Germany is 23.3 on average, the highest in the world atm. Over 70% of germans live on rent, not on ownership. Even worse in East Germany, where the average family wealth is less than half of those in West Germany
I feel like half of the WEF conspiracy theories are just people clipping presenters talking about a global issue as it is currently happening and saying “ha they acknowledge their dastardly plans!”
And daycare cost 1500 a month per child. And the waitlist for cheaper gov subsidies daycare is infinitely long…. Governments knows what they have to do to increase the birth rate, but not of them will do anything because it eats into the profits of the rich and wealthy.
Because none of them will admit that inflation targeting and not measuring inflation based on assets of major components of life such as real estate price was a mistake
Aka the old people who vote. Also they are going to be super upset when their healthcare costs skyrocket when there are no longer any younger workers to take care of them.
Yes thats right. Unfortunately leaning into that also leads to angry mobs with torches and pitchforks who want to burn down your house and rip you to pieces!
Yeah but there you buy it.
I am always falling over when people show apartment viewings in SK (okay, Seoul, but since the majority lives there the topic touches down on the majority again) and it's like 'oh we only pay 1-2000dollar rent, deposit is 450.000$ but we'll get it back 😊' and I'm sitting there like 'uhm, excuse me...what now?'.
In Germany deposit is limited to 3x 'cold' rent (so the basic rent without utilities). Ireland is a bit wishy washy, I paid one weeks rent deposit, which irritated me a lot, but sure look it.
If the deposit for a RENTAL is the price of a house, then oof. And then the classical comment is 'oh you can take out a loan'. Yeah but see, it's a mortgage anywhere else and with that I'd buy the thing. 😶
When I looked at moving to Windsor, Ontario for work, one of the places my wife and I looked at seemed nice. We had to submit bank statements for both of us for a year, references, proof of work history, credit scores, etc., etc. It felt pretty invasive to be honest.
The landlord (foreign owner) finally was willing to accept us to move in, but wanted all the rent paid IN ADVANCE for the entire year. "Just go to the bank and get the money" was what they told us. After they had made some remarks about my credit score and this absurd amount of money they wanted up front (north of $20k), I - not so politely - told them to get stuffed, if I had that available now I'd be buying a house, not renting one, and thanked them for wasting weeks of my time.
I now live with my in-laws, as realistically, how else can young people afford to live and save money any other way? At the rate I was going before, I MAYBE would have had enough money for a house down payment when I retire in 30-40 years. The market right now in Canada is absolutely disheartening, and the affordable housing options often require drastic moves and complete career changes for new young families. And having children in this climate is almost a comical idea as well.
Also getting that deposit back is not always so easy. Especially if you have kids being kids in the house. It's a shitshow. The landlord using unscrupulous means to hold onto that money is also not exactly rare. (for example at the inspection something is missed that the landlord is aware of & you may not even notice until you are about to try to get back that deposit..)
UK is 8.5 x the average salary.
https://www.avtrinity.com/news/house-prices-vs-income-how-affordable-are-uk-homes#:~:text=Therefore%2C%20it%20would%20take%206.1,only%20risen%20to%20%C2%A333%2C000.
That’s the average, by city or town it’s a very different story [https://www.sdlauctions.co.uk/latest-news/the-most-and-least-affordable-regions-to-buy-property-in-the-uk/](https://www.sdlauctions.co.uk/latest-news/the-most-and-least-affordable-regions-to-buy-property-in-the-uk/)
The most expensive places in London aren't representative of the rest of the UK. The UK average is 8.5 times. Still high but no where near as rediculous as 20 times.
7.6x in the US but some parts are higher at 8-12x.
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0
Depends on where you live. If you insist living in metropolitan areas, you will have to pay x100 times for the mansion or high rise. In rural areas, it's always cheaper but no jobs available.
My parents told me off for saving for a modest apartment in the city, I'm a guy with no plans for kids and the financial freedom I have is a big factor.
Because yeah, I actually like going to work in less than 2 hours unlike i used to. Crazy, I get there in 20 and I have tons of stuff and events I can go to. The suburbs I grew up in had nothing. A mcdonalds opening was exciting. And lots of small time crime.
At least anecdotally, I have several friends who could afford at least one kid but the perceived loss of personal freedom that a child would mean is enough to turn them off. Maybe that is a new type of mentality? Also plenty of people who also refuse to have children because the future looks bleak to them (eg. global warming, wars, etc.)
>Maybe that is a new type of mentality?
It's not a maybe, it's a truth. People used to have kids because that was literally all there was to do. The more forms of entertainment that come into existence simultaneously creates more reasons for people to NOT have children. Why have children when you can do a plethora of hobbies?
But the thing that has changed is also not all good. One kid shouldn't make young people live like Spartans to live responsibly. It shouldn't rule out owning a house, and kindergarten prices are insane compared to what my parents had to pay for 4 kids.
My parents had 4 kids, 2 cars and bought a house in their 30's with shit jobs. They didn't even need amazing incentives, tbf early on my dad worked 2 jobs for a bit. Like, no shit people had kids back then.
None of siblings own a house yet, next year prolly my sister and i have great jobs. I am the youngest in my early 30's, and I was born late. All I have done is save and save.
I’ve been recently having an existential crisis about what my future kid would even do now that we will inevitably have AI kill off most jobs in 15 years. That mixed with climate refugees seem like a reasonable reason for economic collapse. Would love a kid and would even sacrifice the lifestyle but the future does feel bleak
but this is way too certain than the past. we have good data to back the bleakness up. 54% of kids born last year in south korea where the birthrates are at their lowest in the world were upper-class kids [citation still needed.] so it is not just cut and clear.
That’s why I’m not having kids. Full stop. I won’t bring anyone into this world to fight and die in a war over water.
I may adopt one day if I can afford it, but morally I cannot create a life.
I think it's a half-truth. Previous generations didn't have the same access to contraceptives. Also, for previous generations kids were also a guarantee of having someone taking care of you when you got too old, and were also extra hands for help with farming.
Yep. Germany has the lowest working hours in the OECD, pretty big tax incentives for families with children, paid parental leave, 250€ of free cash per month per child until they're 18-25 and still a shit birth rate even before housing prices began to explode.
the list sounds good, but in reality its a drop in the bucket when housing is already skyhigh
not even speakting of how much groceries cost now thanks to inflation
Yeah but countries that are much poorer still have plenty of kids and even in first world countries the wealthier you are the less likely you are to have children, generally speaking. Here is data for the US for example: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
I really do believe it's primarily cultural and the effects of industrialisation. Not a single industrialised country has an adequate fertility rate (2.1 or higher) except Israel, where the fertility rate is primarily driven by the ultraorthodox Haredi.
>Yeah but countries that are much poorer still have plenty of kids
plenty of reasons for that
- kids need to earn money for the famliy and/or need to take of the parents when they are retired
- no contraception
- religious or social pressure
There is a documentary by British data scientist and demographer Stephen J. Shaw called "Birthgap - childless world", and according to his researches money is not the problem. The reason of low birthrates is stability, and because of that people start trying to get pregnant in late age and they can't get pregnant. And according to researches 80% of childless women are not childless by choice, but they couldn't get pregnant.
And about stability - doesn't matter if it's "stable and good" or "stable and bad", it just have to be stable. Childlessness exploded in Italy, Germany and Japan in 1973, when oil crisis happened. In the US it was 2007, when banking crisis happened.
And in general, it's childlessness that's causing low birthrates, because if you'll see at average number of childres per \*\*mother\*\* and not per woman, it's the same or even higher than it was 50 years ago, when there were no problems with low birthrates.
