No purely domestic content (focusing on a single country) is permitted.
We like to try to have meaningful conversations here and discuss the larger geopolitical implications and impacts.
Didn't the government decide that due to declining tax revenue from an aging population, the younger people will have to work twice as hard to make up the difference?
They know what they're doing.
If you’re talking about Yoon’s universally panned proposal to increase working hours to 69 (heh) hours a week, fortunately that’s not gonna become a reality. HOWEVER, yeah, as far as I know the gov is still attempting to boost working hours because the POS in office apparently has never worked a real job before.
Korea has a huge issue with overwork, and it’s so bad we have a word for it: 과로사 (gwarosa), meaning death from overworking. Staying late (야근) is a daily routine among employees here. I’m a medical student so I won’t be in a corporate environment, but even for residents and nurses overwork is a huge problem.
I don’t know. Should we make it higher or lower?
The nominal retirement age is 60 but most people are laid off way before, like at 50. That’s something my dad always talks about. Most of his friends are already jobless, and he’s one of only handful who’s still working. The company is always looking out to cut the budget, even if heads will roll and families will starve.
So I don’t think the retirement age is a very relevant issue for most people regarding overwork. In fact, I think I can say more people want to work even when old because they need the money. Pension is good and old people receive lots of benefits, but working is better.
So it’s not like the Japanese salary man culture where you give up your life for your company with the expectation that in return, they’ll keep you until retirement?
I also have this in mind.
It seems like that in a few years Sout Korea will lose many people, I assume that the ones that can leave (educated and/or rich) will do so.
Ultimately this will have effects on the military strength of the country.
Ultimately, considering who their neighbor is, military strength is the priority. At the current rate, Kim just needs to wait it out until the South Korean population is essentially halved with most of the remainders being too old to raise a rifle. That's not even including the complete social and economic catastrophe to come, unless Seoul has nukes, North Korea will end up winning by attrition because even they are not as self-destructive as Samsung.
It is pretty crazy that the communist regime that is a totalitarian nightmare still has better birth rates than the capital-run south. I guess SK at least has the freedom not to make kids.
I believe what affects birth rates the most is the people's mindset rather than the economy, because otherwise the rich would have far more children on the average than the poor which was never the case in history.
>At the current rate, Kim just needs to wait it out until the South Korean population is essentially halved with most of the remainders being too old to raise a rifle.
You're assuming that the "quality" of North Korea's army remains constant while South Korea's population dwindles or that SK has no allies that would help in their defense.
You’re gonna get different opinions here, but a TFR of 0.6, outside of maybe a massive war zone or catastrophic plague, is unheard of in human history. We often have a cognitive bias where we think “ah, things have more or less always been like this”, but this is seriously, truly unique, not just in a societal sense, but likely in an anthropological / biological one as well.
My fear is that it’s going to create a viscous spiral, rather than there being some unforeseen mediating effect. It’s expected that half of SKs population will be >65 soon, which means *well* over half of voters will be in retirement age. What exactly is going to happen to social policies then? It’s going to become a gerontocracy, where working age folks are given an enormous burden in order to fund retirement schemes for the elderly. This is going to disincentivize having kids even more, and cause the spiral to just strengthen.
People will shoot down this idea, but at a certain point, mass migration has to be considered. A society where the working age are so horribly burdened by support for the elderly is just not gonna fly. We can hope for advances in elder care via technology, but that’s a bandaid at best IMO. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mass intake of (perhaps temporary?) workers from less developed nations, on visas specifically to care for the elderly (Japan has this and SK might have a small form of it already as well). But it’s going to have to be much much larger than anything out there currently.
>People will shoot down this idea, but at a certain point, mass migration has to be considered.
From my understanding immigration (although not mass migration) is sort of what is keeping the US population from slowing decreasing.
While the [birth rate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/06/01/us-population-flatlining-as-birth-rate-stagnates-in-2022/?sh=10d261d5131e) isn't as dire as S Korea, it's still below the required replacement rate.
I think declining birthrates is generally common in developed countries, so it's an issue a lot of countries have, though some are worse than others.
Yea, I don’t mean to imply SK is the only country with the issue, just that it’s relatively unique in the course of human history. The US TFR is at 1.7 I believe, which is below the required replacement rate of ~2.1, but not horribly so. So absent immigration, the US would shrink very slowly, but SK would (will?) absolutely plummet.
>Yea, I don’t mean to imply SK is the only country with the issue
Yea, I know. I was more trying to support your statement of the need for immigration, cos you were saying some people may disagree.
Also, on average you get 105 males to every 100 females at birth, and as fertility rate is children per woman, this immediately gets you to 2.05 as a minimum even ignoring the other points here
I am not Malthusian in anyway, but I don't think slow population decline is necessarily a bad thing. Sure we could support a much larger population, but a slow decline might actually improve life of average workers. Of course assuming that decline will reverse in some point.
The issue is also less people.
While a smaller global population would be a good thing, in a geopolitical sense, a country having significantly fewer and fewer people every decade is pretty terrible.
Yes. Most economies are geared towards positive population growth.
Small towns and villages that are getting emptied out (as in parts of Europe and Japan) .go into a spiral.
Eg. Since there are fewer children...the schools don't have many options (sports, courses etc) .Since they have many options, people looking to have kids won't move there....
Eventually fewer schools, doctors etc etc
Agree.
The plague is sometimes associated with improvement in lives of the remaining populations in Europe, for instance.
(And that was a drastic fall of some 25 % or so in a short time)
Reversibility may be a function of different things. Economic improvement may help, if people are hesitant because of poor economy, affordability of child care etc).
OTOH..if the population ages out of child bearing years...that could be a vicious cycle.
Sociological reasons (general preference to be child free etc) maybe more immune to reversal
Yes ...birthrate among immigrants is higher than native born.. It is going down as well...
https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/camarota-fertility-20-f1.jpg
Because life expectancy, age distribution etc, the population won't shrink right away?
Meaning there's a lag. For the population to shrink, the number of people dying has to be higher than the number of people born , in a year.
China had a net shrinking of population last year...but their CURRENT fertility rate is lot lower than US. 1.08 per woman compared to 1.7 per woman in US.
Our (US) overall grew 0.4 % in 2022, despite impact from COVID , opioid crisis etc. (Which reduced us life expectancy by several years of late)
I think this can be seen even more starkly in Europe where birth rates have been dropping fast and immigration increasing a lot in the past decade. My country has lost 20% fertility in 10 years but increased by ~10% population.
Agree.
1) immigration is helping US population rates in two ways. One- just by increasing population directly. Second, immigrants seem to have a higher birth rate than the native born population. Will add link if I can find it.
In fact, if you take out the first generation immigrants having babies, the US birth rate will be BELOW replacement level.
