186
How to fix Korea's birthrate? Put girls in school earlier, controversial report argues
(koreajoongangdaily.joins.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
186 points (93.9% liked)
World News
38977 readers
2940 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Actual answer: stop overworking your fucking population.
Won't fix it, unless women want to stop working and stay at home, couples aren't having more kids.
The solution is better population distribution, we've got overpopulated countries and countries where the birthrate isn't high enough, no need to be a genius to get it.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, how about you propose an actual realistic solution? It's not 1850 anymore, people have goals other than making sure their family name lives on, no matter how easy you make it to have kids, more and more people just don't want to have them because it's socially acceptable and they don't want the burden. What then? Let the population go down until the average age is over 70? There's not a single birth policy that respects people's freedom of choice that has achieved the objective of making the local population have its birthrate go back over 2.1, none.
How does that fix anything? You keep some parts of the world as human breeding mills and send them to the places where quality of work/life balance is so bad that they can't have kids there either?
No, at some point the human population won't be able to increase forever and as conditions are improving in poorer nations their birthrate is decreasing, I'm just pointing out the obvious, immigration is the solution to birthrate problems in some parts of the world and it's the solution to overpopulation in other parts.
Heck, that's exactly what multicultural countries are doing, it's an issue with Asian countries that refuse to welcome people of other cultures.
Just gonna point out that this isn't a problem.
I would argue it is a problem in a capitalist society where constant and eternal economic growth is necessary.
Then again, I would also argue that capitalism is the problem.
Correct. If the masses benefitted from industrialization rather than just the corporations, we could have a high quality of life for everyone, population growth be damned.
Never said it was, but it's ridiculous to think it's normal to let certain territories become empty out of nationalistic pride when people are suffering out of lack of resources in other territories.
Just to chime in. I was interested to randomly see in my feed the other day about how divorce between an American husband and Japanese wife, is at a lower rate than is between Japanese citizens.
I found it interesting that some cultures might be slightly more compatible with each other.
Anyway.
Not surprising, Americans living in Japan don't tend to adopt the crazy work schedule that's considered normal over there.
Raise the price of labor to the point that a working family can afford to have children at the standard they consider socially acceptable.
That would devalue investment accounts though, so it won't happen until there is suffering on a scale not seen outside of major wars.
It won't make people have enough kids to renew the population though otherwise birthrate would have been higher than it was in the 70s and 80s
In what country?
I'm talking about raising wages by 40-70% in the US.
Pipe dream, but if it happened the fertility rate would increase.
It's the same story in all countries as they become developed, access to birth control and people having other more interesting shit to do means they don't want to have kids, no matter how easy it is for them.
Finland: 1910 to 1930 4.7 to 2.4, 1950 to 1975 3.4 to 1.6, between 1.5 and 1.9 since then.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033730/fertility-rate-finland-1800-2020/
Look at Canada's numbers the second the pill becomes available in the 60s (years before Reaganomics and at a time where people were still able to make it on a single income)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm
UK, going down since the end of the industrial revolution
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
People just don't want enough kids to renew the population when they're given the choice to do something else, it's that simple.
Heck, increased income is associated with decreased fertility, it's been known for decades at this point! How come the rich don't have tons of kids? They don't have to stress about money, right? How come poor people have more kids than the middle class? It's not as if they have a surplus of cash or can afford to only have one parent working, right?
France made childcare and education free and relatively high quality and look at that! They have just under replacement level fertility!
Some people do want children. Not everyone, but lots of people do. It's true that wealth depresses fertility, but you can have a sustainable society if you give people financial security.
I'm willing to believe there are some cultural issues at play, not just the economics, but that is for demographers to tease out.
The American congressional representatives have an average of 2 children. Replacement rate. Get our standard of living up to that and you will see fertility go up.
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/472322/natalite-france/
Downward trend
Longer term
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-france-1800-2020/
Downward trend
Replacement rate is 2.1, not 2
Nice for congressional representatives, did you take a look at their age? Average is 58 and 64 in the Senate, median is 58 and 65 respectively from what I'm finding. They're not people who are making the choice to have or not have kids right now.
maybe because regardless of money, some people don't want to have and raise kids in the shitshow this world has become over the last 30 yrs?
