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Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

japantimes.co.jp

51–60 of 147 posts

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#51
There is no highly-developed country with replacement-level fertility. And, in fact, the only places left with fertility rates that are above replacement (and not rapidly dropping) are sub-saharan African countries with a median income below 5k USD. On the other end of the spectrum, you don't see fertility rates tick up again until you get to the 500k USD and above bracket.

My personal hunch is that this is a form of market failure. If you're a young woman, delaying childbirth in favor of more education and a higher income makes perfect sense, on an individual level. But the more young women take that path, the fewer are available to form communities of care. Consider the economic cost of replacing that network -- neighborhood moms, grandparents, immediate and extended family. Raising a child with one parent working is strenuous, with both it's only possible through expensive and sub-optimal childcare programs.

One typical response is that we should simply subsidize those childcare programs. Fair enough, but the countries that have taken this idea the farthest -- the Nordics -- have still not achieved replacement-level fertility.

Another response is that the earth is too overpopulated already, and we should have fewer children due to climate change. However, we know exactly how many people will be alive in the latter part of this century -- given relatively static mortality rates -- because those people have already been born. Crashing the population after 2100 won't really help anything, and will in fact only introduce more economic challenges and crises for our descendants.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#52

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…

I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode. Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I ca…

>The Peter Pan life has a lot going for it.

Trust me, this feeling passes. You want to be prepared for when it does.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people make up excuses? They simply don't want them. My “excuse” for not having children is the same “excuse” I have for that I'm not a firefighter: I have no interest in it.

Curious: have you ever considered going to a therapist about this? It's not psychologically normal to never want children. I wouldn't be surprised if it was also co-morbid with other psychological issues.

[deleted]

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#54
post #39

This is a problem that'll solve itself eventually; the desire to have children is to some degree inheritable, so the people with genes that make them still likely to have children in modern society will outbreed the people with genes that make them unlikely to have children in modern society. Similarly the cultures that make people more likely to have children will outspread those that make people less likely to have…

This is not clear at all. Perhaps people who don't want kids will die out, but if this is a cultural issue that affects our basic human instincts, it could be something that is extremely hard to fix. Perhaps in modern society, whatever you do, people only want 1-1.5 kids? If that's the case, without a radical cultural change, humans are basically going extinct.

> whatever you do, people only want 1-1.5 kids?

This is definitely not true. Look at the fertility rates of any of the aforementioned cultures. Humans will never go extinct because they're making the conscious choice to do so...

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode. Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I ca…

Many people feel this way in their mid 20s, it often changes when you hit your early to mid 30s. Most of us don't believe that it'll happen to us either. :)

Maybe, but between dating skills and allocation of spend I may otherwise be committed to the strategy whether I regret it or not.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people make up excuses? They simply don't want them. My “excuse” for not having children is the same “excuse” I have for that I'm not a firefighter: I have no interest in it.

Curious: have you ever considered going to a therapist about this? It's not psychologically normal to never want children. I wouldn't be surprised if it was also co-morbid with other psychological issues.

[deleted]

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nursing homes still need to be staffed, and staffing them 24/7 requires a lot of staff.

Whatever happened to Toyota's palliative care robots? Remember about 15 years ago when they were doing all those demos and said they'd have them out within 10 years and would be $15,000?? Honestly, even if they were $50,000 it'd still be a lot cheaper than a nursing home and would allow people to live at home.

Why not just killbots?

Much less dystopian than a future of elders left alone to be tended by palliative care robots.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#58
post #39

This is a problem that'll solve itself eventually; the desire to have children is to some degree inheritable, so the people with genes that make them still likely to have children in modern society will outbreed the people with genes that make them unlikely to have children in modern society. Similarly the cultures that make people more likely to have children will outspread those that make people less likely to have…

This is not clear at all. Perhaps people who don't want kids will die out, but if this is a cultural issue that affects our basic human instincts, it could be something that is extremely hard to fix. Perhaps in modern society, whatever you do, people only want 1-1.5 kids? If that's the case, without a radical cultural change, humans are basically going extinct.

>Perhaps in modern society, whatever you do, people only want 1-1.5 kids?

This clearly isn't true because the Amish and Ultra-orthodox Jews still want/have 7-8 kids, and they live in modern society. I'm not sure about the Ultra-orthodox, but the Amish are certainly capable of sustaining their standards of living even if the rest of America dies out, so humanity wouldn't go extinct, it'd just become 100% Amish (and whatever other cultures are able to maintain persistently high fertility rates).

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#59
post #11
post #6

That means about 1/3 of male population may never have any of them as well. What haunts me most is to ponder about the world we get when a lot these 18 years old become 75+ years old people with no close living relatives and their social support network mostly gone before themselves. A world of single or no children also leaves people with no uncles, aunts or cousins.

It’s worse than that. Historically only 50% of men reproduced, and that hasn’t gotten much better. There are plenty of divorced men with more than one family, yet this is rarer for women. I’d estimate if 30% of women aren’t having children at least 50-60% of men won’t. God knows what kind of issues that will cause.

We'll just normalize MAID, and people will volunteer to shuffle off this mortal coil. Insert a WSB meme, drawn in mspaint, about a cheap handgun being your retirement plan.

Re: Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have children: study

#60

I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…

I ponder this question myself on the edge of Gen Z and my life is simplified tremendously if I just essentially pause it in high earning young person mode. Money is abundant for travel and anything I want. I don't need to figure out dating. Means I don't need to figure out everything from conflict resolution to clothing. I don't need to struggle to buy a ton of housing. I have friends/a sister who will have kids I ca…

It's strange that other people will pay the burden of raising children that support your retirement.

You might think that your earning and savings supports your retirement, but no. It will be the next generation of workers that actualize it. Money is just unit of account, it by itself does not give you a retirement. Only working age, working people.

We've found ourselves in a very strange moral hazard. You spend your money to raise kids that will work to earn my savings in my retirement. Hopefully the state can afford your retirement too, but that's unlikely, because no one had children. Because this society sterilizes itself.

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