seems like NK will overwhelm SK by paraphrased Yasser Arafat words:
the strongest weapon that the Palestinians have is the womb of Palestinian mothers
How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
321–330 of 439 posts
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you really want to have children but are worried about climate change and cost - may I suggest you look moving to norhern europe. The region will survive most predicted outcomes and childcare is heavily state subsidized. That is if you would love to have a family but can’t for the stated reasons. It’s totally fine not to want children as personal choice without any rationalization as well!
It would be better to move to the midwestern US honestly. Housing and childcare is super affordable out there and wages will probably still work out better than in europe. I expect when shit hits the fan you’d rather be in wisconson with american citizenship than on the proverbial maginot line. Civilians don’t often fare well in european continental conflicts.
Yes! And No!
Yes: US will continue being an economic powerhouse, and a very rare geopolitical entity that can source all of it’s inputs and can grow it’s own food. I would definitely think about really hard moving my family to US if our kids were 10 years younger mainly because I’ve realised how it geopolitically speaking outclasses anyplace else on earth.
No: Please do better research. Civilian population in North Europe will do quite well compared to planetary alternatives.
Yes: But safety wise US still wins if one is worried of foreign invasion.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wall manifests as prices. When you barely make ends meet in spite of being a skilled worker, something is off.
"The wall" is already manifesting in Europe as well, in terms of CoL and real estate prices[1] where even skilled workers can't afford a decent home anymore or build any wealth after paying the inflated rents from their stagnating wages. You either inherit something from your parents or are screwed if you don't get a top FAANG/F500 job out of university. Working for small or average companies doesn't cut it anymore.…
In the EU in particular, there's the nZEB standard, which became a requirement for new buildings. This makes the initial costs higher, but the ongoing ones lower.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
OK, redone with the US actuarial table.
age fraction alive
0 1
15 0.99156
30 0.96994
45 0.92732
60 0.8273
75 0.57758
90 0.1437
105 0.0034
For TFR of 0.7, generation sizes are 1000, 339.5, 114.3, 38.5 and 12.9.
At Y+105, populations are:
Age Pop
15 38.1
45 101.9
75 144.7
105 3.4
generation sizes: 1000, 897, 798, 710, 631
Age Pop
15 704
45 712
75 382
105 3.4
generation sizes: 1000, 1115, 1234, 1364, 1509
Age Pop
15 1352
45 1100
75 475
105 3.4Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#325Smuggle 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.
I've read about the sad state of escaped North Koreans. They are provided a "life starting" package from the South Korean government, but sometimes to get out of North Korea they have to promise to give some of that money to the people smuggling them out. There are also a lot of scams that North Koreans don't know to be wary of, and there was even a report of someone going back to North Korea after being scammed and becoming a propagandist on their national television to tell everyone about how South Korea is full of scams and liars, and North Korea is way better.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add some color: South Korea is somewhere between the size of Kentucky and Indiana (the 37th and 38th largest states), yet has over 51 million people, almost 15 million more than California, the most populous state. It has very few natural resources to speak of, and is roughly two-thirds mountainous, meaning most of the population is condensed in the few flat areas. In some ways, it's natural that the fertility rat…
Indeed. Infinite growth as demanded by capitalism is not physically possible. If they wouldn't hit "the wall" now, they would hit it anyway in the near future. Maybe South Korea's situation should give all ageing rich developed nations something to reflect on and start making preparations for the upcoming demographic plateau/collapse and reform stuff like welfare/pension systems, instead of blindly kicking the can do…
There are only three options possible. Growth, stability, and shrinking. The fertility numbers are in the shrinking range.
And the worst part is that when shrinking, economies contract and things get worse. If they can't afford to have children now, then people in South Korea in 20 years will certainly not have it any better. It's an extinction death spiral.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not arguing your decision to not have children. I've made the same decision myself, but the 'can't afford to have children' has always confused me. Even after the point where contraception became readily available, people were having children with far fewer resources than anyone alive today. What I hear when people say 'We can't afford to have children' is an additional '...and maintain our current standard of li…
It might be fair to assume that you are relatively upperclass tech worker; I think your perceptions of what people can do is colored by your social circle. For many people they aren't worried about kids going to a private school, it's whether they can afford to feed someone else . I'm surprised none of your expectations include basic child care - food, shelter, care. If you are just scraping by on two incomes how do…
It might be fair to assume op is as well. Beyond that, people have 'afforded' kids since there have been people, and this includes the worst deprivations at the beginning of the industrial age. Birth rates are actually inversely correlated with income, and this cuts across industrial and agrarian societies.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not arguing your decision to not have children. I've made the same decision myself, but the 'can't afford to have children' has always confused me. Even after the point where contraception became readily available, people were having children with far fewer resources than anyone alive today. What I hear when people say 'We can't afford to have children' is an additional '...and maintain our current standard of li…
It might be fair to assume that you are relatively upperclass tech worker; I think your perceptions of what people can do is colored by your social circle. For many people they aren't worried about kids going to a private school, it's whether they can afford to feed someone else . I'm surprised none of your expectations include basic child care - food, shelter, care. If you are just scraping by on two incomes how do…
> For many people they aren't worried about kids going to a private school, it's whether they can afford to feed someone else.
In a developed country? Even the US (hardly a socialist paradise) has extensive programs to keep children fed. I think that issue is pretty well covered.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#329South Korea is hostile for new families. Unless you were born to rich parents, have a decent education with a good job (that's with a Multi-national or a Chaebol), own property in Seoul, find a partner, and survive the probability of divorce, having a child is impossible--let alone having two to meet the population replacement rate. What's the solution?
Lot's of sticks. No real estate / wealth transfers unless to couples with 2 kids. New nuclear families either have potential windfall of 4x estates/wealth/housing from multiple older generations or they have to work the uphill childless grind. Combine with subsidies for home ownership in desirable areas for those with kids. BAN PET OWNERSHIP for those without kids. IMO This one huge. Increasing trend of emotional surrogate pets filling emotional void in east asia. Need to drive down cost of people settling for medicore relationships.
It's not enough to make economics of having kids easier, you have to make not having kids harder.
Re: How South Korea’s birth rate dropped below Japan’s
#330My 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…
Maybe you’d change your mind about affordability if you actually had to pay the externalities of your childlessness and didn’t hope to be subsidised by others