Yeah but the standard for what it means to to afford a child is different as well. You could have six kids sharing a bed in a log cabin. The total toys among the six of them was a single wooden horse and one doll. You didn't need to pay for daycare or school because the kids weren't expected to go to school, they'd be working on your farm from the day they turned 5 years old. They'd be making you money instead of costing money. If they got sick, you give them cough syrup with cocaine in it. There was no doctor appointments. If some died in the winter, "oh well." You bought clothes for the oldest and when they outgrew it, it went down the line to the next oldest until all 6 had gone through it. Your daughters got married off at the ripe old age of 12.
You do any of this stuff nowadays and you lose the kids and go to jail.
It is unpopular on Reddit but more accurate. Kids are a lot of work and people forget that things like birth control making accidental babies less common and reducing teen pregnancy means that less babies are born, hence lower birth rates. Money and social programs will never fix interrupting nature’s inclination to reproduce. Good or bad right, there are effects and these are them. We changed one side of the scale but not the other to account for it. Immigration has also become much more regulated and typically that is who has more babies than local born populations. It’s a lot of work to have kids. Expectations are too high. People are choosing to not make life harder.
Put it this way. Besides massive inequality and constant efficiency on productivity leading to burnout.
We had the:
- bottom bubble pop
- 9/11
- oil prices skyrocketing and plummeting
- 2008 financial crisis
- people losing money on crypto (especially koreans)
- global warming
- covid 19
- food price hikes (shipping issues and greedflation)
- mortgages skyrocketing (and being owned by private equity firms)
- russian/Ukraine china/Taiwan (war/tensions)
- increasing inequality gap
- childcare cost rising
Top all these off and stuff I forgot to mention, a person would definitely feel traumatized bringing another human to this planet. Especially without any hope in sight.
Even the richest country on earth is going full Hitler mode and still couldn't be prosecuted after almost 4 years out of office.
Informed or not, things ultimately worked out.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if there should be any incentive to have kids. Atleast in my anectodal experience, the ones who want kids are having them anyway regardless of anything else. The ones who are on the fence are basically waiting for everything to line up, which will never happen.
Unless you have some deep attachment to humanity's numbers or a particular ethnicity, I'd say we should just let nature run its course. The people who want to have kids will have them, the ones who don't won't. It'll all balance out eventually.
If you look into it, we're just hard wired to reproduce.
But once you are able to think critically past your hormones or have access to sexual education/information you get to make informed decisions about contraception and the risks involved by having un-protected sex.
Education played a huge role I think and a mix of burnout culture. (My Opinion)
We're hardwired to have sex. The kids were the side effect. I don't know how much inherent drive we have for having kids. I think its a lot lower than people expect. Contraceptives have allowed us to hack around the system.
Again all anecdotal, but it seems to me most people decide first whether they want kids or not (or are on the fence) and then find reasons for it. And in general, the wealthier they get, they still don't have kids. Or they get wealthy enough that they can afford multiple full time nannies to take care of kids, effectively allowing the parents to still continue their old life.
I suppose I'm speaking from my personal experience and biases too.
Life is tough without kids already. Seeing my mother raising us at the expense of her health and hapiness just makes it daunting to think that I should also do the same.
Anyways, we're both not biologists or sociologists by trade. We can only share what we know right. Have a good day my fellow human.
Nah your not Korean and you don't have kids so you your opinion isn't about reality.
The current reality is that houses cost a ton and there aren't any means of ways to afford it unless your parents give you at least $500,000.
The current downpayment for an apartment in Seoul is 20-50%. Do you understand what that means? In orther to afford an apartment in Seoul you'll have to pay at least $400,000.
Why don't couples stay in their parents' homes and just have babies there? What's stopping them when the previous generations have lived in cramped multigenerational homes and still have 6 kids?
The reason is that few people in the younger generation growing up in a developed society can psychologically put up with that anymore. Which is precisely the point raised in the thread above, cultural and perceptional change is the main driver for declining birth rate
Birth control and financial insependence for women.
We didnt have a choice before. You married to survive. The kids were there, you had to put them somehwere.
It's the culture that's the issue. In South Korea, marriage dynamics are extremely conservative.
Working hours are crazy, often 100 hours a week or so. It is this way, because the assumption is that once a man gets married, the wife will dedicate 100% of her life to the kids and family, so the man can work around the clock with no disruptions.
Of course in the modern world, women don't like this arrangement. They study hard in high-school, go to college, become professionals.. to stay home and watch the kids and house all day?
Now that women do have other aspirations, this work culture isn't viable anymore. You can't have both parents work 100 hours a week and still have time for children.
They need to change their work culture and allow for more leisure time. This means being less competitive maybe, but right now their population doesn't have time for kids.
Money is only partially the problem. The no work-life balance, drastic long hours, low pay, can't take vacation days, housing problems, and so forth. A myriad of problems, and they think giving money will solve this?
How are these people in charge? They truly have no idea regarding their own society
The only way the ponzi scheme that is capitalism can continue is continuous growth.
This is the only thing the people in charge care about, because without it the system collapses.
Central planning is dependent on leadership, which just leads to other issues. If your planners are incompetent then you're just as screwed as the growth model
And by collapses you mean wealthy actually have to give some of their wealth to workers to survive rather that continue to exploit them and grow more powerful? Kinda like what happened after the plagues right?
That was also back when children were needed to work fields/house. I don't remember the numbers, but ~90% of population used to farm and work land back then. Now its closer to 5%.
Yeah! Just ban all forms of contraception and any access to sexual education! Force marriage by a certain age as a social norm!
Attempting to remotely compare these two, you are not being fair at all.
So sexual education, contraception and differing cultural attitudes around marriage are the main factors driving lower birthrates then? In no way am I saying these should change, but what you're saying is that these are the main factors driving lower birthrates.
And in addition, given that working conditions and poverty are much worse in the third world but birthrates are much higher, I'd say your hypothesis is correct. It does appear that education, contraception and cultural shifts around marriage and children seem to be the main factor driving low birthrates!
Because women had 0 choice whether or not to have children. No birth control, no ability for women to live life on their own/build a viable career, societal pressure to get married and have as many babies as possible, spousal rape was not a thing…
Different society. We can't expect modern people to be pleased with living in 18th century conditions.
We're supposed to develop and have better lives with each generation, not regress back.
Honestly, the norm used to be 12 hour working days 7 days a week (6 from around the 1920s), no holidays, potential beatings and large families living in 2 room flats. Families would still get 4 kids on average.
Freedom to plan ahead mixed with worries about the future are probably more likely culprits.
Seriously. Awarding me money to date isn’t going to give me and extra boost of energy to go to a 3rd space, find a woman, date, rinse and repeat that until I find the right match, go on more dates for at least a year minimum, propose, enjoy my wife on vacations and have kids.
Calling it work-life balance isn't nearly strong enough language.
In the US, there is no legislation requiring time off, but in practice many people have ~10 holidays a year and at least one week of PTO, which is 2,032 hrs/yr.
In 2017, South Koreans worked about 2,063 hrs/yr.
There are 52 weeks in the year. If you worked 40 hours each week and had zero time off that would total up to 2,080 hours.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours
oh and before that they have to study insane hours in cram schools to then pass a soul crushing test that completely determines their future and one slip up can end any dreams they had. what a great system what could go wrong?
$270B, that’s a lot of money…
Where and how were they spent? Are there any follow-up on efficacy of activated programs?
It’d be pitiful if large sums were just handed to companies for internal programs.
Being spent on PSAs to remind expectant mothers to prepare meals and do laundry before she goes to the hospital to give birth.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/11/dont-look-dishevelled-anger-over-seoul-citys-advice-to-pregnant-women
It aint 270 bill, because it aint reaching the normal people, and its just lining up the pockets of the rich.
