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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

#271

Post by somenameforme »

dougmwne wrote: post #5

It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…

I think there are many strong arguments against this, but most are debatable. So I'm going to focus on one of the arguments that I do not feel especially strongly about, but one that I think is simply undeniable.

A smaller world population in the longrun is a defacto nonstarter. Many places in the world continue to have extremely high birth rates. And the wealth/education correlation that claims to predict the change of this seems, at best, extremely weak when put under scrutiny. Billionaires have high wealth, high education, and high fertility. Places like Thailand have extremely low education/wealth levels, yet their fertility rate is lower than even the US. Israel is the third most educated country in the world, has an advanced economy, and a fertility rate that is even competitive against some African nations at 3.0.

The issue is one of prioritizing wealth more than family, which also explains why the trend collapses at billionaires (for whom family has effectively 0 impact on their wealth), even though the correlation would expect them to be having effectively 0 children. And this pursuit of wealth over family holds true in the West, but there's no reason to expect such ideology to spread. So the question is not one of a smaller world population, but of a smaller population of the groups that are not reproducing vs those that are. In other words should the West simply accept its own extinction, likely alongside those of its values? And to me, the answer to that question is no.

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

#272

Post by visarga »

refurb wrote: post #210
dougmwne wrote: post #5

It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…

There is nothing wrong with it as long as people are prepared for the effects: higher taxes combined with reduced social benefits (as fewer workers support more retired). A stagnant or declining standard of living. A house that goes down in value not up over time. More challenging education for children as schools are closed and consolidated.

Many more towns will be deserted, people are still going to crowd in big cities.

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

#273

Post by nomay »

tstrimple wrote: post #185
irrational wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my exact same though while reading OP's comment. Taxes will go way up since the number of people having to support all the old people will be fewer and fewer. The increased taxes will cause people to have fewer and fewer children. It's a vicious cycle.

Fortunately tax policy can be adjusted to encourage things you want to happen within a society. If taxes are punitive, tax credits for having children would lead to a baby boom based on the same logic.

I don't think it's the case, old folks will outvote the young, same as the property speculators are doing.

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

#274

Post by decafninja »

nunb wrote: post #255
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…

I find this topic very interesting. My observation (anecdata-lly, but I would love to see RCTs or perhaps a cleanly designed ANOVA study) is that these symptoms of infertility are particularly (world-wide) prevalent in people who have (usually undiagnosed) metabolic syndrome & low cholecalciferol. In almost all South-east Asian countries in particular, I have noticed high levels of sucrose consumption so I am curious…

Not sure why you're being downvoted.

I'm Korean born, but spent most of my life in the US. My wife is a much more recent immigrant so she is a product of the Korean education system as well as the Korean corporate world and all that entails.

We have some friends that have adopted, so are aware of the potential issues. Most of them seem perfectly fine, but one had some initial problems with the child adjusting to his new life. These were all toddlers (3-5 years old).

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

#275

Post by labster »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #177
labster wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sure, but none of that changes what I wrote. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Nor that improvements to Earth’s habitability will be timely, nor whether incentive structures will line up to implement the changes needed.

> Past performance is no guarantee of future results By that logic we shouldn't be applying arguments like "It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation".

My scenario is several orders of magnitude more common than yours. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong; miracles do happen. It must be nice to have so much blind faith in technological progress and human exceptionalism, but I’m going to stay with my ecology and statistics.

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

#276

Post by Thorrez »

Dalewyn wrote: post #212
ctoth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years Does the change necessarily have to be societal? > In 1992, a study found a global 50% decline in sperm counts in men over the previous 60 years. Multiple studies over subsequent years confirmed that initial finding, including a 2017 paper showing a 50% to 60% decline in sperm concentration between 1973 and 2011 in m…

>Men today produce fewer sperm than in the past, and the sperm are less healthy. The question, then, is what could be causing this decline in fertility[0]. This has everything to do with monogamous relationships and marriages in most of the developed human world. In the natural world, there are many factors at play that help ensure only the "healthiest" males conceive with females. Most factors are indirect, such as…

This seems to be based on the idea that the only feedback mechanism for improving sperm is to have sperm fight with other sperm. That's not correct though. Whatever trait in sperm leads to pregnancy more often will be evolutionarily selected for. There doesn't need to be any direct fight between sperm.

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

#277

Post by nomay »

qqqwerty wrote: post #216
thunderbird120 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wanna guess what happens in that welcoming environment? My guess is people feel inclined to make some babies. I would assume the exact opposite given that this will probably probably crank up pressure on working-aged people as more and more old people need to be supported by fewer and fewer young. I would also assume a significant exodus of the young to places with actual opportunities rather than a country sized re…

This feels like a non-issue. The boomer generation is probably one of the wealthiest generations in history. And the younger generations have for the most part been fairly underemployed. Feels like there is more than enough slack in the labor markets to handle the extra work, and taxes could be targeted towards the wealth assets of the boomers (stocks, real estate, etc...).

Don't know what it's like in Korea, but in China, it's pretty common to have pension higher than local average salary if you were in the state job system, which is absolutely huge. This is due to the polical power dynamic.

Many provinces are barely scraping by, young workers are not only effectively directly supporting pensioners, they are now delaying young workers retirement age, and you better not believe the old folks will willing to eat into their own money.

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

#278

Post by frontman1988 »

mach1ne wrote: post #230
Dalewyn wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Men today produce fewer sperm than in the past, and the sperm are less healthy. The question, then, is what could be causing this decline in fertility[0]. This has everything to do with monogamous relationships and marriages in most of the developed human world. In the natural world, there are many factors at play that help ensure only the "healthiest" males conceive with females. Most factors are indirect, such as…

Humans may naturally be monogamous, at least to a degree. It is a common occurrence in the animal kingdom, in many bird species for example. Monogamosity is therefore a very unlikely candidate for fertility drop.

Apes are mostly polygamous though. And even if polygamy wasn't the norm culturally, the results of procreation have been polygamous. For example this study analyzed dna and shows how 8,000 Years Ago, 17 Women Reproduced for Every One Man.

https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success

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

#279

Post by jdkoeck »

lettergram wrote: post #148
decafninja wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of our social circle consists of recent immigrants from Korea ( But it does seem to affect Korean-Americans that have been here longer too. Even amongst our close family, my cousin is affected, two of her cousins are affected. All three were born and raised in Korea to adulthood and came here within the past 10 years. My cousin has an American (Caucasian) husband, her two cousins have born-in-the-USA Korea…

To be honest, this sounds environmental in nature… I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional. That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional. Plenty of non-intentional possibilities as well.

> That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional.

You might want to consult with a professional, that’s paranoid thinking.

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