts. If you have 4 kids you don't pay income tax for life.
- bjourne 10mo agoMaybe... How much should childless people have to pay for other peoples' children?
- GlitchInstitute 10mo agomore than people who have children? that's logical. you get cuts for the hard work you're doing.
- robocat 10mo agoThe childless should pay enough to ensure there are younger people to do the work of supporting the childless when retired. Using foreigners to fill a demographic shortfall is unsustainable/shortsighted. That said, I'm in New Zealand and too many young adults emigrate because (A) our economy sucks and (B) richer economies like to employ NZ citizens (NZers love international travel/work).
- general1465 10mo agoInteresting, according to data, it did absolutely nothing for fertility rate https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Hungary/Fertility_rate/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Hungary/Fertility_rate/
- jacquesm 10mo agoMore misogynist posts?
- irilesscent 10mo agoPlease elucidate, my personal takeaway from this post was how women are treated unfairly which leads to lower birth rates. The article goes into depth about this.
- password54321 10mo agoLess social cohesion: https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998 https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12... Then there is dating apps that essentially made it near impossible for men that fall below the median: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01361/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01361/ I'm sure economics plays some role here but I personally wouldn't emphasise it.
- aurareturn 10mo agoDating apps allow women to more easily access men of higher value while higher value men can access a greater number of women.
- password54321 10mo agoJapan has an average IQ of 106, I'm sure a fair portion of that 40% isn't exactly 'low quality' in terms of genetics. Dating apps are also mostly about photos.
- aurareturn 10mo agoYea but those men with 106 IQ on average lose out to men with 120 IQ and good looking on dating apps, right? And the vast majority of those 106 IQ men can't move somewhere else where their IQ advantage comes into play. Passport bros are a thing but they're a very small (but growing) part of the male population.
- dachworker 10mo agoMaybe I'm weird, but does anyone else have worries about what future their prospective children would inherit? In particular things that worry me: 1. the growing geopolitcal turmoil which is likely to eventually descend into a great war of sorts, the footage coming out of Ukraine is horrifying, 2. climate change isn't going to be dealt with and again, lots of violence will ensure because of that, almost certainly, 3. not sure what to think about AGI, but I'm not entirely dismissive and at best it seems like a dual use technology, 4. a GATTACA-type future where the super rich figure out a way to birth super humans with perfect genetics and top 0.001% IQs. All of those make the future look so unappealing.
- graemep 10mo agoI think kids born now will inherit a much better world than in the past. What sort of world did a child born in Europe in 1900 or 1930 inherit? What about a black child born in the US in 1950, or South Africa in 1960? What about a child born in China in 1950 or (what is now) Bangladesh in 1960 or Sri Lanka in 1970? Their children and grand children will have a much better life.
- dachworker 10mo agoMy grandparents were all born in Europe between the two world wars. Actually, despite humble origins they all had a fairly prosperous life. Even though I have much more education than they did, I don't think I can ever achieve the same level of prosperity as they had. Like, I certainly cannot afford a family of 12 children. Nor can I afford to buy the amount of land that they acquired, and certainly not by working the same kind of jobs they did.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoThe poorest people have the most children, and they are not starving; they're usually obese. What has changed is that your definition of "afford children" has come to encompass a vast amount of requirements that your grandparents did not have.
- 999900000999 10mo agoA bunch of things are at play here. This is actually a good thing for personal autonomy. Instead of accidentally having kids you can't afford, due to modern science, it's completely optional. The article alludes to this, but the government previously promoted smaller families. Just a few generation ago the birthrate was considered too high. Realistically to have a growing population you probably want to have around an average of 3 children per couple. This is economically impossible for most people though. No one has a stable job anymore. We're all temps and gig workers. If you just do it anyway, and find it's a struggle... Society blames you and calls you careless. The path of least resistance is to just skip having a family.