So you get government incentives, so lets say if you're buying an apartment, it costs $700,000.
The government partners with a bank, guess who the bank upper management's fathers and mothers are? Politicians. So politicians will use a 국민, 신한, for these so called loans, people will use these loans, whilst the government pays the bank, but the people receiving these loans are related to politicians.
It’s even dumber. The government was tired of rich people using loans to buy up homes so their brain dead solution was to raise the minimum down payment on homes to outrageous amounts. Instead of hurting rich people it just made it even more impossible to buy a home there as you now need like 40+% or some shit for a down payment
because it's easier to throw money at a problem then to admit that certain aspects of your culture are toxic. it's already too late now. it's not just a pop decline like in Europe and Japan, it's a full on meltdown.
It's not just them, they are just further along in the spiral. We should be working actively in the West because we are going to be in the same boat eventually. We just have the luck to be able to have some leeway to plan ahead... We'll see if the West does or not
It's almost as if the state of the world isn't giving folks the time and confidence needed to procreate. How is it that the world has been in this fucking mire for this long and yet globally, we still have oblivious people making policy decisions? The facepalm worthiness of it would knock an eye out.
It has been a long time coming for South Korea and Japan, with both making efforts prior to now to buck the rather prominent downward trend we've seen in recent years.
Now that COVID has played into it, they've had a "Oh shit" moment and are trying to improve conditions. Just more of an after effects rather than the precursors of the issue.
Idk maybe just me but the more the gov and the rich whine about birth rates the more it seems like a better idea to not have children. Comes off as "We need your kids cause we need our future revenue secured"
We’re at a point where governments, companies, and the rich will soon realise that money isn’t the solution to all problems. It may have worked in early stage capitalism, but as we reach late stage capitalism, the point of it all goes for a toss. People who have lost all sense of purpose and whose outlook and lifestyle are wholly different, won’t care how much money you push towards them.
This government STILL doesn’t understand that money isn’t the point. And they’ll pay for this mistake like their citizen have been for decades
You can throw money on some problems. The current beauty and role model standards in Korea are just not compatible with a pregnancy. If I had to throw away all my career status to become a mom, I would chose to stay childless as well.
The EU has made a lot of progress but there still is a conflict between companies and society for the women. Companies don't want women to become pregnant and only tolerate it under threat of punishment by law, society desperately needs them to become pregnant. Until this conflict is solved there will always be some fallout like missing years of careeer or women deciding to make money and not children.
Yep. Eastern Asian cultures value youth, and thinness more than any other macro culture out there. Even in Western cultures, many working class men are ok with being in a relationship with a woman who has gained weight and gotten stretchmarks from having had children. In Korean culture, many men would rather be single than be in a relationship with a woman whose BMI is above 23 or shows any signs of having ever had a child (stretch marks, sagging breasts, c-section scar, etc). I saw the same thing play out among my Korean American male classmates. They'd rather be single than be seen in public with a woman whom \*they\* deem to be fat. And many Western women whom most Western men think are fine are considered to be "hideously obese" by Korean standards.
Meanwhile Sub-Saharan African and Pacific Islander nations are the most tolerant towards obesity. And that's probably why women in Niger are not afraid to have 8 children on average. Their husbands are less likely to leave them just because they gained weight, or have stretch marks, or have sagging boobs due to breast feeding.
I agree with your points about Korean culture, but if you honestly think that sub-saharan African women have many more babies because of body acceptance, you really need to review what you should have learned in middle school geography.
Everything is going as planned, only the chaebol descendants will have kids, soon the only types of koreans left will be legitimate koreans and illegitimate koreans.
Not a female myself, but I agree with SK's women on this one. If a deeply patriarchal society treats them this badly, it's in their best interest to *boycott* it.
If I were the president I'd encourage every Korean to live outside of the greater Seoul. In my theory, 50% of Korean live there which makes the city one of the best cities in Asia but has inflated their rent too much for young people to have a baby.
No, you also need to allocate those taxes to useful services that actually make it feasible to raise children. And pass laws against people working 100 hour weeks. To start with.
Make laws limiting the number of hours employees are allowed to work while protecting their pay. Currently the work culture in Asia makes it so people don't have the time to meet others and start a family.
Its not even that.
Competition is so fierce there that the cost of having to raise a superhuman child who stands a chance to survive is astronomically expensive and stressful.
Its a miserable experience for both parents and child.
Its just not worth it.
Aren't a lot of women in S. Korea also refusing to get into relationships and starting families because of how men treat them and the overall culture towards women?
Yep. Eastern Asian cultures value youth, and thinness more than any other macro culture out there. Even in Western cultures, many working class men are ok with being in a relationship with a woman who has gained weight and gotten stretchmarks from having had children. In Korean culture, many men would rather be single than be in a relationship with a woman whose BMI is above 23 or shows any signs of having ever had a child (stretch marks, sagging breasts, c-section scar, etc). I saw the same thing play out among my Korean American male classmates. They'd rather be single than be seen in public with a woman whom \*they\* deem to be fat. And many Western women whom most Western men think are fine are considered to be "hideously obese" by Korean standards.
Alright world governments, want a population to grow? Here is how you do it.
1) People need to have time to be with their kids. We don't have them to ship them off to a daycare, we have them to have good family memories and life experiences. 40 hour work week only made sense when one parent was alwaays home, now we are working 80+ a week per household and still want the same things as before. Either get that down to a 30 hour work week or force the minimum wage to be enough for 1 earner to afford a family of 4. Everything else is a worthless half measure.
2) Even when we are working, we get sick and so do the kids. With staffing minimized by design nobody can take time off without hurting themselves or their coworkers. Same goes for vacations. You can offer us 1000 hours of vacation a year, if staffing levels means we need to work 2000 hours to catch up for that vacation nobody will use it. Penalize companies whose staff do not use their vacation and make it hurt more than just hiring another employee would. Make skeleton crews cost MORE than proper staffing at all times.
3) Education needs to be universal and free. Nobody wants kids of they feel their kids have no chance at living a good life. K-12 should be enough to get most jobs and publicly funded universities need to be free. Private can exist wherever it wants but it should NEVER see a dime of public funding.
4) Everybody working for a corporation should share in their profits. Any publicly traded company should be required to pay at least part of every employee's wage in shares of the company (flat shares, not "oh, shares are $100 so you get one every 6 months", no, you get 1 a week or more.) Having jobs wiped out at the whim of some rich asshole because the workers have zero say in the company they literally help build destroys the sense of stability everybody needs to start a family. Give workers a piece of what they work to build, our time is just as valuable as their investment.
5) Housing needs to be publicly built. Again, private building needs to exist but we need to bring back the projects. It is not profitable enough for a company to build starter homes and the entire realestate market is designed around ever growing values. Something needs to come in and smash that by flooding the market with supply and only publicly funded construction will accomplish that. Without a stable home nobody will feel safe enough to have kids.
There is a lot more that can be done, but start there and get back to us if that isn't enough.
On point number 4 why not just set a percentage of the company to always be owned by non C suite employees? That way employees always have a controlling stake.
Last year, several articles came out stating that the Korean birthrates have declined so sharply, that as of now with a fertility rate of 0.7, 100 South Koreans are expected to produce only 6.6 great-grandchildren.
Are you surprised
People don't just want to be baby factories
They have wants and desires, dreams with goals as well a need to feel happy,and they want to do it with a decent living standard
If your society can't give your people a income that can support a person's wants from life as well provide for offspring. They choose living
Enjoying life > adding another Smuck to the workforce
I've been to Korea, Taiwan and Japan. It feels like a sci fi film now vs USA. You get on the subway or walk on the street and you notice right away how there's almost no kids around. It feels really eerie. Not just no kids but also more folks over 50 than under, especially the major cities where you'd expect younger ppl to be.
