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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

#401

Post by simonebrunozzi »

I hate when journalists use nasty tricks to make their point stronger. This is not good journalism.

Look at the "Rich but Shrinking" graph in the article. I'll report the numbers here for simplicity:

Country / number of babies per woman

Israel: 2.9

Mexico: 2.1

France: 1.8

US: 1.6

Australia: 1.6

UK: 1.6

Germany: 1.5

Canada: 1.5

Spain: 1.4

Japan: 1.3

Korea: 0.8

(all numbers as of 2020 except Korea)

Now, there are a few things happening with this.

1) Numbers are wrong. Based on World Data [0], Spain is 1.2, not 1.4.

2) Notable countries are missing from the list: Hong Kong (0.9), Singapore (0.9), Italy (1.2).

3) "Korea is the world’s fastest-aging nation among economies with per capita GDP of at least $30,000," conflicts with the fact that you include Mexico in your list of countries (Mexico's GDP is below $30,000), just to make Korea's problem look worse.

[0]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec...

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

#402

Post by imtringued »

dron57 wrote: post #7
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…

Most of the past century's gains in quality of life were tightly correlated with rising labor. If the population crashes, then who will do all the specialized work? Another thing to think about is excess capital and investment. With a large population, excess savings become investments into new companies, technologies, etc. Without excess savings there will be no tech industry, improvements in science, infrastructure…

This is a joke. Excess savings are economically pointless, they serve no purpose, excess savings mean people are saving more than they invest, leading to economic decline.

>Without excess savings there will be no tech industry, improvements in science, infrastructure investments or much of anything interesting.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Governments borrow more and more money to artificially turn excess savings into regular savings by increasing the investment rate, any benefits you think come from excess savings actually come from turning excess savings into regular savings aka savings = investment.

If savings are above investment it means aggregate demand is below aggregate supply and we are failing millions of people.

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

#403

Post by bamboozled »

adrianN wrote: post #209
legutierr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world has always been going down the toilet. The only difference now is that we have higher visibility of and lower tolerance for the bullshit. You shouldn’t be so pessimistic.

The other difference now is that we're pretty close to wiping out crucial ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and show no signs of taking climate change as seriously as we should.

But still, the word has really been going down the toilet for humans for a long time, famines, wars, plagues, pandemics. It's all been going down the shit shoot for a long time. But then you see a nice sunset, eat a decent meal and feel lucky. If my children get to experience some of those simple pleasures, maybe it's mission accomplished ?

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

#404

Post by nopzor »

amrocha wrote: post #292
nopzor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the gp is trying to make the point that countries with higher birth rates tend to be poorer and/or more oppressive.

I know what they're saying. I'm saying that's wrong. Korea isn't even particularly equalitarian either.

it’s not particularly wrong. there is indeed a general correlation between birth rate and economic development.

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

#405

Post by imtringued »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #26
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…

Historically population drops were bad. When you lose population, you lose the labor required to support as many specializations, and civilization regresses. Now, though, fertilizers and modern medicine support excess human population, fossil fuels are an energy wellspring that helps reduce the need for physical labor, and AI can free people from repetitive mental work. Combine this with the fact that yes, our oversh…

Historically population drops have led to the industrial revolution with increased labor productivity.

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

#406

Post by jillesvangurp »

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?

Historically, many societies treated women as property whose opinion simply did not matter and having kids was a numbers game that was part of your retirement plan. Have ten kids and maybe a few will survive long enough to take care of you when you are old and needy.

In many countries that is a situation that was common until fairly recently and in some countries this is still the status quo. E.g. my parents are from Dutch catholic families and they have countless relatives. My mother had a couple of dozen aunts and uncles. Their generation was a lot less productive. I only have one sibling and neither of us has had any children. We're both middle aged and I doubt it will happen. I know many people my age that have made similar choices.

Korea is an example of a conservative society where women are empowered to say no both technically (birth control) and legally (they don't end up being forcibly married by their families anymore). That's pretty much the case around the world with some notable exceptions of very conservative and/or poor countries; typically with a distinct lack of democracy and other freedoms.

Economical circumstances make having kids a really expensive choice in Korea. So, people are no longer being forced to marry and have kids, they can practice birth control, and can't afford to have kids. So, they don't unless they really want to and are able to secure the funding. You see the same patterns in other places in the world where housing is expensive and people are literate. They have kids later or not at all. Even countries that are notoriously very egalitarian with extensive child support programs (e.g. Sweden) have rather low birth rates these days.

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

#407

Post by thematrixturtle »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #401

I hate when journalists use nasty tricks to make their point stronger. This is not good journalism. Look at the "Rich but Shrinking" graph in the article. I'll report the numbers here for simplicity: Country / number of babies per woman Israel: 2.9 Mexico: 2.1 France: 1.8 US: 1.6 Australia: 1.6 UK: 1.6 Germany: 1.5 Canada: 1.5 Spain: 1.4 Japan: 1.3 Korea: 0.8 (all numbers as of 2020 except Korea) Now, there are a few…

Singapore is small and an educational pressure cooker like Korea, but makes up for its low birthrate with huge amounts of both permanent skilled immigration and temporary unskilled foreign labor. This is an unusual combo, but it's unlikely to face a demographic crunch anytime soon.

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

#408

Post by mirzap »

croes wrote: post #350
mirzap wrote: post #346

People are worried that over-population is problem, some idiots even decide not to have children. But real problem is the opposite - population collapse. How do you plan to retire if there's not enough young people to sustain ever growing older population. Rough times are ahead of us, something we haven't yet experienced.

>How do you plan to retire if there's not enough young people to sustain ever growing older population. Higher efficiency, higher wages especially in social security jobs, and of course a universal social security system How do you plan to solve the problems of a growing population? The consequences of things climate change will hit harder.

> Higher efficiency, higher wages especially in social security jobs, and of course a universal social security system

efficiency has its limits. And we are reaching it, I would argue we reached it already. Without full automation there's not much room for "efficiency". There's no growing population on the west, it is declining sharply if you exclude immigration. There's not enough people to work with elderly. Germany desperately tries to import people for elderly care for years. Also, from what I read and researched the LARGEST single polluter on entire planet is the US military complex. Even if entire world switched to electric cars, eat less meat, it wouldn't make a dent in a greenhouse gas emissions. Not to mention that 50% of all produced food in the west is a waste. There's place for 20b people on this world, no shortages of land, resources. We just need to change our habits and drop consumerism (as we know it). If everyone bought only what they need, and consumed 99% of food they bought, that would result in less pollution than 3b people buying 200-300% more that they need.

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

#409

Post by missedthecue »

s5300 wrote: post #317
moomoo11 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m sorry, but if you thought the US fit the criteria you’ve just described, you’re sorely mistaken…

Try to bribe a police officer in the US next time you get pulled over at a traffic stop. Try to bribe the immigration officer at any US airport. My congressman's office didn't even let me give him a small non-cash thank you gift basket when he resolved a very sensitive and urgent administrative matter with my visa.

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

#410

Post by ck425 »

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'm not sure encouraging more children will help long term though. Eventually we need to figure out how to make society work without population growth.
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