Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

nippon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 439 posts

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#171

Post by kredd »

remarkEon wrote: post #165
kredd wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But doesn't raising kids also provide a big set of exciting experiences you are trading-of against? Maybe for you, but the value proposition isn’t there for me. There’s no indication that the world is willing to fix its global problems (climate change, housing problems and etc.), why would I also subscribe my child to this “fun”? It is weird to write that sentence, as I am generally a fairly optimistic person. But…

>Maybe for you, but the value proposition isn’t there for me. There’s no indication that the world is willing to fix its global problems (climate change, housing problems and etc.), why would I also subscribe my child to this “fun”? It is weird to write that sentence, as I am generally a fairly optimistic person. But “let me sacrifice a ton, for a decent chance of misery of myself and my offspring” doesn’t sound righ…

Good for you. I’d even go further, force us to have kids. That’ll show us!

Glad that my attitude is in somewhat majority, otherwise we wouldn’t have potential depopulation problems. Don’t have to worry about these type of takes.

Have a good day!

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#172

Post by HDThoreaun »

markus_zhang wrote: post #92

Chinese people are seeing the same decline of birth and marriage. Part of that contributes to better life but I'd say the majority is because of Capitalism. This form of Capitalism is initiated by the government so there is not much to check its power. Essentially, if you look at housing, cost of education and cost of medical services, you will understand why middle class in China does not want to give birth to child…

I really think it's a mistake to say quality of life is lower in China right now than at any point in the past. Yes, housing is expensive, but 60 years ago literally tens of millions of people starved to death. Housing in rural china is still cheap, but no one wants to live there. It's capitalism that allowed people to escape rural subsistence farming that realistically meant starvation level quality of life. I do think people work more, but that's largely because the alternative is being a subsistence farmer on the verge of starvation like they would've been before capitalism.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#173

Post by remarkEon »

kredd wrote: post #171
remarkEon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe for you, but the value proposition isn’t there for me. There’s no indication that the world is willing to fix its global problems (climate change, housing problems and etc.), why would I also subscribe my child to this “fun”? It is weird to write that sentence, as I am generally a fairly optimistic person. But “let me sacrifice a ton, for a decent chance of misery of myself and my offspring” doesn’t sound righ…

Good for you. I’d even go further, force us to have kids. That’ll show us! Glad that my attitude is in somewhat majority, otherwise we wouldn’t have potential depopulation problems. Don’t have to worry about these type of takes. Have a good day!

I'm not really trying to "show" you anything, in that sense.

I'm pointing out the absurdity of your position. Look, you can't have it both ways. You can't claim you care about the future and what happens to the planet and then intentionally make yourself not a part of it. I simply tune out and don't consider the opinions of folks who fall into that camp. Why would I?

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#174

Post by kredd »

remarkEon wrote: post #173
kredd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. I’d even go further, force us to have kids. That’ll show us! Glad that my attitude is in somewhat majority, otherwise we wouldn’t have potential depopulation problems. Don’t have to worry about these type of takes. Have a good day!

I'm not really trying to "show" you anything, in that sense. I'm pointing out the absurdity of your position. Look, you can't have it both ways. You can't claim you care about the future and what happens to the planet and then intentionally make yourself not a part of it. I simply tune out and don't consider the opinions of folks who fall into that camp. Why would I?

I dunno, maybe you should, because unless our opinions are considered, the problems will only get worse?

It’s not like we’re some bunch of people who would never change our minds, but actions speak louder or something. If older people want us to take these bets, give us better odds.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#175

Post by WanderPanda »

justrealist wrote: post #86
ilkke wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the short-term, which is exactly the problem. Squeeze more now and don't worry about the long-term consequences. "Après nous, le déluge"

Well more concretely, it's that the people paying the cost do not directly reap the benefits of the investment. A child has extremely high long-term ROI for the economy. But (for good reasons) you can't take out a loan in the name of a future child for a larger house now. Someone (aka) the government needs to be future-sighted enough to make the investment. Unfortunately, governments are run by people who will indivi…

I don't agree that an incremental human is a big benefit for The Economy. In a steady state it should be mostly neutral in terms of the per capita GDP (of course there are non-linearities with things like scientific discoveries scaling to all of humanity). Even considering taxes an incremental average human should have no impact on the total welfare of society. In a changing demographic pyramid (inverting) I can agree to your point though because the child will be forced to pay an even higher amount towards the wealth distribution towards the care of (child-less) older people.