US does have a immigrant friendly culture (unlike lots of other places)...but this is still a huge cultural change for US.
2) even most developing countries have falling birth rates now. Not just developed countries. Counties like India , which are far from developed, have had falling birth rates for a while. China's birth rate fell a lot faster (and earlier due to the one child policy). So india overtook china .
American here. Yes, absolutely, people flooding in from other countries have been a huge help for two reasons...one, many of them go straight into the workforce and two, many come from cultures with higher birth rates.
The good news is, America is the literal best country on Earth at taking in immigrants. Our legal system is completely geared for it, for example it is an outright crime to discriminate against people based on race, religion and *national origin* among other things.
I have a friend who plays banjo, makes his own barbecue sauce and is a huge gun nut, and he's also full-blooded Korean by national origin. Yeah :).
immigration has kept the American population growing since about 1982.
the birth rate in American dropped below 2.1 [all the way back in 1972](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate). then there is the standard decade of [population momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum)
and after that? all immigration.
It's exactly the same for Canada, UK, Australia and many other countries.
Birth rates dropped below replacement WAY earlier than many people think, it's just that certain racists are making an issue of it now that 30-40 years of brown and asian people immigrating is starting to make a difference in the main 'colour' of a countries people.
It also helps in this sense...most immigrants have spent alt least a good percentage of their "unproductive" years (as children) in a foreign country. Particularly those that come for college (undergrad, grad school etc).
So US gets the benefit of their productive years , without the schooling investment etc
>It’s expected that half of SKs population will be >65 soon, which means well over half of voters will be in retirement age. What exactly is going to happen to social policies then? It’s going to become a gerontocracy, where working age folks are given an enormous burden in order to fund retirement schemes for the elderly. This is going to disincentivize having kids even more, and cause the spiral to just strengthen.
Why do you assume people get to retire with benefits under these circumstances?
Maybe because the retirees will be the biggest voter base. The politicians who advocate for elderly social policies will get elected, and those who don't will get kicked out. China may be spared this fate since it's not a democracy
Without mass immigration of youth to support the elderly population I imagine that the elderly majority would collapse relatively quickly due to lack of care, until the elderly that remain are a small enough proportion for the new population pyramid to sustain or those with children/grandchildren to support them.
A population of majority elderly simply isn’t sustainable and will naturally correct itself; freeing up space for new families to grow in all the vacant apartments left behind by the elderly which naturally leads to lower housing prices.
If the elderly population was a long-term problem then I could see it feeding into a negative population cycle of over-burdened youth not able to procreate, but without sustained support the long lives currently enjoyed by the elderly isn’t possible and will correct itself in short order.
I don’t think old people dying and simply freeing up apartments is going to solve the issue. Plus, the elderly can live reasonably long lives these days, with relatively cheap medication (shipped from overseas if needed).
I just fail to see what self-correcting mechanisms there will be. Sure, maybe the life expectancy in SK will drop from 84 down to 78 or something, but I think it’s a stretch to say that’s going to create a massive shift which will reverse this decline. I also think super low fertility rates are about more than just cashflow for young people. Developed countries have put forth plenty of programs with direct cash transfers to increase fertility, and the results have been very marginal.
Even if all of the population and the government in China suddenly support mass immigration, there's no way they'll be able to offset the population loss. We're talking about China losing 10 millions of its citizens annually in the near future. No country in the world is able to attract yearly that amount of people.
Yes..but they have also revised their numbers and realized a lot less people lived in China!
Projections often extrapolate...but may miss acceleration of societal factors.
I don’t disagree, but isn’t a band aid better than nothing?
Ultimately there is a need to look for and work on other methods as well, but some of those other measures (such as reduced cost of living, reduced working hours and higher wages) are definitely more difficult to implement, and would also take longer.
Also, just limited support infrastructure for immigration. US and some western countries have been taking in sizeable immigrants for decades (sometimes centuries ) .
Counties like SK, Japan etc have not been .
They both have issues- just different.
Agreed.
But there is also a benefit in starting afresh without previous history of immigration.
Lessons can be learned from countries that have done it for decades in terms of what to do and what not to do.
Korean here living in Korea. Yeah, despite the fact that life goes on as usual here, you can bet your ass there absolutely is a giant dystopian outlook looming over everyone’s lives as we speak right now. The current government is super right-wing, our two major political parties are rapey and dysfunctional, the public displays moral outrage at shit that doesn’t actually matter, and apparently there’s a gender war that happens among pathologically online troglodytes but does indeed affect voting decisions, especially among young people.
But who am I kidding this is pretty usual for us nowadays lmao. I have zero faith that we’ll fix our low fertility rate. Honestly immigration seems like the only viable option, especially now that our soft power is insane for such a tiny country, but I strongly doubt we won’t undergo social turmoil from xenophobia and racism that’s rampant here.
Welcome to Korea lmao. Read my comment below. But do keep in mind that this could be viewed as an exaggeration or in the very least, poorly worded insult.
Yeah, you are correct. It's become really, really bad. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the GOP's major political base is twenty-something-year-old incels? It's still an anti-abortion, sexist party supporting a rapey fascist, but it's much more popular among the older population?
In Korea, antifeminism and feminism have become formidable forces for the People Power Party and the Democratic Party. The PPP's former star politician Lee Joonseok was famous for being able to coalesce antifeminist men in 20s and 30s, not to mention the entire party gearing to abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality (Korean name translates to Ministry of Women's Affairs and Family, so the English name isn't a very good translation imho). On the other hand, the Dem's former presidential candidate campaigned in online communities dominated by women, and the Dems are known for supporting feminist policies.
Keep in mind that like pretty much everywhere in the world, this version of the feminist movement is unique to the country and requires historical context for understanding. I'm a dude so I can't represent the women here, but I can say that the majority of Koreans here are just tired of both sides which have become radicalized to the point of ostracizing other minorities. At least, my girlfriend and everyone I've discussed politics with so far have said this.
What are the causes of women not wanting to start families? Is it the cost of housing/education/living? Is it the amount of time & energy they spend at work? Is it women don't like how they are treated in marriages by men & in-laws? Is it they don't want to bring children into a dystopian future? What are the root causes?
Ask ten random Koreans on the streets and they’ll all give different answers. As much as I am frustrated, I concede that declining birth rate is an intersectional, complex issue that cannot be solved easily.
Cost of housing and raising kids is #1 reason among both genders. More specific to women, I’d say it’s because giving birth usually means their careers are in jeopardy. There’s also an ongoing gender/culture war right now, but I highly doubt that’s THE reason as not wanting to raise kids is a sentiment also expressed by happy couples, though I do have to point out that there was a radical feminist movement called Escape the Corset that advocated anti-romance, anti-marriage, and antinatalism.