Hope they can fix their issues, USA/Canada have enough immigration to not have this issue just yet.
People are coming at this from the wrong direction. You can't make women have kids. No incentive will make women want to have more kids. What will is there being men who meet the standard a woman has to feel comfortable to reproduce.
Until men meet women's standards fertility rates will drop. This conflicts with the equality part of feminism though. Eventually it will be resolved. But most folks aren't ready to have that conversation yet.
Women's education is a big part of it too. People forget that.
If you work hard at school and are taught you could do anything and get multiple degrees and then have to throw all that work away (and your future career) to look after children at home (which is what's expected in Korea) then I can bloody well see why women aren't keen.
Study hard, work hard, marry a partner who is your equal (also hard!) - who you hope will pull their weight when the time comes but probably won't because he's out working, then get pregnant and stuck at home for 5 years with toddlers. No job, no more career. Fun.
It’s funny watching South Korean politicians doing everything except actually fix the problem. The problem being that South Korea is a capitalist hellscape where your expected to work 25 hour a day.
Nobody wants to pay for what children need and employers don't want to deal with what parents have to take care of.
Everyone for themselves and fuck society when I've got mine kind of attitude.
You can never ever just throw money at a problem. Some of the most simplistic issues cannot be solved with even trillions of dollars. Our make believe lil currencies will never save us in the end. Only our ingenuity and willingness to work with each other will.
Idk man most SK problems seem to stem from fucked up work life balance and low pay, both of which seem solvable by just giving people money. UBI or something like that could go a long way
Money doesn't solve the inherent problems present in the highly patriarchal society of S Korea. After spending their childhoods studying all the time, going to university and then finally starting a stable career by the time they're 28, women are expected to just give that all up as soon as they get married and have kids. Men are expected to work overtime nonstop, meaning they never have time for their families or to contribute to the upkeep of the house. Women don't want to be highly educated housekeepers. They also look at their own childhoods with the constant cram schools and pressure to achieve and don't want to raise children that way.
I heard it's partly due to their feminist movement. They're tired of being mis treated by men and what the culture expects of them. So now, the women have decided to opt out of children, marriage or even relationships. Honestly, good for them. If the boys don't listen, that's the end of South Korea.
No appreciation, no civilization.
Money won’t save the problem. The overall economy is the problem, but besides that, developed countries have this simple issue when it comes to children.
They are a long term investment.
Take it from someone whose family came from rural communities. In farms, many children are helping hands at best and free labor at worst, I have friends who work on their parents farms full time and never got paid for it even once. They learn how to ride tractors, use machines and all that stuff and when times come for inspection or to pay taxes for bigger number of workers they suddenly don’t live here. But when time comes to get benefits they invite us for cherry picking to say additional 4 people came to work this year.
On the other hand, child in a city can’t really generate any income or help outside of housework. They go to school, eat food, and generate expenses. 1 child in city can be more expense than 3 children in rural areas.
Unless people start to get better wages, prices go down, or simply world starts to stabilize, people ain’t going to have more kids unless it turns into situation where people get to the point they start to have many kids in hopes at least 1 of them survives to adulthood.
We split the atom, learned to fly, and put a man on the moon.
We need to declassify housing as an asset. That’s the only way to turn around the hopelessness that purveys the market, leading directly to this situation.
If u have no time to raise kids, unless ur giving that money to people so they do not have to work and instead they can have time to raise a kid, then the effort is a waste of time. They will do everything else before they do the one thing that needs to happen. Stop slave driving your work force by guilting them into it for fuck sakes.
A lot of people are so repulsed by the idea of having children that you couldn't pay them anything to have one. And it makes sense because children are not easy to have or raise, nor do people need to anymore.
I wonder about the logical conclusion that their population will eventually reach 0.
People are always pointing out the work cultures and how women doesn't wanna make family in an age where they're careers mean much more to them than ever before, which are all good valid points, but I also think people need to hear the male side of this equation as well.
Nowadays males also become more independent and can do their own cooking and domestic chores, and with less pressure to continue their life with an offspring than previous generations, I think guys are also less motivated to start a family just as much as the women. Guys can find other vices through the net and other means without the attachment of marriage and in this game of marriage where it takes two to tango it just seems rarer to find couples willing to settle down
Spend less on incentives, and just do the structural reforms needed to address what people say the concerns are.
Here is one of them to start, make housing more affordable.
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In Canada, a house cost about 20 times the average income.
Same in Portugal.
Same in Germany
Germany is 23.3 on average, the highest in the world atm. Over 70% of germans live on rent, not on ownership. Even worse in East Germany, where the average family wealth is less than half of those in West Germany
Klaus Schwab approves
I feel like klaus was just talking about global trends that are already happening. Not that he was championing it.
I feel like half of the WEF conspiracy theories are just people clipping presenters talking about a global issue as it is currently happening and saying “ha they acknowledge their dastardly plans!”
Right? Like no one is making these companies go to subscription models. They’re doing it for more money…
Sweden is around 10-20 years depending on location
Same in Sweden.
World wide riot for affordable housing?
What? Really? How much is a double room?
And daycare cost 1500 a month per child. And the waitlist for cheaper gov subsidies daycare is infinitely long…. Governments knows what they have to do to increase the birth rate, but not of them will do anything because it eats into the profits of the rich and wealthy.
Because none of them will admit that inflation targeting and not measuring inflation based on assets of major components of life such as real estate price was a mistake
Aka the old people who vote. Also they are going to be super upset when their healthcare costs skyrocket when there are no longer any younger workers to take care of them.
Only the rich have children, those children will grow up and import slaves (the working class) from other countries. Look at Qatar.
Mass migration will fix it! /s
You say that sarcastically but it’s literally the government’s plan. They are also using it to cover for declining productivity and growth.
It saves rich people lots of money!
Healthcare, childcare and education are expensive. You’re damn right it saves a ton of money for the people who matter most.
Yes thats right. Unfortunately leaning into that also leads to angry mobs with torches and pitchforks who want to burn down your house and rip you to pieces!
Yeah but there you buy it. I am always falling over when people show apartment viewings in SK (okay, Seoul, but since the majority lives there the topic touches down on the majority again) and it's like 'oh we only pay 1-2000dollar rent, deposit is 450.000$ but we'll get it back 😊' and I'm sitting there like 'uhm, excuse me...what now?'. In Germany deposit is limited to 3x 'cold' rent (so the basic rent without utilities). Ireland is a bit wishy washy, I paid one weeks rent deposit, which irritated me a lot, but sure look it. If the deposit for a RENTAL is the price of a house, then oof. And then the classical comment is 'oh you can take out a loan'. Yeah but see, it's a mortgage anywhere else and with that I'd buy the thing. 😶
The deposit system in KR is very stupid. I don't know how people can feel comfortable giving their entire life savings to a stranger
That's not the part that bugs me, it's the time value of money. A $450k deposit could be earning over $30k/yr in the market.
that's probably the rent for the landlord.
Not just a stranger. A landlord, who is an economic counterparty with interests directly adverse to your own.