I think the incentives could be fixed in a simple (not easy) way, by not letting childless people benefit from the safety net spanned by children of other people.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#176

Post by dmoy »

aidenn0 wrote: post #63

Aside from SK specific issues in TFA, are their wealthy countries that have successfully countered declining birth rates with something other than immigration?

No.

But there are places where it isn't nearly as stark as SK or HK (the two big ones under 1.0, let alone replacement of ~2.1).

Most of Western Europe is under 1.5, which is still way under replacement rate. Sweden, France, and Iceland are at like 1.8, which is still under replacement rate but not incredibly low.

Unless you count tiny places like the Faroe Islands maybe.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#177

Post by justrealist »

WanderPanda wrote: post #175
justrealist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well more concretely, it's that the people paying the cost do not directly reap the benefits of the investment. A child has extremely high long-term ROI for the economy. But (for good reasons) you can't take out a loan in the name of a future child for a larger house now. Someone (aka) the government needs to be future-sighted enough to make the investment. Unfortunately, governments are run by people who will indivi…

I don't agree that an incremental human is a big benefit for The Economy. In a steady state it should be mostly neutral in terms of the per capita GDP (of course there are non-linearities with things like scientific discoveries scaling to all of humanity). Even considering taxes an incremental average human should have no impact on the total welfare of society. In a changing demographic pyramid (inverting) I can agre…

> I think the incentives could be fixed in a simple (not easy) way, by not letting childless people benefit from the safety net spanned by children of other people.

Yeah this is the only serious fix, but once childless people become a large % of the electorate (aka it's a real problem), they can vote against assuming responsibility for the problem they created... and your country is basically in an inescapable doom loop.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#178

Post by throwuxiytayq »

nonethewiser wrote: post #152
kredd wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what to say, but do you have friends in their 20s? It’s not exact doomerism, but more of a “if I am struggling, why should I burden someone that I will love even more”. And again, for a lot of people life can be more fulfilling without having a child as well. The general economy want these people to have children for its own benefit, not for the benefit of the parents.

> The general economy want these people to have children for its own benefit, not for the benefit of the parents. Well maybe the parents aren’t supposed to be the beneficiary in the parent-child relationship.

Is anyone?

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#179

Post by dang »

ae_throw wrote: post #130
duchenne wrote: post #94

This sounds like a study made from afar by just reading numbers without even talking to Koreans. When I talk to Korean parents, the vast majority of them tell me that raising even one kid is exhausting. They usually try as much as possible to satisfy every requests of their baby: carrying the toddlers for hours until they fall sleep, letting their kids sleep in the parents bed until they're 6, spoon-feeding them unti…

TIL SK babies are needier than babies in rest of the world.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? Your account has already been doing it repeatedly. We're trying for something else here!

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s

#180

Post by munk-a »

justrealist wrote: post #177
WanderPanda wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that an incremental human is a big benefit for The Economy. In a steady state it should be mostly neutral in terms of the per capita GDP (of course there are non-linearities with things like scientific discoveries scaling to all of humanity). Even considering taxes an incremental average human should have no impact on the total welfare of society. In a changing demographic pyramid (inverting) I can agre…

> I think the incentives could be fixed in a simple (not easy) way, by not letting childless people benefit from the safety net spanned by children of other people. Yeah this is the only serious fix, but once childless people become a large % of the electorate (aka it's a real problem), they can vote against assuming responsibility for the problem they created... and your country is basically in an inescapable doom l…

That'd be an extremely complicated fix though. Are sterile people automatically excluded from old age benefits? What about someone who suffered from assault and finds reproduction traumatic? What about someone who simply finds reproduction repulsive? What about conscientious objectors who think that over population is a serious issue and refuse on moral grounds? What about people with disorders or genetic aberrations that they don't wish to pass on? What about women with physical defects that make pregnancy extremely dangerous? (some heart conditions for instance)

That road is extremely grey and has a lot of really difficult edge cases you'll need to sort out.

Also - if we just need a next generation in the workforce immigration is an excellent option for the time being.

Post reply on HN