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Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#11

Post by ben_w »

FiReaNG3L wrote: post #4
foreigner wrote: post #3

So what's the long-term plan here? A country's population is just supposed to keep growing... forever?

Yes, same as the economy, too many things depend on infinite growth (retirement funds being the main one).

Retirement funds don’t strictly requiring that, they just require that there are more workers than pensioners — you could also sort that with a higher retirement age.

(Long-Term question I’ve had: how does this compare with UBI, which is kinda like a pension but for everyone?)

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#12

Post by QuesnayJr »

FiReaNG3L wrote: post #4
foreigner wrote: post #3

So what's the long-term plan here? A country's population is just supposed to keep growing... forever?

Yes, same as the economy, too many things depend on infinite growth (retirement funds being the main one).

Most economic growth comes from technological advance. Do you expect technological advance to stop before the Baby Boomers retire? It's possible, but it's not obvious to me.

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#15

Post by mytailorisrich »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #5

Birth rates are dropping globally and we’re all living longer. The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates. With climate change likely to affect the habitability of many of our current settlements, as a species we’ll need to support massive migration shifts over the next few hundred years. So the problem kind of solves itself if we manage migration and resourc…

> The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates.

Why is that the answer? This creates its own problems as well, especially in countries like Korea that are extremely homogeneous.

Realistically the global population cannot keep growing so we'll need to adapt to stagnant and potentially decreasing (at least for some time) population at some point.

So IMHO the best long term answer for countries facing this now is to accept it and to start changing paradigms and the economy instead of trying to keep on growing the population.

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#16

Post by tonyedgecombe »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #5

Birth rates are dropping globally and we’re all living longer. The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates. With climate change likely to affect the habitability of many of our current settlements, as a species we’ll need to support massive migration shifts over the next few hundred years. So the problem kind of solves itself if we manage migration and resourc…

You just need to look at Brexit/Trump to find that most people don't like migration very much, especially at scale.

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#17

Post by Allenaz »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #5

Birth rates are dropping globally and we’re all living longer. The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates. With climate change likely to affect the habitability of many of our current settlements, as a species we’ll need to support massive migration shifts over the next few hundred years. So the problem kind of solves itself if we manage migration and resourc…

So we don't fix the stupid economic system in place and throw immigrants at the problem, all the while making their origin countries even worse since it's now deprived of the ones bright enough to qualify for skilled labour... doesn't sound like the best of plans.

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#19

Post by Cthulhu_ »

This shouldn't be a problem as long as they don't panic. It will have an increasing social cost to support the elderly, but at the same time, in theory they worked all their life to save up and contribute to (state) pensions to afford this. In theory, in practice (as a layman) it seems the younger generation pays for the older generations.

Anyway, this will happen all over the world over time; birth rate is dropping in Europe and N-America because of the current economic climate, that is, people can no longer afford to have children, because they have to work tons of hours and multiple jobs just to keep afloat. The boomers were able to buy a big house and cars in the suburbs in their early twenties on a blue collar job. Not going to lie, I'm jealous of that.

Meanwhile, I was a single white collar worker who had to live in substandard 'student' housing for close to a decade before finally my wage and the housing market aligned enough for me to be able to buy a modest house. Not complaining about the house or anything, but I already feel very privileged and since then the housing prices have gone up by another 10-20%, making owning a house and therefore the stability to start a family unreachable for a lot of people.

What I'm trying to say is, to slow down or reverse birth rate decline in 'the west', we need financial stability and security. We need to be able to afford a decent house on a single income, and to get rid of the stress of living in debt and from paycheck to paycheck.

Re: Alarm as South Korea sees more deaths than births

#20

Post by ben_w »

yaakov34 wrote: post #8

Since South Korea's birth rate has been very low for many years (e.g. there are about half as many people in the 5 to 9 age group as in the 45 to 49 group), what exactly did they think was going to happen?

One can be alarmed without being surprised. I mean, neither of my parents should have been particularly surprised by the cancer and Alzheimer’s diagnoses respectively given their ages at diagnosis, but it was still pretty alarming for each of them (and the rest of us in the family) when they were diagnosed.
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