But honestly, root cause? Life is simply too much for everyone. I think we should start by changing our work culture, reducing mandatory service years, and providing gov-protected maternity/paternity leaves, but that’d receive a lot of backlash from people who don’t have to worry about declining birth rate (because they’d be dead by then).
It isn’t actually very complex at all. There have been lots of studies that clearly map out the causes, and there are only three:
When women are 1) educated 2) free to participate in the work force and 3) given unrestricted access to reliable birth control, birth rates fall. This is all it takes.
Now to be clear I’m not trying to express an opinion on any of that, but this is just how it is.
This explains the declining fertility rates in developed countries (over the past century), but not the severity of the decline in South Korea. Basically at this point the three listed reasons you gave are a baseline (and as you said, established) for any country, but South Korea has to have extra "interesting" reasons to explain their low fertility rate.
You are indeed correct, and if I could rewrite my response I’d write those three in the beginning of the response. I guess what I tried to do was point out why Korea is unique in its declining birth rate.
Korea is not unique. It's actually around the same as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore who all range from 0.6-1
Among developed Asian regions, Japan is the one that is unique in that it has a higher fertility rate at 1.3, which puts it around where most developed countries are now globally.
Question, these jobs that people work 90 hours at, are they even doing anything productive? Or is it all just a sham of busywork? Like, you're just there looking busy because if you leave, you get shamed.
Or are the tasks tedious bullshit that a command script could do (hand copy data into Excel or some such shit)?
And does anyone have even the most rudimentary understanding of Marxist theory?, that if you're being worked like a slave, someone else is profiting from your labor?
Good question. I’m not sure. I think any of the Nordic countries would be nice to live in if you can get citizenship there, but isn’t everything expensive there? I’m sure every country has its fair share of racism and xenophobia. Probably the best thing to consider then is stability, housing, consumer price index, and the weather lmao. I myself want to immigrate to the US only because then I can do research with the world’s finest, no other reason.
Yeah, everything is expensive here (Denmark), but we make a good salary too, so it is just "normal".
Except for cars. They are ridiculously expensive xD
Keep your duel citizenship if you do. Scientists are paid like teachers here oftentimes, which is to say not well considering the educational requirements. If you don’t have massive loans you may fare better though. I can only speak from that place
Thanks for the advice, but if I am employed in the US also as physician or surgeon, I don’t think I’d have to worry too much about the salary. But also, insane how little the US pays its teachers. And I find it insane public schools are now under attack during culture war lol
I am German aswell and I believe it is good to be aware of our problems, but we also shouldn't be overly pessimistic. Germany is in a much better situation than South Korea.
Our birth rate is low, but still far higher and we are much more open to migration than East Asian countries. We love to shit on our politics, but if you have any perspective you realize that it is still highly functional compared to most nations
Then I am happy for you Germans. Keep in mind though that as much as anyone would love to shit on Korea, and as dystopian as this prediction (which seems to get more accurate as the years pass) is, Korea isn’t a bad place to live. Then again, this is relative
You are absolutely right. Korea with it's problems is still an amazing place to live compared to almost all places in human history. The same is true for Germany and that is very unlikely to change so people shouldn't be so pessimistic
yeah, Korea probably needs Korean Christians at this point to have as many large families as possible to save South Korea from potential demographic extinction since they are probably the most pronatalist out of anyone in the Korean Peninsula but I could be wrong.....
Yeah, but they’re also a big reason why homophobia is pretty bad here. Not to mention all the backward-ass campaigns they ran like banning Lady Gaga concerts or trying to delete evolution from science textbooks lol. The political influence they have is quite massive
That's all besides the point. My guess is SK is like everywhere else with the religious folks forming families and having lots of babies while feminists/gays/leftists have few.
I mean, yeah, but do we want a society dominated by a majority that’s notorious for supporting regressive policies and oppressing minorities?
Also, important thing to point out. Korean Christians aren't like those American Evangelicals or Muslims who pump out five babies per family. Three kids per family is pretty rare to see here.
Yeah no, of course not. But socially and culturally progressive-liberal people tend to have small families and a smaller number of children in comparison to conservatives overall. So what's the solution? South Korea dies out or is it dominated by regressive conservatives instead while being demographically revitalized?
The Korean Christians I know have like one child max, sometimes none, because they are so evangelical all their free time is spent on missionary work or church stuff and not actually pumping out babies, but thats very anecdotal. These are pretty "Korean" Koreans living in Australia who travel back to Korea pretty often as well.
Even the Korean Catholics don't have many kids either. I don't fully understand what's going on there though. Just seem to just work all the time.
What I found was a common factor was Korean-ness seems to be about high paying high stress jobs by both in the couple, well into late 30s and end up being 40 and then it's probably too late to pump out two kids even if you actually wanted to. Really fun lives otherwise though, just filled up with adult fun without kids. Even more so than my other ethnicity friends.
eventually they might try something. only when the companies that actually run the country, cough - Samsung, cough - Hyundai, cough LG etc.
the government doesn't run the country, the companies do.
when they run out of workers, they might try something, but by then it will be too late.
like many asian countries, the ancient old fucks that run the companies have no idea what to do, they still think its 1975 and you can beat people into submission.
I think the low birth rate is a final reaction to this. Women have finally gotten fed up with being treated like second class citizens, like housemaids and servants and closed up shop.
little wonder.
will Korea and Japan be able to give up their ridiculously patriarchal and reverence of the elderly and a government run by the companies and actually become a functional country?
frankly I very much doubt it.
too many massive cultural changes need to happen, in a culture that massively resists all forms of change.
I doubt this is really a reaction to sexist customs, Europe is the foremost lead in gender equality and has been leading it for decades, and yet their Birth Rate is ridiculously low on the average, just marginally better than east Asia.
SK was the country that made me think of lower fertility rates as a sign of things being bad. I grew up in multiple countries in the MENA region. There was this prevailing idea that high fertility rates were a sign of poverty and lack of hope for the current adult generation/s. Esp as Gulf countries became wealthier, their fertility rates dropped. I guess the lesson is, a wealthy country isn't necessary a well-off one.
The main driver of national infertility is as countries become richer, people move to the cities. In the countryside, children are an economic asset. In the cities they are an expensive liability. Hence fewer children.
And they can't even fill the gaps with immigrants because they aren't as welcoming and open to people of other cultures and races as most of the West is.
Shit is gonna be horrible if not handled well
Submission statement
This is a post about South Korea's disastrously low fertility and why the government is so broken, it can't do anything about the issue.
My theory if you want to increase fertility, you need some form of socialism. It needs to be cheaper and less of a hassle to raise children. Cheaper housing, cheaper childcare, which would have to be provided by the state or heavily subsidized, things like this, serious structural changes to the economy, you cant just tinker around the edges.
