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

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 643 posts

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

#621

Post by random314 »

rayiner wrote: post #596
tptacek wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even wrong. Is the number of human toes genetic? How heritable is the number of toes on a human being? Is wearing a dress genetic? How heritable is whether or not you wear a dress?

I don’t really understand your argument. Wearing dresses isn’t heritable, we know that because most women’s grandmothers wore dresses and most women wear jeans or casual wear. Heritability isn’t proof that a trait is genetic, but it’s strong evidence once you start addressing confounding factors. As I recall, the IQ heritability research was done with twin studies. This is like shocking to me we’re even debating this…

> As I recall, the IQ heritability research was done with twin studies.

No, it wasn't. Such a set up is impossible because of lack of samples and sampling bias.

All that "IQ is X% heritable" means is that they ran a linear regression on a large data set and saw that the variance error in the regression reduced by X% when they plugged in parental IQ as a covariate in the regression.

This is a correlational study as causal studies are impossible. Correlational studies are inherently spurious and ignore lots of confounding factors. Nevertheless, we can say that what we routinely observe in real life - smart parents having smart kids, has been grounded in real data.

For getting effect of race on IQ you plug in race as a covariate. Typically, most of the race based IQ research remove parental IQ as a covariate. All of these regression based studies are dubious and there is no real way to correct it. A large data set of twins who were separated at birth could help, but there are caveats there as well.

As an aside, Jordan Peterson seems to love these race IQ regression models and likes to call them hard undeniable science. He immediately switched sides when talking about climate models and how these models can't be trusted, because the simple choice of covariate included creates absolutely unreliable and biased models.

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

#622

Post by random314 »

rayiner wrote: post #305
nunb wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the most bizarre & unexpected opinion first-hand from an obgyn. Prior to this I was firmly in the nurture camp of nature/nurture, but this obgyn's opinion on adoptions shocked me out of my complacency. I am hoping Sapolsky's latest book may shed some light on the subject without the Wade/Murray "bell curve" implications.

Do you really think genetics don't matter? Depending on the study, IQ heritability is between 60-80%.

Heritability includes both nurture and nature(genetic). There is no real way to separate nature and nurture in these studies.

For eg, if you take Einstein's kid and let wolves raise him, we can expect the kids IQ to be somewhat lower.

I would guess IQ is primarily genetic, but these heritability studies don't show that.

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

#623

Post by DocTomoe »

erulabs wrote: post #611
DocTomoe wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's name the elephant in the room: No government is going to make a significant part of the workforce work in (unproductive) elderly care. Societies will eventually start to just get rid of their old, first encouraging life-ending treatment, and eventually enforcing it if there are not enough takers.

The counter to this argument is that time begets wealth - thus the oldest folks are the most likely to have capital. Those with capital impact economic decision making: thus the real trap is that we will all eventually spend all of our time taking care of the elderly - it will be the last job in town - as the elderly will have the last wealth at the last moment. Government policy of today certainly favors the old and…

It will not continue because it is ultimately unworkable. We are seeing that already today, with increasingly larger parts of the population becoming aware of the "boomer problem". Eventually this will become evident enough so that governments can no longer ignore it.

That being said: Capital of a few old people becomes pretty meaningless when your economy is collapsing. See any country that went through capital collapse in the last 100 years or so.

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

#624

Post by pxtail »

collegeburner wrote: post #548
irrational wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my exact same though while reading OP's comment. Taxes will go way up since the number of people having to support all the old people will be fewer and fewer. The increased taxes will cause people to have fewer and fewer children. It's a vicious cycle.

we have the same kind of situation in America just a little behind, so here are my thoughts "as a young person": none of my peers want to pay for that. we're not going to sit around letting old people leech from us instead of working. and at the end of the day younger people hold more physical power and more working ability so we will have the final say regardless of how many old people there are to vote themselves o…

> young people refuse to pay and force the government

How they would be able to "refuse to pay" if payment will come as form of taxes for goods and services? And moreover they won't be able to "force" government to anything since government will be representing and working for the majority of people who voted for them: older generations

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

#625

Post by Ekaros »

erulabs wrote: post #611
DocTomoe wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's name the elephant in the room: No government is going to make a significant part of the workforce work in (unproductive) elderly care. Societies will eventually start to just get rid of their old, first encouraging life-ending treatment, and eventually enforcing it if there are not enough takers.

