These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.
In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.
Is a declining birth rate a bad thing? 50 million people live in a country (South Korea) the size of Indiana. Maybe, just maybe the economy should just take a hit for a change so there can be fewer people here. I know rich people don’t want that, but I bet the country would be a better place for it.
Korean here. The problem is the steepness of the trend. We are not ready for such dramatic change over short period. Gradual decrease in population will cause economic downfall for sure. But we can deal with that. But in current speed, it’s going to be economic airplane crash. Claiming that it’s only bad for the 1% is just delusional at best. The crash will overwhelm any social/economic structure.
I’ve noticed some people here practically yearn for disasters because it might hurt the rich. The absolutely staggering collateral damage to everyone else is ignored or waved away. It’s very much a desperate “nothing left to lose” philosophy that’s both sad and scary.
Multiple generations have had all the doors slammed in their faces, and all the ladders pulled up before them. Instead of acting like crabs in a bucket, they’ve decided they would rather have nothing so long as the people who trapped them suffer too. It’s pure spite but can you blame them? I’d probably do the same thing.
You are ignoring the fact that there’s going to be several times the loss in human workers added to the workforce by way of virtual laborers within 20 years.
This is just one of the many recent instances of humans being unable to adequately forecast consequences due to anchoring biases. While we typically see it in the other direction (minimizing increasing risks because of lower historical risk) here it’s something that would have been concerning decades ago but won’t be nearly as risky decades from now.
Maybe the chaebols should stop constantly putting up new apartment blocks now.
That’s very far from what’s happening right now. I’m curious where did you get that idea from.
Maybe the evidence is anecdotal, but I’ve lived in Korea for 20 years, and there’s always a huge new, self-contained apartment complex going up nearby. If anything, they’ve ramped up production in that time. While older population centers are left to decline. Maybe not in Seoul which is shoulder-to-shoulder apartment complexes already, but the smaller cities are full of decaying apartment complexes since they put them up, then completely fail to maintain them as they know their market is full of people who will move into the next complex since “gotta have the latest and greatest” is a problem here.
There’s good evidence though. When you drive from Incheon Airport into Seoul, you see a ton of new apartment / condos going up. Every time I visit, I see more and more buildings put up.
I mean, in the short term (50-100 years), yes it is. Unless people start dying at a younger age, there’s going to be a lot of orphaned seniors, which isn’t good. We won’t really see the benefits of a declining birthrate in our lifetimes, but we will see numerous negatives.
In the long term, it’s probably more nessecary then “not bad,” but again, you don’t want to be the one of the people living during the population collapse.
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It’s bad for capitalism and the 1%. You can’t have infinite growth with falling population numbers.
Edit: A lot of people claiming it’s also bad for the young and old people. It depends on how you’re social services are structured. Where I live the system is set up so that everyone only gets back the money they put into the system. That’s what the EU recommendations are and where all the EU countries are moving. Yes, the retirements will be lower in the future but that’s the only way to make the system sustainable without major cuts to everything else. IMHO it’s better than the idea of infinite growth.
No, it’s actually bad for everyone, because few young people have to support loads of old people. Politics will cater to the old people, because they have more voting power in numbers and will cut budgets for young people (education, social security and so on).
As opposed to now? That’s literally what happens here, no one wants any of these old fucks’ laws. They were born when the first plane was taking off and haven’t kept to date with anything in the modern world. We have no choice because the only people who seem to have any time to do anything in this country are the old people. Therefore we get shit on for simply trying to exist.
Yeah, that’s getting even worse.
It’s bad for the Old who will have their Pensions cut and bad for the young who have to pay for more Pensions.
It’s not bad because we’re such a capitalist Society but exactly because we’re not. Because we expect to pay Welfare to older People to retire. And that whole Concept lies on the Assumption, that there will always be more People paying for the Welfare than People receiving it.
Lol. What pensions?
Just like national health insurance, every workers in SK is mandated to pay for the pension insurance. You give x% of your earnings and 국민연금공단(National Pension Service) gives you back(with x more amount, in consideration of interest rate and everything) as pensions after you retire(from 65, that is). Problem is steep decline in taxpayers and increasing number of pensioners have resulted in NPS not having enough money to pay everyone who already paid for their pensions.
Nice of you to just go lol what pensions when you don’t seem to know anything about the system.
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Sounds nice for SK. But lol pensions don’t exist for most of the US anymore
It’s bad for humanity too. You can’t replace all the old people that cannot create what we desire for living without having kids.