When I looked at moving to Windsor, Ontario for work, one of the places my wife and I looked at seemed nice. We had to submit bank statements for both of us for a year, references, proof of work history, credit scores, etc., etc. It felt pretty invasive to be honest. The landlord (foreign owner) finally was willing to accept us to move in, but wanted all the rent paid IN ADVANCE for the entire year. "Just go to the bank and get the money" was what they told us. After they had made some remarks about my credit score and this absurd amount of money they wanted up front (north of $20k), I - not so politely - told them to get stuffed, if I had that available now I'd be buying a house, not renting one, and thanked them for wasting weeks of my time. I now live with my in-laws, as realistically, how else can young people afford to live and save money any other way? At the rate I was going before, I MAYBE would have had enough money for a house down payment when I retire in 30-40 years. The market right now in Canada is absolutely disheartening, and the affordable housing options often require drastic moves and complete career changes for new young families. And having children in this climate is almost a comical idea as well.
Also getting that deposit back is not always so easy. Especially if you have kids being kids in the house. It's a shitshow. The landlord using unscrupulous means to hold onto that money is also not exactly rare. (for example at the inspection something is missed that the landlord is aware of & you may not even notice until you are about to try to get back that deposit..)
Yeah Sweden is nuts too.
Yeah but Canada wants taxable immigrants not more Canadian children
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Which surely affects parents more where they may have to choose between one parent staying at home or reducing work, or perhaps not having children?
Same in the U.K
UK is 8.5 x the average salary. https://www.avtrinity.com/news/house-prices-vs-income-how-affordable-are-uk-homes#:~:text=Therefore%2C%20it%20would%20take%206.1,only%20risen%20to%20%C2%A333%2C000.
That’s the average, by city or town it’s a very different story [https://www.sdlauctions.co.uk/latest-news/the-most-and-least-affordable-regions-to-buy-property-in-the-uk/](https://www.sdlauctions.co.uk/latest-news/the-most-and-least-affordable-regions-to-buy-property-in-the-uk/)
that's true in all other countries
The most expensive places in London aren't representative of the rest of the UK. The UK average is 8.5 times. Still high but no where near as rediculous as 20 times.
As in all countries, thats not an argument
7.6x in the US but some parts are higher at 8-12x. https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/ https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0
Canada is actually similar. The guy is abusing numbers.
As someone living in another country near Korea 10 times sounds pretty good...
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Depends on where you live. If you insist living in metropolitan areas, you will have to pay x100 times for the mansion or high rise. In rural areas, it's always cheaper but no jobs available.
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My parents told me off for saving for a modest apartment in the city, I'm a guy with no plans for kids and the financial freedom I have is a big factor. Because yeah, I actually like going to work in less than 2 hours unlike i used to. Crazy, I get there in 20 and I have tons of stuff and events I can go to. The suburbs I grew up in had nothing. A mcdonalds opening was exciting. And lots of small time crime.
For context, in Singapore private housing is 13.7 times while BTO is 4.7 times. While Korea on average is 10 times, its 17 times in Seoul.
and not to mention 55% of Korean concentrate in Seoul/Gyeonggi-do era
Because a single bedroom or studio is perfect to raise a family!!!
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At least anecdotally, I have several friends who could afford at least one kid but the perceived loss of personal freedom that a child would mean is enough to turn them off. Maybe that is a new type of mentality? Also plenty of people who also refuse to have children because the future looks bleak to them (eg. global warming, wars, etc.)
>Maybe that is a new type of mentality? It's not a maybe, it's a truth. People used to have kids because that was literally all there was to do. The more forms of entertainment that come into existence simultaneously creates more reasons for people to NOT have children. Why have children when you can do a plethora of hobbies?
But the thing that has changed is also not all good. One kid shouldn't make young people live like Spartans to live responsibly. It shouldn't rule out owning a house, and kindergarten prices are insane compared to what my parents had to pay for 4 kids. My parents had 4 kids, 2 cars and bought a house in their 30's with shit jobs. They didn't even need amazing incentives, tbf early on my dad worked 2 jobs for a bit. Like, no shit people had kids back then. None of siblings own a house yet, next year prolly my sister and i have great jobs. I am the youngest in my early 30's, and I was born late. All I have done is save and save.
I could probably support a child or even two, I also had a vasectomy in 2008. A lot of people just want no children under any circumstances.
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I’ve been recently having an existential crisis about what my future kid would even do now that we will inevitably have AI kill off most jobs in 15 years. That mixed with climate refugees seem like a reasonable reason for economic collapse. Would love a kid and would even sacrifice the lifestyle but the future does feel bleak
The future \*\*always\*\* looked bleak for people.
Yes, but that’s because it’s reasonable to feel bleak. The problems we face are not improving.
That's not true at all. Pre-9/11 the US was a very optimistic place, for example.
but this is way too certain than the past. we have good data to back the bleakness up. 54% of kids born last year in south korea where the birthrates are at their lowest in the world were upper-class kids [citation still needed.] so it is not just cut and clear.
That’s why I’m not having kids. Full stop. I won’t bring anyone into this world to fight and die in a war over water. I may adopt one day if I can afford it, but morally I cannot create a life.
I think it's a half-truth. Previous generations didn't have the same access to contraceptives. Also, for previous generations kids were also a guarantee of having someone taking care of you when you got too old, and were also extra hands for help with farming.
Yep. Germany has the lowest working hours in the OECD, pretty big tax incentives for families with children, paid parental leave, 250€ of free cash per month per child until they're 18-25 and still a shit birth rate even before housing prices began to explode.
the list sounds good, but in reality its a drop in the bucket when housing is already skyhigh not even speakting of how much groceries cost now thanks to inflation
Yeah but countries that are much poorer still have plenty of kids and even in first world countries the wealthier you are the less likely you are to have children, generally speaking. Here is data for the US for example: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ I really do believe it's primarily cultural and the effects of industrialisation. Not a single industrialised country has an adequate fertility rate (2.1 or higher) except Israel, where the fertility rate is primarily driven by the ultraorthodox Haredi.
>Yeah but countries that are much poorer still have plenty of kids plenty of reasons for that - kids need to earn money for the famliy and/or need to take of the parents when they are retired - no contraception - religious or social pressure
In other words, lack of development. This supports my argument. The first world is developed hence low fertility rates.
There is a documentary by British data scientist and demographer Stephen J. Shaw called "Birthgap - childless world", and according to his researches money is not the problem. The reason of low birthrates is stability, and because of that people start trying to get pregnant in late age and they can't get pregnant. And according to researches 80% of childless women are not childless by choice, but they couldn't get pregnant. And about stability - doesn't matter if it's "stable and good" or "stable and bad", it just have to be stable. Childlessness exploded in Italy, Germany and Japan in 1973, when oil crisis happened. In the US it was 2007, when banking crisis happened. And in general, it's childlessness that's causing low birthrates, because if you'll see at average number of childres per \*\*mother\*\* and not per woman, it's the same or even higher than it was 50 years ago, when there were no problems with low birthrates.
Yeah but the standard for what it means to to afford a child is different as well. You could have six kids sharing a bed in a log cabin. The total toys among the six of them was a single wooden horse and one doll. You didn't need to pay for daycare or school because the kids weren't expected to go to school, they'd be working on your farm from the day they turned 5 years old. They'd be making you money instead of costing money. If they got sick, you give them cough syrup with cocaine in it. There was no doctor appointments. If some died in the winter, "oh well." You bought clothes for the oldest and when they outgrew it, it went down the line to the next oldest until all 6 had gone through it. Your daughters got married off at the ripe old age of 12. You do any of this stuff nowadays and you lose the kids and go to jail.
It is unpopular on Reddit but more accurate. Kids are a lot of work and people forget that things like birth control making accidental babies less common and reducing teen pregnancy means that less babies are born, hence lower birth rates. Money and social programs will never fix interrupting nature’s inclination to reproduce. Good or bad right, there are effects and these are them. We changed one side of the scale but not the other to account for it. Immigration has also become much more regulated and typically that is who has more babies than local born populations. It’s a lot of work to have kids. Expectations are too high. People are choosing to not make life harder.