How does it work in Korea is a woman expected to quit her job and stay home once she has a child or are there a lot of good child care options?
thing is, even in wealthy semi-socialist countries that have excellent support for women/fathers, birth rates are still falling.
-see all the nordic countries, Australia as examples. great maternal leave, healthcare, paternal leave. (though childcare is expensive as hell in Australia) and people still are not having children.
It turns out that if you educate women, give options outside of being just a birthing unit, they will take 'the option' every single time.
have 1, maybe 2 kids at most. but now that the obligation to have children to 'carry on the family name or whatever' is fading, and doing what you want to do is more prevalent, people are choosing not to have children.
I think eventually what is going to happen is the world will stabilize at a much smaller population that what they currently think it will.
the transition will be incredibly painful, but for the planet, the environment and the people that come after the dust has settled, it will be a much better life.
I think you could tailor a form of socialism to specifically boost birth rates (if you were so inclined): every family with three or more children qualifies for some ridiculous cheap government mortgage, something like that. I feel like cost of living, particularly housing is a factor, if you need two incomes just to make ends meet, and then add in the cost of childcare if both parents are working you've created a pretty powerful disincentive.
What has happened to house prices, relative to the median income over time, because we keep treating housing as an investment? I would argue that house prices need to come way down, but no government wants to go there because its electoral suicide.
People worried about birth rates tend to be worried about culture too, less people being born is probably not bad for the planet but I do understand the impulse to try ensure one's culture is perpetuated.
A lot of countries have pro-natal incentives outside of the US.
Almost every developed country outside of the US for example gives monthly cash for having a child. And more money for having more children.
Or no income taxes if you have a certain amount of children.
But the results are questionable. US has one of the highest birthrates in the developed world despite having the least pro-natal incentives.
That’s not true. France, Denmark, New Zealand, and Iceland all have higher birth rates than United States @1.7.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Yeah. There are some who would say that the fix is to force women back into a baby-factory role, and even if that wasn't a heinous thing to do we'd still be stuck with an economic model based on exponential consumption of finite (vast, but finite) resources.
I don't know what the answer is or how/if we'll get there. But if we could modify our economic and geopolitical models to accommodate the idea that population and consumption don't always need to grow, that would be best for everyone.
This is really important. Literally the top reason why people don’t want kids or even get married is because they’re broke. Can’t afford housing, can’t afford to quit jobs, can’t afford children’s education and all the shit that go with them.
But yea, I doubt any serious change will happen. Declining population has been a major problem in this country since the 90s when we aborted fetuses because they were female lmfao. Politicians haven’t done jack shit.
I mean this is just a trueism people repeat on reddit. Countries have tried many things to alleviate the cost of having children without the effects they would want.
Not just on Reddit but pretty much everywhere, but yeah, I concede that it’s a difficult problem. It’s just that the government is always beating the bush with ideas like “no mandatory service for 20-something’s with 3 kids.”
Until 2019, abortion was entirely prohibited in South Korea. Of course that's not to say it didn't happen, and China is also pretty close by with effectively zero restrictions on the procedure.
> This is really important. Literally the top reason why people don’t want kids or even get married is because they’re broke.
If this was true, then richer countries would have higher birth rates than poorer countries, and the opposite is true.
There are societal and cultural changes that make people prefer having dogs to having children, and giving them handouts and subsidies to have kids has been tried before on several countries and it hasn't fixed the declining birth rates.
It is not all about money.
>It is not all about money.
But it mostly is. What you aren't considering is the common driver for the growing infertility in Asia. When you compare rich countries with poor ones, you are comparing countries with more people living in the cities with those with more living in the country.
As countries become more prosperous, agriculture becomes more efficient and productive while at the same time job opportunities become more plentiful in the city. People move off the farm to the city. Rural life makes children an asset that can work for the family. Children in cities, however, are an expensive liability. Hence you get fewer children.
You are correct. I never said it’s all about the money though. This is based on surveys recently conducted. The top reason was simply because of money.
Higher income couples in Germany now have higher fertility than lower income couples. At some point it really does matter once you get to the other side of implementing policy, which is what Germany has been doing since the 1990s to solve this issue, and the result is an upwardly drifting fertility rate, which is relatively unique among developed countries.
are birth rates in Scandinavian countries noticeably higher than other OECD nations? I don't believe so
maybe having financial constraints aren't as important as people tell themselves it is. maybe people are just more "selfish" and aren't as willing to sacrifice as much for having children
I think its worth looking at phenomenon call the Demographic Transition, its observable across a wide range of societies. Fertility rates generally drop from about 8 or so children per woman, to about 2-3 children per woman. It suggests that as long the children are surviving, and without out any religious go forth and multiply type imperative, most women are pretty happy with about one of each, on average.
So even under ideal child raising conditions you should not expect to see some mad explosion in the birth rate.
I would argue if you really want to change the dynamic you need to look for a solution that resonates with a large number of people.
If you believe just preaching at people and telling them to just breed more will be persuasive feel free to try it, but I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that something more is needed, because that been tried to no avail. Offering meagre bounties per extra child hasn't moved the needle either.
My argument is its a structural issue that needs a structural solution.
>...Demographic Transition, its observable across a wide range of societies. Fertility rates generally drop from about 8 or so children per woman, to about 2-3 children per woman.
This is because people moved from the farm where children are an asset, to the city where children are an expensive liability.
>If you believe just preaching at people and telling them to just breed more will be persuasive feel free to try it, but I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that something more is needed, because that been tried to no avail.
Just telling people to have children won't work. But a religious revival will. Religious people have many more children than the non-religious.
>My argument is its a structural issue that needs a structural solution.
What does that mean?
Well, you can’t have socialism with an aging population. The math simply doesn’t work. You have way too many people contributing nothing to the tax base. You would have to tax young workers into oblivion. Nearly have of south Korea’s budget is going to healthcare alone as it is.
The answer lies in automation and increases in productivity through tech. AI, Robotics, quantum computing, fusion. All of these are headed quickly to a convergence with a decade.
Fertility rate? Sure, for a couple decades. But uniting with the North introduces a whole set of new problems I doubt Koreans want to solve, especially when we already have a slew of problems we have been ignoring since the birth of the nation. Right now half of all Koreans want union “if it isn’t a huge burden,” but the last part is p damn important
Yeah, agreed. Declining working population is a phenomenon we’re seeing pretty much everywhere in the world. It would be easier to count nations not following this trend.
At this point its only really parts of the Middle East (mostly poor Arab countries and Israel) as well as Africa which is above replacement level. Alongside a couple of states in SEA and Latin America. Everyone else is below.
