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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

#471

Post by pas »

FBISurveillance wrote: post #206
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…

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…

> Housing prices are 9x salary

Monthly mortgage payments are the same though. (Lower interest rates, etc.)

Also building costs gone up. (The plague of single family homes, stricter building codes, higher quality requirements from buyers, while buildings are still produced using the old labor intensive methods.) And due to fucked up zoning building low-cost housing is just not happening :/

So folks are basically forced to buy expensive houses.

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

#472

Post by nisegami »

Sharlin wrote: post #458
searchableguy wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kids are forced to do these activities to pad their application for colleges and sometimes it is for show and prestige.

Oh. That’s batshit crazy (the college application thing). Why should non-academic achievements make any difference whatsoever when applying to college? Is that a thing anywhere except the US? As for show and prestige, that’s usually what the parents want, so that’s squarely in the "something is wrong" category.

>Is that a thing anywhere except the US?

Very much so. It's a thing even here in my tiny caribbean island for some fields of study.

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

#474

Post by andai »

bmitc wrote: post #442
agilob wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about 4 days work week for adults, but no one is talking about 40 hours work week for kids. 7 hours of school, 3 hours of homework, then karate, piano, swimming and football on weekends.

I've complained about that my whole life. Going from high school to college was wonderful because I had so much time time my first semester in college. (I ended up blowing that by overloading myself in subsequent semesters, but that's another story.) I always hated the idea of homework in school (outside of college/university) because I have never understood being at "home" but still required to do "work" for a place…

I just never did homework, half-assed projects and did the bare minimum for tests. I had an unusually liberal school though. I probably would have dropped out if it wasn't illegal here.

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

#476

Post by amag »

Dalewyn wrote: post #234
jhanschoo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an elaborate portrait and narrative you've painted there. Do you have sources for that?

It was something I saw many years ago on NHK as one theory of why human sperm quality keeps deteriorating. As far as I'm concerned, it makes sense to me. Remove more and more factors that would encourage healthier sperm and it's only natural that our sperm will deteriorate.

As others have said, the decline is much too rapid in the last couple of decades for it to be explained by evolution. It sounds more like a theory spouted by chemical-/food-/etc companies who worry about getting the blame.

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

#477

Post by Reason077 »

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…

> "My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?"

There are various factors that increase the chances of having fraternal (non-identical) twins. Genetics (a women who is a twin herself is more likely to have twins), age (older women are more likely to have twins), and, of course, fertility drugs which stimulate ovulation can result in more eggs being released and thus more likely to produce twins.

Identical twins, on the other hand, are a natural phenomenon that occurs in about 1 in 250 pregnancies. There are no known factors that increase the chances of identical twins.

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

#478

Post by [deleted] »

Sharlin wrote: post #458
searchableguy wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kids are forced to do these activities to pad their application for colleges and sometimes it is for show and prestige.

Oh. That’s batshit crazy (the college application thing). Why should non-academic achievements make any difference whatsoever when applying to college? Is that a thing anywhere except the US? As for show and prestige, that’s usually what the parents want, so that’s squarely in the "something is wrong" category.

[deleted]

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

#479

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

mavhc wrote: post #359
lettergram wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people are intentionally trying to limit births, why would that lead to a large amount of fertility procedures? Those fertility procedures are not the desired way to go about having a baby. The vast majority of the time it's a procedure of last resort (i.e. can't get pregnant another way). These procedures are expensive and often don't work. It could be intentional that a government, organization or pharmaceutic…

But allowing people to decide when to have children via birth control doesn't reduce the population, it just means the children have better lives as their parents can afford them and don't need to rely on welfare.

It does the first, with the potential of the second.

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

#480

Post by winReInstall »

creakingstairs wrote: post #311

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but this does not surprise me in the least. The life in Korea is way too competitive and stressful. The hellscape begins in pre-school and primary school where parents make kids go to private school AFTER school, often till late evenings. This progressively gets worse and worse until university. In my father's generation, people could relax after getting into univers…

This whole experience sounds very labour camp like. Minus the electric fence. The way out is no longer that easy.

Of course the decorations are nicer and there are some who are kept around to work as "worser off" examples. But all in all, i guess most would cheer for the fall of this.

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