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Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

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Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#241

Post by rajup »

selimthegrim wrote: post #136
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

Usually, the story told here is South Korea copying Pakistan’s five year economic plan in the early 60s. Also you should specify whether you mean West or East (presumably West) Pakistan’s population numbers. The western half had 51m people in 1960.

There is no East Pakistan AFAIK, or atleast not for more than 50 years.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#242

Post by [deleted] »

sacrosancty wrote: post #197
ckylee wrote: post #188

Korean politics is blaming feminism for this phenomenon, but it's really a mix of all the issues in the comments, as well as sexual crime injustices (bare minimal sentencing for sex crimes) and women afraid of bringing a child into such society. It's just a natural evolutionary reaction.

Has there ever been a society in history that was so bad that "women afraid of bringing a child into such society." was a thing? In the very short term, sure, but forever?

[deleted]

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#243

Post by kamaal »

lettergram wrote: post #146
decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

As soon as you hit 30-32 the rate of issues conceiving and issues with the baby grow exponentially. How long have you been seeing this trend? There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring. The general reasoning is fairly straight forward - if one thing damages your DNA or what have you, then it might be anywher…

>>There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring.

Basically anything that can kill bacteria, mosquitoes or rats, can also kill tissues in your body. Nobody knows what tissues because body is a complicated structure of pathways. Most of the things we take in have an entry through mouth and nose, but no real exit path. They could kill things in your body.

Now many times that's tissues in your pancreas, or thyroid glands. Which perfectly explains diabetes and thyroid epidemics in countries like India.

Add to this the micro plastic pollution.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#244

Post by aszantu »

decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

if you're eating a lot of plants, look into phyto-hormones, those might be preventing fertility. There are a few anecdotal stories from the carnivore/keto forums, that fertility came back after cutting out carbs.

Edit: Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#245

Post by pigtailgirl »

-- Our study suggests that even modest habitual alcohol consumption of more than 5 units per week had adverse effects on semen quality although most pronounced associations were seen in men who consumed more than 25 units per week. Alcohol consumption was also linked to changes in testosterone and SHBG levels. [a]

Women in the highest alcohol consumption group (14 units or more per week) had 37 pregnancies in 307 cycles, and those who did not drink had 1,381 pregnancies in 8,054 cycles. These figures equate to an 18 percent decrease in the probability that the women would conceive. [b]

South Korea handily dominates the list of countries, drinking more than twice as much liquor per capita as any other country. [c] --

a) https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/9/e005462 b) https://www.bmj.com/content/354/bmj.i4540.full c) https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-drink-most-liquor-...

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#246

Post by yomkippur »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #87
faeriechangling wrote: post #62

It’s eerie to think of how hard South Korea is going to crash in the future. These past years may have been it’s peak.

The closest thing we have to a crystal ball is Japan, which is a few decades ahead in demographics, and it's been much more prolonged slump than sudden crash there.

but japan has largely been successful at flattening the curve while Korea is in a serious crisis here. if I have to guess, when there are more older people than young, the society destabilizes.

immigration is going to happen regardless of koreans want it or not and I finally understand why the Korean governments has been pushing soft power for so long, they were planning for this scenario.

I don't think the outcome is going to be as bad as some nationalists make it out to be, for sure most immigrants are going to come from other Asian countries but I do not see it say reaching the dysfunctional state of Western Europe with mostly muslim/african migrants. This is not to say that Southeast Asians won't be pushed to the fringes and experience discrimination that puts them on the same anti-host country culture like in France for example.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#247

Post by Thorrez »

Dalewyn wrote: post #202
DSingularity wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not one kid and try to use the excess parenting bandwidth to equip him/her to face the new world and maybe even fix it a bit?

Not to detract, but "one kid" would only make the problem worse because a woman needs to give birth to at least two children in order for population counts at large to maintain parity. That is, one kid per woman halves the population. If the axiom is at least maintaining, ideally growing the population, every woman needs to give birth to at least two and ideally three or more kids. Of course, this isn't to say I'm te…

I don't understand. How is 1 biological kid worse than 0 biological kids? It sounds like decafninja is likely planning on having 0 biological kids.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#248

Post by ryanSrich »

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

We’re lucky enough to afford childcare and healthcare, but I can’t imagine how anyone making significantly less can do it.

Healthcare costs are ongoing, and obscene. Routine newborn vaccines are around $900 per visit even with partial insurance coverage. Not to mention any unforeseen hospital visits that will force you to hit your deductible in the first two quarters of the year ($10k per child in our case).

In most tier 2/3 cities in the US you can expect daycare to cost $1,000-$1,800 per child per month.

In any tier 1 city, especially west coast cities like Seattle and SF, expect to pay at least $2,000/child per month.

On top of that, you’ll have a mortgage. With median housing prices around $1.2-$1.6m and rates in the mid 5% you’re looking at anywhere from $6,500-$8,000/month for a mortgage depending on taxes.

So right out of the gate, you’re at $10k of post tax income just going to daycare costs and a mortgage. You likely have other costs that equal at least $1,000/month. And that’s for 1 kid. Add another kid and you’re easily approaching $15k per month.

If you do the math, you’ll need to make at least $250k if you have one kid considering at least 40% is going straight to taxes (aka military funds since we get nothing in this country for the insane amount of taxes we pay).

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#249

Post by yomkippur »

aszantu wrote: post #244
decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

if you're eating a lot of plants, look into phyto-hormones, those might be preventing fertility. There are a few anecdotal stories from the carnivore/keto forums, that fertility came back after cutting out carbs. Edit: Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.

so soy protein, dried or boiled soybeans, tofu, tempeh, and meatless soy products....but Koreans have been eating it forever. perhaps the processing in mass industrial scale has impact?

yeah I heard of the plastic theory and I think the air pollution in Korea is an overlooked factor. The fine dust particulates must have some impact on the reproduction system.

maybe even Ramen? Koreans consume a ton of instant ramen. High rate of alcohol?

I am interested to hear more about the impact of plastic. It is unavoidable and its widely used in Asia.

...what I really think is contraceptives is having an impact and that we are politically blocked from discussing it. What happened in Korea since 2010s? Huge amount of contraceptive pills were sold as society adopted a more laissez faire attitude towards sex. 10 years later those women are not trying to have babies and cannot. Is this too far fetched?

We are seeing the same issue in most western countries that correlate with high contraceptive usage. There is just less children being born but not an issue where contraception is tough.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#250

Post by lbwtaylor »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #121
decafninja wrote: post #106

My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time. Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affe…

Regarding twins, doctors like to implant two embryos to give a better chance of successful insemination per procedure.

I can confirm what another commenter wrote - what I was told by my doctor is that this is very uncommon now, at least in California, where the guidance is to only do it in very limited circumstances.

On the other hand, even one IVF embryo has much more likelihood of splitting and creating twins than natural. I saw the science at 10X chance but a quick Google search shows slightly lower.

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