Look at long term trends, it's not a 30 years thing, 100 years ago Finland was getting close to being under minimum required to renew its population.
When women get rights, people get education and people have access to birth control, they stop having kids, the situation in the world at the moment only adds more reasons but even in a perfect world people wouldn't have enough kids to renew the population.
Rebalancing is only a temporary solution. Birthdate in developing countries is also dropping: they may still be in the “good” part of the stop, but there’s no reason to expect it won’t keep dropping. Predictions vary widely but in about half a century, the overall population will start dropping, regardless whether you rebalance.
The thing that really hasn’t been tried is to value parenthood, value children. Sure, we may culturally and may even give a few incentives, but it has always been a huge burden on parents. Very few countries with the possible exception of a couple Scandinavian ones, do much to help make this easier
US is particularly bad at this
I’ve read estimates that parents spend on average $250,000 to raise a kid, and that’s an old number so I don’t see how it’s anywhere near that low. Who can afford that?
And that’s not counting the work, the attention, the hardship of raising kids. I always wanted kids and regret not having more than 2, but raising them is neither easy nor cheap, and society does very little to help
How come Scandinavian countries don't have a higher birthrate then?
How come you can see birthrate fall at an alarming rate the second birth control becomes easily available even in the 60s when traditional families were still the norm?
How come millionaires don't have bigger families than poor people if they don't have the financial burden or the need for both parents to work?
Valuing children also means educating them and you know what happens the more people are educated? That's right, birthrate drops.
The truth is, we're not going back to numbers over 2.1 unless we take away women's freedom and I'm sure no one with half a brain wants that.
I disagree. I think more people actually do want to have families but the systems in place just aren't set up to enable that. This is anecdotal, of course.
But the system has changed quite a lot during the last century yet birth rate has been going down even when things were going better.
Hell, you see it extremely well in Canada, the second the pill becomes available, fertility starts dropping. That's in the 60s, people were still able to afford to raise a family with a single income.
It's extremely short-sighted to just look at today to make an opinion.
Give women AND men the opportunity and means to stay at home for childcare and stop putting the burden solely on the women might actually help.
But I guess treating women like actual people and with equity is way too much to expect.
South Korea has a huge misogyny problem to the point where young women choose celibacy and staying single over marriage and family to escape their bad situation under the current patriarchy. They actively choosing not to have children, because men treat them like shit.
Data shows it's not the case otherwise rich people would have way more kids instead of being poor people that have the higher fertility rate.
Also birth rate goes down with improvement to women rights, not up. If there was less misogyny in South Korea people wouldn't have more kids than they do at the moment.
You think the world wasn't misogynistic when people were having 10+ kids in the 18th and 19th century?
My main argument wasnt about money, but if you stop putting the burden of hild rearing soley on women and share these responsibilities equally they will be more willing to have children. In most cases, more rights for women meant they are paying for the privilige with double the work. Still doing all the work at home and all the work of having children in addition to the job they can now have and gives them a choice.
Yes of course Birthrate goes up, if you take away women's agency and give them no choice. Take away the means to control family planing and make being a wife and mother the only survivable option. As it was for women in those centuries.
You want to live in a world, were women are again slaves and property of the men in the family and forced to be birthing machines and maids to their husbands?
But that's exactly what I showed isn't true with rich vs poor! Rich people can afford not to work or to pay someone to take care of their kids yet they have smaller families than poorer people who need both parents to work and less than poor people where only one parent works.
Also, birthrate isn't any higher in places where there's social programs to help people with that either. Heck, in Canada the parents get a year of parental leave, in Quebec specifically there's super cheap kindergarten since the 90s as well and the birthrate is one of the lowest in the world.
I'm not saying I want to live in a world where women are forced to have kids, I want to make people understand that they're trying to find tons of excuses why people don't have kids but the reason is simply that when people are actually given the choice to have them or not, the people who actually want to have kids don't have enough to renew the population and that won't change no matter how "easy" we try to make it. Having kids is a huge responsibility and people realize that they have other things they want to do with their lives.