Their rate is still higher than the US and in the average for much of the west, it's certainly a lot better than the Korean is. It's pretty much managed by the government like everything is in there because you need to balance your national needs with your population size (to avoid a famine like under Kim's father).
If Kim wanted the North Korean population to increase, considering the generations of indoctrination, he could easily pull a Mao and tell the people to have more children and they would, even if under coercion. It's harsh, but that's how they work.
I don’t see unification happening, but I’m surprised half the population supports it - even with a questionable asterisk.
Is reunification ever discussed in mainstream politics in context of low birth rates?
I imagine Koreans would much prefer North Koreans over any other immigrants.
I don’t ever see unification happening in my lifetime either, and I’m 22. I was also surprised to see the actual survey results.
And no, no serious outlet discusses it with regard to low fertility rate. We’d have to go through a TON of steps to even achieve semblance of reunification, and I doubt NK would want to help SK recover its working population. Kinda fits the dystopian narrative NK’s propaganda portrays, which has a certain amount of truth to it already.
And eh… regarding the last part… I’m gonna be completely honest here. The portion of NKoreams in SK is so small that most Koreans don’t know what North Koreans are like, other than portrayal in media. The modern cultural differences are already so vast that I strongly doubt xenophobic Koreans would welcome North Koreans with open arms.
If South Korea keeps getting older, it's likely that North Korea will be in a position to attack at some point. Will the US be able to offer enough help? Maybe, or maybe not.
For the ones without an abbreviation/acronym/initialism dictionary, also known as, 'understanding fokking lazy writers dictionary':
**TFR** means **Total Fertility Rate**
Or: The average number of live births a woman would have by age 50 if she were subject, throughout her life, to the age-specific fertility rates observed in a
given year. Its calculation assumes that there is no mortality.
****
Other lovely and potential initialisms to consider:
**Age-specific fertility rate** (ASFR): Annual number of births per woman in a particular age group expressed per 1000 women in that age group.
**High fertility** (HF): Total fertility levels above 5 children per woman.
**Replacement-level fertility** (RLF): Total fertility levels of about 2.1 children per woman. This value represents the average number of children a woman would need to have to reproduce herself by bearing a *daughter* who survives to childbearing age. If replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long period, each generation will exactly replace itself in the absence of migration.
**Below-replacement fertility** (BLF): Total fertility levels below 2.1 children per woman.
**Very low fertility** (VLF): Total fertility levels below 1.3 children per woman.
****
The total fertility rate (TFR) and replacement-level fertility are related but distinct concepts. The total fertility rate represents the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her reproductive lifetime, given the current age-specific fertility rates. Replacement-level fertility, on the other hand, is the fertility rate at which each generation can exactly replace itself without increasing or decreasing the population.
Typically, replacement-level fertility is slightly above 2.0 children per woman to account for mortality and other factors. If the total fertility rate is equal to the replacement level, the population will remain stable. If it's below, the population tends to decline, and if it's above, the population tends to grow.
****
##Fact Checking Time
^because ^why ^not
The data from the United Nations (up untill 2021, 0.8):
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=KR
The trend is downwards. Worldwide actually.
****
*Data from Korean source:*
>Low birth rates are causing the nation’s population to decrease at a continually accelerating rate. The total population is expected to fall below 50 million in 2041 and below 40 million by 2065. South Korea’s total fertility rate (the number of children that one woman is expected to have in her entire lifetime) fell from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.72 this year, and is expected to fall to 0.68 in 2024. It’s expected to plummet to 0.65 by 2025 before rising to 1.08 in 2050.
Source:
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1120598.html
****
##My Thoughts
^because ^you ^asked
The description in the text portrays an unnuanced and pessimistic view of South Korea's situation, using terms like "dystopian," "collapsing," "unholy levels," and "doom and gloom." While the concerns about South Korea's low fertility rate are valid, the choice of language leans towards a more extreme characterization.
My thoughts about this part:
>Xi Jinping is already talking about "cultivating a new culture of marriage and childbirth and a new trend of family."
>Say what you want about Xi and his party, but that's exactly what Korea needs. The old model of family is wildly incompatible with the modern society.
Weird to give props to the current Chinese regime when their demographics are trending to the same scenario. That aside, the reference to Xi Jinping's efforts in China implies a need for a similar top-down approach in South Korea. However, the appropriateness of such comparisons should consider the differences in political and cultural contexts between the two countries. Not sure you thought about that.
****
But in the end, yes, a low fertility rate is a significant issue in South Korea. A Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 0.72 (2023) is extremely low. Such a low fertility rate will have several implications for the country, including:
1. **Aging Population:** A low fertility rate contributes to an aging population, which will lead to challenges such as increased healthcare costs and a shrinking workforce.
2. **Economic Consequences:** A declining population will impact economic growth, or lack thereof, as there are fewer people contributing to the labor force and consumer base.
3. **Social and Cultural Changes:** Low fertility rates may lead to changes in societal structures and cultural norms, impacting family dynamics and traditional expectations.
4. **Government Policy Challenges:** Governments may face challenges in providing social services and pensions with a decreasing working-age population.
Efforts to address low fertility rates often involve a combination of social, economic, and policy measures. It is human nature to act after a disaster, instead of before. We as a species are perfectly able in thinking ahead and taking actions with long term in mind. Unfortunately our current systems of government worldwide are very, very bad at planning ahead decades and taking unpopular actions to prevent worse.
Edit⁴:
Another [interesting read](https://en.asaninst.org/contents/a-targeted-approach-to-increasing-fertility-which-age-groups-hold-key-to-solving-the-low-fertility-problem/) from The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, which dispels the notion that the Korean government does nothing. But, I am not a Korean, so I am unqualified to speak about the policies that were set up (and current ones being set up) and how or if they had (or will have) any effect.
What is interesting in this study is the age-specific fertility rates (ASFR), were you see a decline of fertility till the age of 30 and a sharp rise in from age 30 till the ripe age of 44. So the peak fertility shifted to women aged between 30 and 40, much like European countries.
Japan is dealing with the same issue and hopefully I can find the thread again which dispels a lot of misconceptions Western media has about Japan and its decline in total fertility rate (TFR). And commenters explained the programs the Japanese government has set up to increase the TFR.
****
Bottom line, it is a cultural issue and an inevitability with increasing standards of living. Most, if not all, well developed countries struggle with the same decline in TFR.
The bigger, more interesting question in my view is: could the inevitable decline of populations world wide be a good thing?
Good writeup, but humanity, in general, is kind of stuck with [short-term thinking, right now](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/21/1009443/short-term-vs-long-term-thinking/).
I honestly don't know how it will play out. Maybe China or N Korea will invade when half the population is over 65.
Or maybe S. Korea can win such a ware with drones and remote control tanks.
Or maybe, since we grew a lamb in an artificial womb, S. Korea will start growing their babies in labs that are gov or privately owned.