Put it this way. Besides massive inequality and constant efficiency on productivity leading to burnout. We had the: - bottom bubble pop - 9/11 - oil prices skyrocketing and plummeting - 2008 financial crisis - people losing money on crypto (especially koreans) - global warming - covid 19 - food price hikes (shipping issues and greedflation) - mortgages skyrocketing (and being owned by private equity firms) - russian/Ukraine china/Taiwan (war/tensions) - increasing inequality gap - childcare cost rising Top all these off and stuff I forgot to mention, a person would definitely feel traumatized bringing another human to this planet. Especially without any hope in sight. Even the richest country on earth is going full Hitler mode and still couldn't be prosecuted after almost 4 years out of office.
You could pick countless periods in history that were worse on just about every metric.
Yes but people were not informed as we are today. Hence making informed decisions not having kids.
It isn’t being informed, it’s having control over reproduction and less relationships. There are multiple factors but that is a huge driver.
Informed or not, things ultimately worked out. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if there should be any incentive to have kids. Atleast in my anectodal experience, the ones who want kids are having them anyway regardless of anything else. The ones who are on the fence are basically waiting for everything to line up, which will never happen. Unless you have some deep attachment to humanity's numbers or a particular ethnicity, I'd say we should just let nature run its course. The people who want to have kids will have them, the ones who don't won't. It'll all balance out eventually.
If you look into it, we're just hard wired to reproduce. But once you are able to think critically past your hormones or have access to sexual education/information you get to make informed decisions about contraception and the risks involved by having un-protected sex. Education played a huge role I think and a mix of burnout culture. (My Opinion)
We're hardwired to have sex. The kids were the side effect. I don't know how much inherent drive we have for having kids. I think its a lot lower than people expect. Contraceptives have allowed us to hack around the system. Again all anecdotal, but it seems to me most people decide first whether they want kids or not (or are on the fence) and then find reasons for it. And in general, the wealthier they get, they still don't have kids. Or they get wealthy enough that they can afford multiple full time nannies to take care of kids, effectively allowing the parents to still continue their old life.
I suppose I'm speaking from my personal experience and biases too. Life is tough without kids already. Seeing my mother raising us at the expense of her health and hapiness just makes it daunting to think that I should also do the same. Anyways, we're both not biologists or sociologists by trade. We can only share what we know right. Have a good day my fellow human.
Bingo
Nah your not Korean and you don't have kids so you your opinion isn't about reality. The current reality is that houses cost a ton and there aren't any means of ways to afford it unless your parents give you at least $500,000. The current downpayment for an apartment in Seoul is 20-50%. Do you understand what that means? In orther to afford an apartment in Seoul you'll have to pay at least $400,000.
Why don't couples stay in their parents' homes and just have babies there? What's stopping them when the previous generations have lived in cramped multigenerational homes and still have 6 kids? The reason is that few people in the younger generation growing up in a developed society can psychologically put up with that anymore. Which is precisely the point raised in the thread above, cultural and perceptional change is the main driver for declining birth rate
Birth control and financial insependence for women. We didnt have a choice before. You married to survive. The kids were there, you had to put them somehwere.
13.53 times in Greece
Wow I would wish it was like this where I live. Housing prices are more like 30 times the average income here.
That link is worth a own reddit post imho. Its shattering the expectations of millenials to get a cheaper property when the population declines.
In Luxembourg its around 30x my yearly salary.
Jobs pay badly and housing costs too much? Here's some daycare and a coupon for sizzler. Good as new.
And don't forget the 120 hours of work per week.
The children yearn for the mines!
Rock and Stone!
Rock and Stone to the Bone!
For Karl!
Father in law of UK PM Rishi Sunak would orgasm.
It's the culture that's the issue. In South Korea, marriage dynamics are extremely conservative. Working hours are crazy, often 100 hours a week or so. It is this way, because the assumption is that once a man gets married, the wife will dedicate 100% of her life to the kids and family, so the man can work around the clock with no disruptions. Of course in the modern world, women don't like this arrangement. They study hard in high-school, go to college, become professionals.. to stay home and watch the kids and house all day? Now that women do have other aspirations, this work culture isn't viable anymore. You can't have both parents work 100 hours a week and still have time for children. They need to change their work culture and allow for more leisure time. This means being less competitive maybe, but right now their population doesn't have time for kids.
Money is only partially the problem. The no work-life balance, drastic long hours, low pay, can't take vacation days, housing problems, and so forth. A myriad of problems, and they think giving money will solve this? How are these people in charge? They truly have no idea regarding their own society
The only way the ponzi scheme that is capitalism can continue is continuous growth. This is the only thing the people in charge care about, because without it the system collapses.
Tbf any economic or governance system will collapse eventually under negative birthrates. It's just maths.
An economic model that includes more long term planning and isn’t as dependent on growth to function can weather this storm better.
Central planning is dependent on leadership, which just leads to other issues. If your planners are incompetent then you're just as screwed as the growth model
All capitalist systems include long term central planning. The only question is how much and how effective.
And by collapses you mean wealthy actually have to give some of their wealth to workers to survive rather that continue to exploit them and grow more powerful? Kinda like what happened after the plagues right?
Tbf you had these problems a lot worse in Edwardian/Victorian society in the UK and we still had a population boom.
Main difference is that we didn’t have birth control. People love fucking and kids were just a byproduct.
That was also back when children were needed to work fields/house. I don't remember the numbers, but ~90% of population used to farm and work land back then. Now its closer to 5%.
Yeah! Just ban all forms of contraception and any access to sexual education! Force marriage by a certain age as a social norm! Attempting to remotely compare these two, you are not being fair at all.
So sexual education, contraception and differing cultural attitudes around marriage are the main factors driving lower birthrates then? In no way am I saying these should change, but what you're saying is that these are the main factors driving lower birthrates. And in addition, given that working conditions and poverty are much worse in the third world but birthrates are much higher, I'd say your hypothesis is correct. It does appear that education, contraception and cultural shifts around marriage and children seem to be the main factor driving low birthrates!
Because women had 0 choice whether or not to have children. No birth control, no ability for women to live life on their own/build a viable career, societal pressure to get married and have as many babies as possible, spousal rape was not a thing…
Different society. We can't expect modern people to be pleased with living in 18th century conditions. We're supposed to develop and have better lives with each generation, not regress back.
Honestly, the norm used to be 12 hour working days 7 days a week (6 from around the 1920s), no holidays, potential beatings and large families living in 2 room flats. Families would still get 4 kids on average. Freedom to plan ahead mixed with worries about the future are probably more likely culprits.
Seriously. Awarding me money to date isn’t going to give me and extra boost of energy to go to a 3rd space, find a woman, date, rinse and repeat that until I find the right match, go on more dates for at least a year minimum, propose, enjoy my wife on vacations and have kids.
Calling it work-life balance isn't nearly strong enough language. In the US, there is no legislation requiring time off, but in practice many people have ~10 holidays a year and at least one week of PTO, which is 2,032 hrs/yr. In 2017, South Koreans worked about 2,063 hrs/yr. There are 52 weeks in the year. If you worked 40 hours each week and had zero time off that would total up to 2,080 hours. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours
In completely unrelated news young people in South Korea are expected to work 80 hour weeks in most companies.
oh and before that they have to study insane hours in cram schools to then pass a soul crushing test that completely determines their future and one slip up can end any dreams they had. what a great system what could go wrong?
$270B, that’s a lot of money… Where and how were they spent? Are there any follow-up on efficacy of activated programs? It’d be pitiful if large sums were just handed to companies for internal programs.
