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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

#551

Post by BeFlatXIII »

mjh2539 wrote: post #529
mschuster91 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: How on earth can you afford this?

"Afford" is said in many ways. I know my kids will probably have to take out student loans to go to school. Other than that, you live frugally. Health insurance costs usually cap out at 3 kids.

My ex and I split over this issue. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and "the kids can take out loans like me if they choose to go to college." I wasn't going to bother with children unless I could reasonably guarantee all the benefits to my children that my parents provided me (a.k.a. covering a significant portion of my college expenses).

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

#552

Post by BeFlatXIII »

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.

The above poster has never heard of the concept of "carrying capacity"

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

#553

Post by Thorrez »

verisimi wrote: post #475
bruce343434 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a hormonal anti-conceptive side effect.

[flagged]

I've seen people bring up the idea of the covid vaccine reducing fertility many times, both in person and online. I've never seen any evidence. I think people on HN just get tired of seeing the same weird theory brought up with no evidence over and over again.

Look at this graph of births in South Korea:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/641595/south-korea-birth...

There's no difference in trajectory around when the covid vaccine was introduced. So I think we can safely say the declining birth rate is not due to the covid vaccine.

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

#554

Post by Elinvynia »

grapeskin wrote: post #431
makeitdouble wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What are men morally supposed to do when women simply do not want kids? It’s not an issue of financial struggle since the trend is most pronounced in wealthy countries, especially in those with small wealth divisions.

Respect them. Their body, their choice. Even if it means the end of humanity.

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

#555

Post by memcg »

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…

Could you please describe the impact on retirement and caring for aging parents. Are children expected to take care of their parents?

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

#556

Post by mavhc »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #479
mavhc wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only reason to want population growth is to have more people to pay taxes, if they're unwanted unaffordable children they're not going to be paying more taxes than they cost the state in benefits.

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

#557

Post by anon291 »

ffwszgf wrote: post #189
anon291 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is easy. Middle easterners want kids for cultural and religious reasons. I know any talk of religion and/or culture is verboten in modern American discourse but it's a significant factor in most the world. Yet it makes most Americans uncomfortable

It also helps that Qatar (along with the UAE and Kuwait) provide hefty benefits to married couples for marriage and childbirth. Emirati and Qatari women have almost 50% more children than Saudi women despite cultural similarities because their government offers crazy good benefits. Saudi Arabia has less money per citizen so families bear more of the cost and opt for smaller families. Culture plays a huge role but so…

> It also helps that Qatar (along with the UAE and Kuwait) provide hefty benefits to married couples for marriage and childbirth.

This is a reflection of their culture and religion. Governance and law proceed from culture and religion, not vice versa.

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

#558

Post by collegeburner »

nomay wrote: post #273
tstrimple wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i don't think a society that allows old people to vote themselves young people's money just because there's more of them is a good one.

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

#559

Post by somenameforme »

mcv wrote: post #523
russdill wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population didn't double over the first 60 years unless your 100 newborns were created ex nihilo.

True, but if Korea used to have a birth rate over over 5, those 100 newborns could have been born from 40 twenties.

As recently as 1960 [1] their fertility rate was above 6. The neat thing too is that we can actually fill out the missing data perfectly due to the fact that the relative population sizes will always be driven entirely by fertility rates. A fertility rate of six means each older group will be exactly 1/3rd as large as each younger group, similar to how a fertility rate of 1 means each older group will be exactly twice as large as the younger group.

So here is what the table looks like if we assume that Year 0 was the final year of 6 fertility:

(148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns,

(194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns

(208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns

(187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns

(93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns

(46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns

(23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINKOR

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

#560

Post by lettergram »

ericmay wrote: post #534
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…

> It could be intentional that a government, organization or pharmaceutical / chemical company is knowingly sterilizing / making it more difficult to conceive. This could either be through a willingness to look the other way (i.e. a side effect) or intentional (North Korea for instance may do some sabotage or government is intentionally pushing population reduction) For others reading, remember that no evidence is be…

> You've provided no basis for this claim that Planned Parenthood provides birth control, abortions, or other drugs as part of a US program to intentionally reduce population growth.

Any funding of birth control or abortions by definition will slow population growth.

Further and specifically in regard to planned parenthood

> Sanger was so intent on her mission to advocate for birth control that she chose to align herself with ideas and organizations that were ableist and white supremacist. In 1926, she spoke to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) at a rally in New Jersey to promote birth control methods. Sanger endorsed the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states could forcibly sterilize people deemed “unfit” without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. The acceptance of this decision by Sanger and other thought leaders laid the foundation for tens of thousands of people to be sterilized, often against their will.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-hi...

It would be naive to assume that a group who’s specific goal was slowing population growth is no longer still doing it (albeit more “equitably”)

I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing; just pointing out the realities.

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