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

nippon.com

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

#311

Post by Auracle »

Are we sure that there's nothing else going on with fertility rates? It seems odd to me that one of the primary drives of humanity has fallen off of a cliff so quickly. Sure, it mostly manifests as a drive to have sex and we can get around that with birth control, but that's not the only thing it does to us. There's a reason the concept of the "biological clock ticking" is a thing.

We know testosterone levels are dropping: "After controlling for confounders—including year of study, age, race, BMI, comorbidity status, alcohol and smoking use, and level of physical activity—total testosterone was lower among men in the later (2011-2016) versus earlier (1999-2000) cycles (P https://www.urologytimes.com/view/testosterone-levels-show-s...

Setting aside that semen quality is also affected... Maybe testosterone, or other hormones that might be affected by the same thing, also affect the drive to have children? It seems the more urban a civilization, the lower the birth rate.

When I just tried to look up if anyone has looked into that I couldn't find anything, but here's a nice overview of different theories on fertility rates dropping as a whole: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977063/

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

#312

Post by aa1234556 »

neom wrote: post #202

My wife and I have opted not to have children for reasons* and it's really sad how the conversation with the in-laws has moved from "you should have children because children" to "you need to have children because korea needs you to have children", and it's not just a passing comment here and there, the campaign to get us to single handedly re-populate SK is intense and sustained. I wonder if other couples are experi…

[dead]

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

#313

Post by bryanlarsen »

waveBidder wrote: post #303
bryanlarsen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant crop failures will cause prices to rise, which will enable the wider use of refrigerated storage, fertilizer, new crop varietals, desalinated water, greenhouses, etc. This will bring supply and demand back into balance at a higher price. The higher price for food will cause millions of deaths, an impact comparable to COVID or to the Ukraine and Ethiopian wars combined. It will pale in comparison to the im…

it's difficult to articulate the (IMO correct) position that climate change is horrible but still totally solvable. somehow people hear "we can solve this" as " there's no reason to be concerned"

I agree with the gist of your argument, but I wouldn't phrase it as "totally solvable". Limiting it to 2 degrees is possible, limiting it to 3 is likely. Both are bad, both are locally catastrophic but neither are globally catastrophic.

I like my phrasing "millions will die". That works on numerate people, but most people can't really conceptualize the difference between a million and a billion. Any other suggestions?

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

#314

Post by [deleted] »

grej wrote: post #206

South Korea was among the poorest countries in the world - poorer than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as recently as the 1960s. Withing a single lifetime they transformed themselves into one of the most advanced developed economies on the planet with a madman (mad men) on their doorstep. It’s natural that that kind of change will have some massive societal implications, many of which they are still sorting out.…

[deleted]

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

#315

Post by bryanlarsen »

somenameforme wrote: post #290
grej wrote: post #206

South Korea was among the poorest countries in the world - poorer than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as recently as the 1960s. Withing a single lifetime they transformed themselves into one of the most advanced developed economies on the planet with a madman (mad men) on their doorstep. It’s natural that that kind of change will have some massive societal implications, many of which they are still sorting out.…

It's easy to illustrate the impact of fertility rates by model, and it's far more rapid/severe than I think most realize. A fertility rate of "N" means that the next younger generation will be N/2 times as large. So, a fertility rate of 2 means no change, while a fertility rate of 4 would result in an exponential doubling. How about 0.7? We can create a population distribution of this easily enough because we know ho…

Even worse, it's N/2.1 rather than N/2 due to pre-child-bearing-age mortality.

OTOH, obviously 1000 people aren't going to be alive at the age of 80. In Korea life expectancy is 83, but if it was 80 then we'd have 500 people alive at the age of 80, not 1000.

It'd be interesting to redo your numbers with an actuarial table.

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

#316

Post by jimlongton »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #204

Smuggle people out of North Korea on a massive scale. I'm imagining scenes like a Mission Impossible movie.

I would imagine integrating North Koreans into the South would be far more difficult than the reunification of Germany. The technological and health gap alone is huge and even their language has started to drift apart.

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

#317

Post by FirmwareBurner »

1-6 wrote: post #291
deepsun wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's the same way in California.

As someone who's lived in both areas, California still had opportunities for advancement during my career if one was willing to work hard. In SK, you can work hard all your life but as opportunities are limited, you'll get stuck in toil. When tourists look at S. Korea and say, "Hey, it's real nice here!" They don't see the hundreds of low-paid workers who are working behinds the scenes. There are plenty of low paying…

It's exactly the same in western Europe. American tourists visit here on vacation and think "wow it's really nice here, it's walkable and full of culture" but they don't see there's no opportunities for building generational wealth, as all of it has already been captured by the previous generations so the new generation is stuck in serfdom.

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

#318

Post by jimlongton »

mathverse wrote: post #235

Should I have children in a country where I can get fired for no reason, apts cost $1M+ and you have to work slave hours? LOL

It's okay. You can complain to your union (which is run by your company) or work for a competitor (which is also owned by the same conglomerate as your company).

At least your leader is no longer brainwashed by a shaman who channels her dead father while taking bribes from those conglomerates [1]. That father who was also your former military dictator who followed the great tradition of torturing and murdering socialists and worker leaders with the CIAs help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Korean_political_sc...

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

#320

Post by jimlongton »

grej wrote: post #206

South Korea was among the poorest countries in the world - poorer than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as recently as the 1960s. Withing a single lifetime they transformed themselves into one of the most advanced developed economies on the planet with a madman (mad men) on their doorstep. It’s natural that that kind of change will have some massive societal implications, many of which they are still sorting out.…

> it’s worth noting what they’ve accomplished in getting to a place where they can afford to worry about that as one of their primary concerns

It's probably also worth noting the long history of military dictatorships, murderous suppression of worker rights, massive ongoing corruption (including a literal cult controlling the government until 2016) and the highest suicide rate in the world. Reducing the story to just economies is truly narrow minded.

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