The counter to this argument is that time begets wealth - thus the oldest folks are the most likely to have capital. Those with capital impact economic decision making: thus the real trap is that we will all eventually spend all of our time taking care of the elderly - it will be the last job in town - as the elderly will have the last wealth at the last moment. Government policy of today certainly favors the old and…

Depends on capital they hold. Capital only has value because there is either demand or it produces something. If everyone in town is working to take care elderly, the capital in factories is worth nothing as there is no labour to produce things. Or the houses are worthless as there is no demand for them. Later can already be seen in certain locations. So they are out of luck unless they own the nursing home or production for necessary goods in taking care of them.

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

#626

Post by mjh2539 »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #551
mjh2539 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

I mean, if things are anything like they are now, they'll end up paying $100/mo on a salary of ~$130,000 to cover the cost of $70,000 in loans that are going to get written off by the federal government in ten more years. (The fact that my wife does not work and we have two children obviously brings down the monthly rate to a significant degree).

It's not exactly the incredible expense some folks imagine it to be; it's certainly not worth not having children over.

Unless of course you're dead-set on sending your children to Oberlin or Harvard or something and coming out of it with no debt, I don't think it's a reasonable objection. And even if you were dead-set on it, shouldn't you be making enough to be able to afford to let your wife stay at home if she wanted to anyway?

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

#627

Post by collegeburner »

pxtail wrote: post #624
collegeburner wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we have the same kind of situation in America just a little behind, so here are my thoughts "as a young person": none of my peers want to pay for that. we're not going to sit around letting old people leech from us instead of working. and at the end of the day younger people hold more physical power and more working ability so we will have the final say regardless of how many old people there are to vote themselves o…

> young people refuse to pay and force the government How they would be able to "refuse to pay" if payment will come as form of taxes for goods and services? And moreover they won't be able to "force" government to anything since government will be representing and working for the majority of people who voted for them: older generations

in that case i hope there is forcible resistance. a government that robs its youth is not a just one even if a majority supports it.

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

#628

Post by flerovium »

In Korea, income is positively correlated with fertility.

https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol44/39/44-39....

In the West, it was historically (1900-2000) the opposite.

In fact, the fertility of the rich is similar between regions. The difference is that in Korea, the less advantaged have many fewer children.

Understanding this goes a long way toward understanding "Why don't they fix this?" For some, there is no problem.

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

#629

Post by yomkippur »

ookblah wrote: post #345
yomkippur wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah this is a bad take that people on r/korea are pushing which consist drum roll please....mostly white men/women who keep this echo chamber narrative going...so that they think that korean women are going to flock to westerners more (?) its bizarre to me as somebody who has many Korean friends who just crack up when I translate that subreddit for them. first feminism in korea is toxic. they are female version of i…

just want to add that you do a dis-service for calling out feminism in korea without providing some context. decades of treating women basically as second class citizens or worse with no outlet "created" this environment. there's an equally large incel base in korea and we can argue to death who "started" it first, but history has shown it's usually the men heh. this doesn't excuse or condone the toxicity, but this b…

> decades of treating women basically as second class citizens or worse with no outlet "created" this environment.

you mean like japan? what about US where women have unfair advantages?

so your solution is for those women to marry you right?

where do you get this idea that a culture "treats women like shit"? if anything telling women to whore themselves to rich men inject drugs and kill their fetuses seem to me like that definition if we are gonna play stereotypes.

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

#630

Post by rayiner »

jxramos wrote: post #601
rayiner wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget grandparents. That’s how my wife and I had three while both working as corporate lawyers. This is quite common among people I know.

I’ve been curious how Amy Coney Barret and her husband pulled it off. She definitely has it all, staggering.

She lives in a Catholic faith community in South Bend. There’s lots of kids of all ages and so always people around to babysit, etc. It’s like my dad described his village in Bangladesh. Nobody takes care of their kid all the time like in America. (The women have to go into the rice fields during the day too.) The kids get passed around.
Post reply on HN