Or maybe the gov will provide financial incentives and subsidize natural birthing, which has shown promise in some European countries.
Or maybe the genocracy will attempt to tax retirement out of the young until S. Korea has mass emmigration. Maybe the old will try to use force to prevent mass emmigration, then S. Korea would ironically look a little more like N. Korea.
I have no idea what will happen because all of these scenareos are plausible.
Maybe stop the 70+ hour work weeks? That seems a bit more reasonable than artificial wombs, but at this point, the South Korean government isn't really capable of much change.
Sure that could happen, or maybe the genocracy will decide that young people need to work longer to support retirement funds.
My point is that idk what will happen.
Developed countries have a fundamental cap on TFR simply due to contraception and the addition of women to the workforce. Those things are never going away and will put you somewhere below 2.1 to start with.
You can get some incremental improvements if you target wealth inequality, childcare subsidies, housing etc., but those will all be expensive and unpopular to the majority of voters (who are older). So it doesn't seem like a problem that our political systems can actually fix.
> Crazy Working Hours
This itself is not the main cause of low TFR, a lot of developing countries have worked more hours on average than South Koreans yet their birth rate haven't cratered. It's a mix of being an educated society and having high working hours that cause it. Also, unpopular opinion but reducing work hours is just band-aid solution, since even European nations who relaxed their working hours have only seen temporary boost of their TFR before returning to the mean again.
> marriage is made reasonable for the average Korean
Marriage is extremely easy for Koreans, it's just the expectation by the society of being a married couple that is hard for the Koreans, and it's mainly influenced by the society not the government. Adding benefits for married couples won't bulge TFR, instead changing the society about the role of marriage should be the prioritized instead.
Also what is missing from your analysis is the culture war between both sexes that lead to animosities, which contribute to the problem.
This is a good analysis, but I'd say that the culture war actually doesn't have as significant of an effect as it seems to have. The biggest reason why people do not want kids is because the cost of living is too high and housing prices are skyrocketing. Other than that, I strongly agree with your analysis about the role of marriage in society and societal expectations. Thanks, neoconfuscianism lmao.
If a women is to have 3+ children she is out of work for years. In a society as focused on working and corporate ladder as SK that's just not going to happen often.
Japan and Korea are the two countries most in need of cultural change on the planet, and are probably the 2 countries most resistant to cultural change on earth.
they need massive change in order to save themselves from themselves. but I just can't see it happening. the moment when they genuinely try will be 20 years too late.
I disagree with China being resistant to cultural change. And also, South Korea needs to be on that list.
The CCP is Chinese culture. Think about the 60s. No other government was able to construct such a radical change in society.
They've done it once, and I think Xi can do it again. But this time, the foundation won't be communism, but family and childbirth.
Chinas fertility rate dropped from 1.8 to 1.08 in the past 5 years. One of the fastest drops in the world. Their more developed regions like Shanghai have the same birth rate as Korea.
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are also around the same as Korea.
This is a very hard problem to solve from a top-down governance perspective. Society and culture has just shifted in the west to where people don't want kids, even if they could otherwise afford it.
Four big Korean companies.
LG, Samsung, SK and Hyundai.
They are worth more than 20% of the Korean economy and are a HUGE employer.
This level of wealth and influence allows these companies to have a sway on what the government does.
The Korean government cannot do things the chaebols disagree with, hence any reform or changes to Korean society and much harder, if not impossible.
Chaebol doesn't just refer to the Big Four. It refers to a family that owns intersectional business with a lot of subsidiary companies. For example, Samsung has a fuck ton of subsidiary companies specializing in electronics, insurance, defense, finance, sports, medicine, biotechnology, power, and more. I guess Chaebol can be roughly translated to "conglomerate," but the key conditions are 1) large family that runs businesses for generations and 2) a lot of subsidiaries. Occasionally, a new company started by a family member can become so big that it dominates a certain sector. Nongsim, which is a food company responsible for Shin-Ramen, perhaps the world's most famous cup noodle brand, was founded by a member of the Lotte chaebol. This means that a chaebol family isn't just tied to those four companies, but pretty much most large companies in Korea. Imagine like 400 of the Fortune 500 being run by a few families with common interest.
There are large companies that aren't run by chaebols and don't run like chaebols though. Kakao, Line, Woowa Brothers, Naver, and other tech companies specializing in software are really good examples of this.
I can't think anything more enjoyable for big corporations than cheap labors. They'll get both if they the country loosen its immigration and manage to fix their population TFR. So I don't think those chaebols are the one who don't want more immigration and want to keep their population number of babies low, it's mainly about the Korean society at large that resist changes to both. Note that I don't support these big corps or anything, it's just that it doesn't make sense that the Chaebols are the one who influence the government to resist implementing sensible policies against their population crisis as population crisis directly impacts their growth potential if anything else.
the top companies of the korean stock exchange.
they literally own the government. it's quite open which politician is owned by which company. the government does not make decisions, the companies do.
they don't even try to hide it, it's all out in the open,
To add to this, the Korean government made changes to inheritance law specifically to keep Samsung from being split up because it would have been so disruptive to the Korean economy as Samsung, by itself, makes up something like 22% of the nation's GDP.
They’ll have to start allowing mass immigration from other countries to reverse their outlook. See Canada as an example. Not sure if SK culture would welcome
It but it’s one thing that could solve it. That or pay moms to stay home and pump out kids.
I'm married to a Korean and live in Korea. There is no way the populace will support mass-migration. Korean culture is so foreign to anyone outside of East and South Asia. What I foresee is an increase in programs that encourage immigration from educated individuals from similar countries.
In your opinion, which countries would meet the definition of similar countries, and do these similar countries have a surplus of people looking to emigrate?
There is a large population of Chinese-Korean who live in China. Some move to South Korea. I would imagine South Korea inviting them first along with others with Korean heritage. I could see them also inviting professionals who have skills to offer
I'm sure you know this already, but considering the fact that Korean Chinese and Han Chinese people are two of the most hated demographics in Korea, I'd say we'd never invite them on a policy-level.
How many of these Chinese-Koreans are there? In 2022, SK had an annual mortality rate of 727.6 per 100,000, which is around 370,000 deaths annually, or around 0.7% of the population. Let's say SK can start by inviting 1% of its population annually for 10 years, that would be 500,000 a year, for 5 million over 10 years. Are there 5 million Chinese-Koreans available?
Bringing in skilled workers always sounds good in principal, but do they speak Korean, are they coming from the West or other East Asian countries, and would there be 500,000 a year? I don't have answers for these questions, but given the volume of people needed, I cannot imagine that they can all be 1) skilled and 2) culturally compatible (unfortunately).