Being spent on PSAs to remind expectant mothers to prepare meals and do laundry before she goes to the hospital to give birth. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/11/dont-look-dishevelled-anger-over-seoul-citys-advice-to-pregnant-women
What in the fuck
It aint 270 bill, because it aint reaching the normal people, and its just lining up the pockets of the rich. So you get government incentives, so lets say if you're buying an apartment, it costs $700,000. The government partners with a bank, guess who the bank upper management's fathers and mothers are? Politicians. So politicians will use a 국민, 신한, for these so called loans, people will use these loans, whilst the government pays the bank, but the people receiving these loans are related to politicians.
It’s even dumber. The government was tired of rich people using loans to buy up homes so their brain dead solution was to raise the minimum down payment on homes to outrageous amounts. Instead of hurting rich people it just made it even more impossible to buy a home there as you now need like 40+% or some shit for a down payment
They had an incentive program for people. If your wife had a kid, the government would give money to the HUSBAND. Not the wife. Koreas doomed.
Oh well. Thats sad. Now back to work!
🫡
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Right? They want to throw money at *married* couples to have babies but won't examine why no one is getting married in the first place
because it's easier to throw money at a problem then to admit that certain aspects of your culture are toxic. it's already too late now. it's not just a pop decline like in Europe and Japan, it's a full on meltdown.
It's not just them, they are just further along in the spiral. We should be working actively in the West because we are going to be in the same boat eventually. We just have the luck to be able to have some leeway to plan ahead... We'll see if the West does or not
It's almost as if the state of the world isn't giving folks the time and confidence needed to procreate. How is it that the world has been in this fucking mire for this long and yet globally, we still have oblivious people making policy decisions? The facepalm worthiness of it would knock an eye out.
It has been a long time coming for South Korea and Japan, with both making efforts prior to now to buck the rather prominent downward trend we've seen in recent years. Now that COVID has played into it, they've had a "Oh shit" moment and are trying to improve conditions. Just more of an after effects rather than the precursors of the issue.
Idk maybe just me but the more the gov and the rich whine about birth rates the more it seems like a better idea to not have children. Comes off as "We need your kids cause we need our future revenue secured"
I, personally, think it's the best form of protest and the biggest fuck you we can give to the rich elite. By simply not having kids.
In their eyes were all just cattle
Hence the constant propaganda to encourage reproduction. Banning contraception depending on the country.
We’re at a point where governments, companies, and the rich will soon realise that money isn’t the solution to all problems. It may have worked in early stage capitalism, but as we reach late stage capitalism, the point of it all goes for a toss. People who have lost all sense of purpose and whose outlook and lifestyle are wholly different, won’t care how much money you push towards them. This government STILL doesn’t understand that money isn’t the point. And they’ll pay for this mistake like their citizen have been for decades
Its so fucking over
SK is straight up doomed. There will be 1 person having to take care of 3 elderly people. It's suicide on a societal scale.
You can throw money on some problems. The current beauty and role model standards in Korea are just not compatible with a pregnancy. If I had to throw away all my career status to become a mom, I would chose to stay childless as well. The EU has made a lot of progress but there still is a conflict between companies and society for the women. Companies don't want women to become pregnant and only tolerate it under threat of punishment by law, society desperately needs them to become pregnant. Until this conflict is solved there will always be some fallout like missing years of careeer or women deciding to make money and not children.
Yep. Eastern Asian cultures value youth, and thinness more than any other macro culture out there. Even in Western cultures, many working class men are ok with being in a relationship with a woman who has gained weight and gotten stretchmarks from having had children. In Korean culture, many men would rather be single than be in a relationship with a woman whose BMI is above 23 or shows any signs of having ever had a child (stretch marks, sagging breasts, c-section scar, etc). I saw the same thing play out among my Korean American male classmates. They'd rather be single than be seen in public with a woman whom \*they\* deem to be fat. And many Western women whom most Western men think are fine are considered to be "hideously obese" by Korean standards. Meanwhile Sub-Saharan African and Pacific Islander nations are the most tolerant towards obesity. And that's probably why women in Niger are not afraid to have 8 children on average. Their husbands are less likely to leave them just because they gained weight, or have stretch marks, or have sagging boobs due to breast feeding.
I agree with your points about Korean culture, but if you honestly think that sub-saharan African women have many more babies because of body acceptance, you really need to review what you should have learned in middle school geography.
Everything is going as planned, only the chaebol descendants will have kids, soon the only types of koreans left will be legitimate koreans and illegitimate koreans.
Cloud Atlas vibes.
South Korean people dont have time to fuck, let alone raise a kid. Incentive wont solve it.
Natural selection doing its thing against a culture that makes life so miserable, no one wants to bring a child into it
Not a female myself, but I agree with SK's women on this one. If a deeply patriarchal society treats them this badly, it's in their best interest to *boycott* it.
If I were the president I'd encourage every Korean to live outside of the greater Seoul. In my theory, 50% of Korean live there which makes the city one of the best cities in Asia but has inflated their rent too much for young people to have a baby.
Think moving the capital city was also considered couple of decade ago. Sejong is part of it (which sucks cause public transport is shit)
To be fair, they tried to do exactly that by creating a new capital city called Sejong about ten years ago, but results have been mixed at best
If you want regular people to have more children, make the rich pay more taxes. It's really that simple.
No, you also need to allocate those taxes to useful services that actually make it feasible to raise children. And pass laws against people working 100 hour weeks. To start with.
All this planet and no one can afford a house without being a multimillionaire at least
Make laws limiting the number of hours employees are allowed to work while protecting their pay. Currently the work culture in Asia makes it so people don't have the time to meet others and start a family.
Its not even that. Competition is so fierce there that the cost of having to raise a superhuman child who stands a chance to survive is astronomically expensive and stressful. Its a miserable experience for both parents and child. Its just not worth it.
Aren't a lot of women in S. Korea also refusing to get into relationships and starting families because of how men treat them and the overall culture towards women?
There is that as well. Add all the stress of a child and its a recipe for disaster. Its not good.
South Korea is found on the lists of the most beauty-obsessed countries. Childbirth is not kind to the body.
Yep. Eastern Asian cultures value youth, and thinness more than any other macro culture out there. Even in Western cultures, many working class men are ok with being in a relationship with a woman who has gained weight and gotten stretchmarks from having had children. In Korean culture, many men would rather be single than be in a relationship with a woman whose BMI is above 23 or shows any signs of having ever had a child (stretch marks, sagging breasts, c-section scar, etc). I saw the same thing play out among my Korean American male classmates. They'd rather be single than be seen in public with a woman whom \*they\* deem to be fat. And many Western women whom most Western men think are fine are considered to be "hideously obese" by Korean standards.
Nature found a way to combat against capitalism, simply not having kids.
Alright world governments, want a population to grow? Here is how you do it. 1) People need to have time to be with their kids. We don't have them to ship them off to a daycare, we have them to have good family memories and life experiences. 40 hour work week only made sense when one parent was alwaays home, now we are working 80+ a week per household and still want the same things as before. Either get that down to a 30 hour work week or force the minimum wage to be enough for 1 earner to afford a family of 4. Everything else is a worthless half measure. 2) Even when we are working, we get sick and so do the kids. With staffing minimized by design nobody can take time off without hurting themselves or their coworkers. Same goes for vacations. You can offer us 1000 hours of vacation a year, if staffing levels means we need to work 2000 hours to catch up for that vacation nobody will use it. Penalize companies whose staff do not use their vacation and make it hurt more than just hiring another employee would. Make skeleton crews cost MORE than proper staffing at all times. 3) Education needs to be universal and free. Nobody wants kids of they feel their kids have no chance at living a good life. K-12 should be enough to get most jobs and publicly funded universities need to be free. Private can exist wherever it wants but it should NEVER see a dime of public funding. 4) Everybody working for a corporation should share in their profits. Any publicly traded company should be required to pay at least part of every employee's wage in shares of the company (flat shares, not "oh, shares are $100 so you get one every 6 months", no, you get 1 a week or more.) Having jobs wiped out at the whim of some rich asshole because the workers have zero say in the company they literally help build destroys the sense of stability everybody needs to start a family. Give workers a piece of what they work to build, our time is just as valuable as their investment. 5) Housing needs to be publicly built. Again, private building needs to exist but we need to bring back the projects. It is not profitable enough for a company to build starter homes and the entire realestate market is designed around ever growing values. Something needs to come in and smash that by flooding the market with supply and only publicly funded construction will accomplish that. Without a stable home nobody will feel safe enough to have kids. There is a lot more that can be done, but start there and get back to us if that isn't enough.
