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

bloomberg.com

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

#371

Post by krageon »

jdkoeck wrote: post #279
lettergram wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not just paranoid, it's ascribing far too much competence to them.

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

#372

Post by imtringued »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #334
labster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume the current population is the correct one? There’s a reasonable argument to be made that humans are over the Earth’s carrying capacity nearly everywhere, and are causing environmental and social damage to maintain the current size. It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation. If we assume humans are biological organisms, it all seems pretty normal.

Except that humans are now in a situation where modern medicine has also allowed us to live much longer. The natural cycle of birth-aging-death has been disrupted. You suddenly have a world where there are too many 80 year olds and not enough 8 year olds.

80year olds in power that don't want to leave their post or give up their position so a younger person can take over. They can work until they die.

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

#373

Post by FBISurveillance »

seibelj wrote: post #266
FBISurveillance wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for ranting but this topic resonates too much. Housing prices are 9x salary vs 4.5x salary in the 70s and it takes a while to save up. Personal data point: it took me winning an IPO lottery to start thinking about having kids for real. Having kids while earning minimal wage? Terrifying, especially in the US where getting yourself or your kid sick could bankrupt you in the blink of an eye - and if you want m…

This is because you think too much. Most people just have kids and figure it out, same as it has been since the beginning of time.

Surely this is an option, but the risk is higher than ever. If you win the genetic lottery - good for you but cry havoc if you don't and not well-employed/have savings... chances are that you and your loved ones will have a miserable life.

I'm not saying people shouldn't take the risk, but it does seem that more people are either not willing to, or the risk profile changed since 70s, or both.

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

#374

Post by 627467 »

I see lots of references to difficult economic situation as justification for low fertility rate in advanced economies, which obviously is a huge external factor but another one IMHO is the cultural shift towards individualism.

Why sacrifice personal rights for other people (aka children)?

We shifted from huge social-religous pressure to procreate to zero (or negative) pressure to do so.

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

#375

Post by cloutchaser »

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…

Has anyone ever studied whether long term contraception use has an effect on fertility later on? Seems like that could be a reason too.

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

#376

Post by wizwit999 »

moomoo11 wrote: post #267
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…

As an American (immigrant) I'm honestly really alarmed by seeing the high birth rates in countries that are well, to put it bluntly, kinda backwards (I'm from one of them btw). One of the reasons we moved to a country like the US is to be away from a backwards minded, theocratic af, corrupt society. To see that these types of countries are actually booming while highly progressed ones are depressing is super depressi…

This is is such a comically eugenicist racist comment.

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

#377

Post by imtringued »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #108
makeitdouble wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to you it can be summed up to "it's all women's fault" ?

Not really. One can also frame it as society’s fault for not providing both women and men with sufficient incentive to procreate. Note that the word “fault” typically has a negative connotation, but I am not intending to use it with positive or negative connotation, but simply as a causative factor. The comment I replied to stated something changed, to which I wanted to clarify what I think the biggest variable that…

It does sound like we were relying on alcohol, a lack of contraceptives, a lack of choice for women and good old forcing people into marriage to subsidize the lack of incentive to have children.

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

#378

Post by imtringued »

makeitdouble wrote: post #142
lotsofpulp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. One can also frame it as society’s fault for not providing both women and men with sufficient incentive to procreate. Note that the word “fault” typically has a negative connotation, but I am not intending to use it with positive or negative connotation, but simply as a causative factor. The comment I replied to stated something changed, to which I wanted to clarify what I think the biggest variable that…

There's a trend happening in many countries where economical stagnation or downturn push young people and couples to wait for better days to engage in romantic relationships or build families. You could shelve that as "society not providing enough incentives", but to me it looks like a more complex issue than what's covered by carrot/stick mechanisms. Not all issues leading to forgoing procreating are that complex, b…

Capitalism has a minimum profitability requirements, simply being wealthy and having abundance does not mesh well with capitalism, instead the go to solution has been to send people to war and destroy all the wealth we built up so the rebuilding phase is profitable again. The fact that this profit is utterly pointless and does not increase human well-being doesn't matter.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

lettergram wrote: post #303
jdkoeck wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You do know the US government and governments around the world have straight sterilized women before; without their knowledge? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_Amer... I’m not even saying that nefarious. Have you heard of planned parenthood? The government gives them money to aid in reducing fertility. Particularly in populations that would find children “burdensome”. It’s not a stretch to cons…

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by imtringued »

midoridensha wrote: post #224
makeitdouble wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to you it can be summed up to "it's all women's fault" ?

Basically, that's my theory. Back in the "old days", women didn't get to choose their jobs, or when (or if) they had children. Basically, women were little better than slaves. Now that women have freedom, society is imploding in a way, at least in terms of population. So to get back to replacement levels of fertility, we either need to 1) turn women into slaves again, or 2) look at some other way of running the socie…

1) is basically arguing that women are monopolizing procreation and are taking it hostage and charge unreasonable fees, how about we don't listen to them? It sounds ridiculous because women are usually stuck with the children and end up in classic single mother poverty.
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