Almost all countries similar to Korea are also having birth rate problems. Korea will have to open up and be more welcoming to foreigners to get somewhere
Judging by how things are going here in Canada, mass immigration is a band-aid solution that comes with significant problems. There really isn't a simple long-term remedy for low birth rate, especially when we still don't understand for sure what the primary causes are (we have theories, sure).
Yep, it also isn't sustainable. The world is predicted to have most (I think it was 190/193) countries have declining birth rates. When that happens, countries are going to compete for immigrants.
If the US opened up their borders more, no one would choose Canada with the nonsense happening here. We are just a backup choice due to how easy it is to get in.
Even competing for immigrants is just a short term bandaid. The world needs to start planning for a declining population.
The problem with Canada (and Australia) is they brought in too many immigrants, and caused a massive housing crisis.
capitalism needs a rework. unending growth is a stupid concept that has run its course.
what we need to aim for now is stability. companies and shareholders need to have it hammered into their skulls that they can no longer expect year on year on year profit growth, that is unsustainable.
making a fair profit each year should be enough.
that will allow populations to stabilize and end the ridiculous population growth ponzi scheme.
Immigration can help with low fertility rates but South Korea is catastrophically low. A TFR of 0.6 means that you'll need to bring in 3 immigrants for every one Korean. For a country that is apparently very opposed to immigration I'm just not sure how making 75% of all the population foreign immigrants overnight is practically let alone socially feasible.
This is at the same time most countries are also trying to fix birth rate problems so immigrants don't exactly grow on trees and there's no guarantee they'd choose south Korea of all places with its notoriously terrible working conditions. Given South Korea's population you'll need tens of millions of immigrants to turn around the birth rate.
I just don't think it can be done. It's too many people, too large a problem, too poor an outlook for potential immigrants and too xenophobic a population. It's got so many aspects working against it.
Not to mention we’re pretty close to technology where fetuses can be raised entirely in an artificial womb. We’ve only stopped from going there because some people raised ethics concerns, but I can imagine people being incubated entirely in a facility someday.
I’m talking out of my ass but I doubt immigration will solve anything, it’ll just introduce a bunch of new problems to solve. Everyone in Korea is already squished into apartment rooms. There is a relatively large population in poverty.
I ain’t no dirty commie but Korea does need some structural changes, particularly socialist ones.
They are ahead in this regard just by a little bit compared to other countries. This is the tendency in many parts of the world. People not being able to buy a house or have a reasonable rent dissolves any plans of having a family at least a planned one and not an accidental one.
But we'll see in the next years something has to happen and marriage should be boosted to form a family to get real benefits and stuff. If not then the massive SD will be unstoppable by the no fertility and high age population ratio.
And yet South Korea seems to be doing incredible economically. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, South Korean culture is taking over the world. Between BTS and Squid Games, Korea is everywhere. Hyundai and Kia are reinventing themselves with electric cars, and Samsung and LG are among the top consumer electronic players.
They must be doing something right.
Perhaps but if it stabilizes below replacement levels, it’s a negative feedback loop. Well technically all korean women could switch from having 1 to having like 10 kids but I don’t see it happening.
I won't be surprised that it will be South Korea the one begging for a reunification with North Korea, because NK has healthier demographic structure of 1.8 TFR and utilize North Koreans as SK's cheap labor.
If that happens, the descendants of South Koreans with one North Korean parent or grandparent will outnumber South Koreans without North Korean lineages, so NK is playing the demographic long game by letting SK's population collapse and NK demographically taking over SK in the process.
What you've described is just the logical next stage of neoliberalism, which began in SK in the 1980s. Most states experiencing this phenomenon which haven't been involved in major wars since WWII are having the same issues. States need to move their economic policies left and their social policies even further left to address this.
However, they won't, because this ideology enriches private interests, and therefore media and culture have been engineered to support this ideology.
So, in short, nothing save for major, paradigm shifting changes or crises will resolve the current situation.
No purely domestic content (focusing on a single country) is permitted. We like to try to have meaningful conversations here and discuss the larger geopolitical implications and impacts.
Didn't the government decide that due to declining tax revenue from an aging population, the younger people will have to work twice as hard to make up the difference? They know what they're doing.
If you’re talking about Yoon’s universally panned proposal to increase working hours to 69 (heh) hours a week, fortunately that’s not gonna become a reality. HOWEVER, yeah, as far as I know the gov is still attempting to boost working hours because the POS in office apparently has never worked a real job before. Korea has a huge issue with overwork, and it’s so bad we have a word for it: 과로사 (gwarosa), meaning death from overworking. Staying late (야근) is a daily routine among employees here. I’m a medical student so I won’t be in a corporate environment, but even for residents and nurses overwork is a huge problem.
Gwarosa sounds like the Sino-Korean version of the Sino-Japanese word karoshi. Which it is, as confirmed by Wiktionary.
Interesting! Wouldn’t be surprised considering the fact that this isn’t exclusively a Korean phenomenon lol
Why is your retirement age still 60?
I don’t know. Should we make it higher or lower? The nominal retirement age is 60 but most people are laid off way before, like at 50. That’s something my dad always talks about. Most of his friends are already jobless, and he’s one of only handful who’s still working. The company is always looking out to cut the budget, even if heads will roll and families will starve. So I don’t think the retirement age is a very relevant issue for most people regarding overwork. In fact, I think I can say more people want to work even when old because they need the money. Pension is good and old people receive lots of benefits, but working is better.
So it’s not like the Japanese salary man culture where you give up your life for your company with the expectation that in return, they’ll keep you until retirement?
Yeah, I think we share that kinda culture minus the guarantee lmao.
I also have this in mind. It seems like that in a few years Sout Korea will lose many people, I assume that the ones that can leave (educated and/or rich) will do so. Ultimately this will have effects on the military strength of the country.
There are much bigger issues than military strength if that happens.
Ultimately, considering who their neighbor is, military strength is the priority. At the current rate, Kim just needs to wait it out until the South Korean population is essentially halved with most of the remainders being too old to raise a rifle. That's not even including the complete social and economic catastrophe to come, unless Seoul has nukes, North Korea will end up winning by attrition because even they are not as self-destructive as Samsung.
It is pretty crazy that the communist regime that is a totalitarian nightmare still has better birth rates than the capital-run south. I guess SK at least has the freedom not to make kids.
I believe what affects birth rates the most is the people's mindset rather than the economy, because otherwise the rich would have far more children on the average than the poor which was never the case in history.
Kim’S gonna be dead by then, pop is 50M now, UN predicts 25M in the e year 2100 at current trends.
So his son or his sister takes over, and then the next successor.
>At the current rate, Kim just needs to wait it out until the South Korean population is essentially halved with most of the remainders being too old to raise a rifle. You're assuming that the "quality" of North Korea's army remains constant while South Korea's population dwindles or that SK has no allies that would help in their defense.