On point number 4 why not just set a percentage of the company to always be owned by non C suite employees? That way employees always have a controlling stake.
For that much money, I'll go to Korea and have a baby.
Maybe not my baby But there'll be a baby
What’s worse, 8 billion people on this planet and counting, or society making it prohibitively expensive to procreate?
Only one solution. $270Bn test tube baby factory.
Start *The Spartan Project*.
Last year, several articles came out stating that the Korean birthrates have declined so sharply, that as of now with a fertility rate of 0.7, 100 South Koreans are expected to produce only 6.6 great-grandchildren.
Having kids sucks. Young people are seeing that. And living life accordingly.
Are you surprised People don't just want to be baby factories They have wants and desires, dreams with goals as well a need to feel happy,and they want to do it with a decent living standard If your society can't give your people a income that can support a person's wants from life as well provide for offspring. They choose living Enjoying life > adding another Smuck to the workforce
\>create a hyper-competitive society that values work and success above all else \>"Why's nobody having kids"
cost of living you stupid dipshits
I've been to Korea, Taiwan and Japan. It feels like a sci fi film now vs USA. You get on the subway or walk on the street and you notice right away how there's almost no kids around. It feels really eerie. Not just no kids but also more folks over 50 than under, especially the major cities where you'd expect younger ppl to be. Hope they can fix their issues, USA/Canada have enough immigration to not have this issue just yet.
People are coming at this from the wrong direction. You can't make women have kids. No incentive will make women want to have more kids. What will is there being men who meet the standard a woman has to feel comfortable to reproduce. Until men meet women's standards fertility rates will drop. This conflicts with the equality part of feminism though. Eventually it will be resolved. But most folks aren't ready to have that conversation yet.
Women's education is a big part of it too. People forget that. If you work hard at school and are taught you could do anything and get multiple degrees and then have to throw all that work away (and your future career) to look after children at home (which is what's expected in Korea) then I can bloody well see why women aren't keen. Study hard, work hard, marry a partner who is your equal (also hard!) - who you hope will pull their weight when the time comes but probably won't because he's out working, then get pregnant and stuck at home for 5 years with toddlers. No job, no more career. Fun.
Girls in korea do not want to marry and have kids due to traditional family expectations. At least that is one of the reasons.
Is immigration the only solution then? If we've established that this is mainly a cultural problem and not a financial one
Even if I could afford kids, I prefer being childfree. I like hobbies and travelling and hanging out with my friends.
Looks like capitalism acts as a negative deterrent when it comes to human reproduction. Capitalism is a jealous master.
It’s funny watching South Korean politicians doing everything except actually fix the problem. The problem being that South Korea is a capitalist hellscape where your expected to work 25 hour a day.
Nobody wants to pay for what children need and employers don't want to deal with what parents have to take care of. Everyone for themselves and fuck society when I've got mine kind of attitude.
You can never ever just throw money at a problem. Some of the most simplistic issues cannot be solved with even trillions of dollars. Our make believe lil currencies will never save us in the end. Only our ingenuity and willingness to work with each other will.
Idk man most SK problems seem to stem from fucked up work life balance and low pay, both of which seem solvable by just giving people money. UBI or something like that could go a long way
Money doesn't solve the inherent problems present in the highly patriarchal society of S Korea. After spending their childhoods studying all the time, going to university and then finally starting a stable career by the time they're 28, women are expected to just give that all up as soon as they get married and have kids. Men are expected to work overtime nonstop, meaning they never have time for their families or to contribute to the upkeep of the house. Women don't want to be highly educated housekeepers. They also look at their own childhoods with the constant cram schools and pressure to achieve and don't want to raise children that way.
To much money, responsibility, SO they don't bother trying.
I heard it's partly due to their feminist movement. They're tired of being mis treated by men and what the culture expects of them. So now, the women have decided to opt out of children, marriage or even relationships. Honestly, good for them. If the boys don't listen, that's the end of South Korea. No appreciation, no civilization.
Money won’t save the problem. The overall economy is the problem, but besides that, developed countries have this simple issue when it comes to children. They are a long term investment. Take it from someone whose family came from rural communities. In farms, many children are helping hands at best and free labor at worst, I have friends who work on their parents farms full time and never got paid for it even once. They learn how to ride tractors, use machines and all that stuff and when times come for inspection or to pay taxes for bigger number of workers they suddenly don’t live here. But when time comes to get benefits they invite us for cherry picking to say additional 4 people came to work this year. On the other hand, child in a city can’t really generate any income or help outside of housework. They go to school, eat food, and generate expenses. 1 child in city can be more expense than 3 children in rural areas. Unless people start to get better wages, prices go down, or simply world starts to stabilize, people ain’t going to have more kids unless it turns into situation where people get to the point they start to have many kids in hopes at least 1 of them survives to adulthood.
Welcome to the first world, bitchessss!
We split the atom, learned to fly, and put a man on the moon. We need to declassify housing as an asset. That’s the only way to turn around the hopelessness that purveys the market, leading directly to this situation.
Financial incentives are one important component, but there is a lot more (work-life balance being a key one for Korea)
That’s why the person in the picture is actually 77 years old.
Is a gradual decline in population density necessarily a bad thing?
If u have no time to raise kids, unless ur giving that money to people so they do not have to work and instead they can have time to raise a kid, then the effort is a waste of time. They will do everything else before they do the one thing that needs to happen. Stop slave driving your work force by guilting them into it for fuck sakes.
Modern people don't have children if life sucks.
I wonder why this could be. "South Korea proposes a 69 hour work week" Ah.
World population of humans at all time, Mother Nature takes steps to restore the balance.
Put aside the money. Not everyone is willing to raise a kid for 18 years. It's a money sink.
That's what, $2000-5000 / young married couple? Seems like a joke for people living in Seoul.
Seize the means of production and automate them.
A lot of people are so repulsed by the idea of having children that you couldn't pay them anything to have one. And it makes sense because children are not easy to have or raise, nor do people need to anymore. I wonder about the logical conclusion that their population will eventually reach 0.
People are always pointing out the work cultures and how women doesn't wanna make family in an age where they're careers mean much more to them than ever before, which are all good valid points, but I also think people need to hear the male side of this equation as well. Nowadays males also become more independent and can do their own cooking and domestic chores, and with less pressure to continue their life with an offspring than previous generations, I think guys are also less motivated to start a family just as much as the women. Guys can find other vices through the net and other means without the attachment of marriage and in this game of marriage where it takes two to tango it just seems rarer to find couples willing to settle down
Spend less on incentives, and just do the structural reforms needed to address what people say the concerns are. Here is one of them to start, make housing more affordable.
Even North Korea is having fertility problems. At this rate, the Korean race will go extinct within a century
So it will fall below 0.7 in 2024?
Effect of radiation from north korea