- derf_ 10mo agoSouth Korea went through an astounding period of economic growth. In 1961 its per-capita income was US$93 (inflation-adjusted). Ghana, one of the poorest nations in Africa, had more than double that (US$190). In 2024, Korea's had grown to US$36,624. That is almost 40,000% growth in a single lifetime. It is hard to conceive of in most places where GDP growth averages 1...2% per year. The difference between working hard to get ahead and trying to sit out and keep doing what you were always doing was literally the choice between affluence and destitution. So no wonder you have a population hyper-focused on their careers who pushes what children they have as hard as they can, so that none of them have any time for family now. The opportunity cost of anything else was enormous. The positive news (if it can be called that), is that this level of growth cannot continue, so something will have to change.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoThis is trivially fixed by paying people to have and raise children (edit: pay them more than the cost of the children). That no government does this implies to me that it's not really a huge emergency. That this idea doesn't even enter the public forum implies to me that people are still more terrified of maybe-eugenics than they are of falling birth rates, so again it's not that pressing. Edit NB: paying people more than the cost of the children would cause a lot of poor or dumb people to have kids just for money, so you'd ideally have some standard to meet before you get this money, which is where the eugenics comment applies
- irilesscent 10mo agoThe article lists several examples of government programs from different regions that pay people to have kids and their efficacy.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoSorry, I was unclear. I know they pay or give tax breaks to some extent. I meant pay near or even above the cost of raising the kids, i.e. make having kids a net financial benefit. As far as I can tell even the most generous policy is not even close to this.
- maxglute 10mo agoWealthy MENA countries functionally does this, and their TFR is either below replacement or trending to below replacement. And they have other pushers like religion and cheap migrant labour / nannies to incentivize large families. The TLDR is I think state demographic planning cannot positively incentiivize >2 kids. Unless cohort is extremely trad/religion pilled to have as many kids as possible. At some point need to negative incentivize, i.e. taxes, limits on wealth transfer or additional burdens for not hitting family quota. Probably even more unsavory demographic programs, i.e. birth increased by 2% after roe vs wade overturned. But forcing people to start families is harder than forcing them abort.
- sungho_ 10mo agoThey say no childbirth means no children. But must children be such an inconvenience? Even if Korea ceases to produce human infants, AI children may be born in their stead. Or, through reverse-aging, the elderly could become the new children.
- Gud 10mo agoThe problem is the same everywhere - The masses rely on income from their occupation, while the ruling elite rely on capital typically amassed by their forefathers, olden day aristocrats. And income from work is stagnating.
- samyar 10mo agoSo basically, to save the world countries need to help mothers that work or woman that might want to have kids. because looks like the biggest factor is a sexist and extreme work culture.
- sumalamana 10mo agoThe old addage is true. It takes a village to raise a child. It is therefore no surprise that our contemporary unnatural way of life and organization of society is not conductive to the continuation of the species.
- johnea 10mo agoJust in my lifetime, the world population, an simultaneously the US population, has tripled. The world's economic output and productivity are at all time highs. Natural resources are at tipping points of extreme exploitation, and toxic output is causing other massive tipping points of natural destruction. And somehow, the population going down is a big problem? To put it bluntly, this is total bullshit! If you take the world's most hateful pricks out of the picture, there is no shortage of anything. The problem is not an availability of resources, it in who gets to keep them. The best thing that could happen to ease the impact of our human footprint, would be for the population to go down. Then we wouldn't have to tolerate some of the stupidest ideas in the modern world, like flying people to mars! Fix where the fucking money goes! Then we can accept the population reduction for what it is, the greatest trend to emerge in recent decades...
- HK-NC 10mo agoAs racist as it sounds, to me, I'm not looking at the numbers as a sum of the human race entirely. Both in terms of loss of peoples (I dont like seeing ethnic groups diminished) but also because I dont think india or africa picking up the slack for the west and southeast asia is some skin deep inconsequential issue.
- Thomasrosalina 10mo ago[dead]
- Thomasrosalina 10mo ago[dead]