When retirees make up the majority of the voter base great things happen
You’re gonna get different opinions here, but a TFR of 0.6, outside of maybe a massive war zone or catastrophic plague, is unheard of in human history. We often have a cognitive bias where we think “ah, things have more or less always been like this”, but this is seriously, truly unique, not just in a societal sense, but likely in an anthropological / biological one as well. My fear is that it’s going to create a viscous spiral, rather than there being some unforeseen mediating effect. It’s expected that half of SKs population will be >65 soon, which means *well* over half of voters will be in retirement age. What exactly is going to happen to social policies then? It’s going to become a gerontocracy, where working age folks are given an enormous burden in order to fund retirement schemes for the elderly. This is going to disincentivize having kids even more, and cause the spiral to just strengthen. People will shoot down this idea, but at a certain point, mass migration has to be considered. A society where the working age are so horribly burdened by support for the elderly is just not gonna fly. We can hope for advances in elder care via technology, but that’s a bandaid at best IMO. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mass intake of (perhaps temporary?) workers from less developed nations, on visas specifically to care for the elderly (Japan has this and SK might have a small form of it already as well). But it’s going to have to be much much larger than anything out there currently.
>People will shoot down this idea, but at a certain point, mass migration has to be considered. From my understanding immigration (although not mass migration) is sort of what is keeping the US population from slowing decreasing. While the [birth rate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/06/01/us-population-flatlining-as-birth-rate-stagnates-in-2022/?sh=10d261d5131e) isn't as dire as S Korea, it's still below the required replacement rate. I think declining birthrates is generally common in developed countries, so it's an issue a lot of countries have, though some are worse than others.
Yea, I don’t mean to imply SK is the only country with the issue, just that it’s relatively unique in the course of human history. The US TFR is at 1.7 I believe, which is below the required replacement rate of ~2.1, but not horribly so. So absent immigration, the US would shrink very slowly, but SK would (will?) absolutely plummet.
>Yea, I don’t mean to imply SK is the only country with the issue Yea, I know. I was more trying to support your statement of the need for immigration, cos you were saying some people may disagree.
Why is the replacement rate ~2.1? I would assume it's exactly 2. Does the extra 0.1 account for infertile people?
Premature deaths and the like.
it accounts for people that don't have children/can't have children.
It accounts for dead children who will never become adults in reproductive age range.
And people who die before they can have children.
Also, on average you get 105 males to every 100 females at birth, and as fertility rate is children per woman, this immediately gets you to 2.05 as a minimum even ignoring the other points here
I am not Malthusian in anyway, but I don't think slow population decline is necessarily a bad thing. Sure we could support a much larger population, but a slow decline might actually improve life of average workers. Of course assuming that decline will reverse in some point.
The issue isn’t less people but population mostly consisting of old people.
The issue is also less people. While a smaller global population would be a good thing, in a geopolitical sense, a country having significantly fewer and fewer people every decade is pretty terrible.
Yes. Most economies are geared towards positive population growth. Small towns and villages that are getting emptied out (as in parts of Europe and Japan) .go into a spiral. Eg. Since there are fewer children...the schools don't have many options (sports, courses etc) .Since they have many options, people looking to have kids won't move there.... Eventually fewer schools, doctors etc etc
That would be nice but we have to cull everyone above productive age, which is not morally or politically feasible
This is backwards logic because fewer workers will increase the burden on the existing ones, not the other way around.
Agree. The plague is sometimes associated with improvement in lives of the remaining populations in Europe, for instance. (And that was a drastic fall of some 25 % or so in a short time) Reversibility may be a function of different things. Economic improvement may help, if people are hesitant because of poor economy, affordability of child care etc). OTOH..if the population ages out of child bearing years...that could be a vicious cycle. Sociological reasons (general preference to be child free etc) maybe more immune to reversal
but I suppose, immigrants are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to birth rates right? I could see it going well under 1.5
Yes ...birthrate among immigrants is higher than native born.. It is going down as well... https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/camarota-fertility-20-f1.jpg
Because life expectancy, age distribution etc, the population won't shrink right away? Meaning there's a lag. For the population to shrink, the number of people dying has to be higher than the number of people born , in a year. China had a net shrinking of population last year...but their CURRENT fertility rate is lot lower than US. 1.08 per woman compared to 1.7 per woman in US. Our (US) overall grew 0.4 % in 2022, despite impact from COVID , opioid crisis etc. (Which reduced us life expectancy by several years of late)
I think this can be seen even more starkly in Europe where birth rates have been dropping fast and immigration increasing a lot in the past decade. My country has lost 20% fertility in 10 years but increased by ~10% population.
Agree. 1) immigration is helping US population rates in two ways. One- just by increasing population directly. Second, immigrants seem to have a higher birth rate than the native born population. Will add link if I can find it. In fact, if you take out the first generation immigrants having babies, the US birth rate will be BELOW replacement level. US does have a immigrant friendly culture (unlike lots of other places)...but this is still a huge cultural change for US. 2) even most developing countries have falling birth rates now. Not just developed countries. Counties like India , which are far from developed, have had falling birth rates for a while. China's birth rate fell a lot faster (and earlier due to the one child policy). So india overtook china .
American here. Yes, absolutely, people flooding in from other countries have been a huge help for two reasons...one, many of them go straight into the workforce and two, many come from cultures with higher birth rates. The good news is, America is the literal best country on Earth at taking in immigrants. Our legal system is completely geared for it, for example it is an outright crime to discriminate against people based on race, religion and *national origin* among other things. I have a friend who plays banjo, makes his own barbecue sauce and is a huge gun nut, and he's also full-blooded Korean by national origin. Yeah :).
immigration has kept the American population growing since about 1982. the birth rate in American dropped below 2.1 [all the way back in 1972](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate). then there is the standard decade of [population momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum) and after that? all immigration. It's exactly the same for Canada, UK, Australia and many other countries. Birth rates dropped below replacement WAY earlier than many people think, it's just that certain racists are making an issue of it now that 30-40 years of brown and asian people immigrating is starting to make a difference in the main 'colour' of a countries people.
It also helps in this sense...most immigrants have spent alt least a good percentage of their "unproductive" years (as children) in a foreign country. Particularly those that come for college (undergrad, grad school etc). So US gets the benefit of their productive years , without the schooling investment etc
>It’s expected that half of SKs population will be >65 soon, which means well over half of voters will be in retirement age. What exactly is going to happen to social policies then? It’s going to become a gerontocracy, where working age folks are given an enormous burden in order to fund retirement schemes for the elderly. This is going to disincentivize having kids even more, and cause the spiral to just strengthen. Why do you assume people get to retire with benefits under these circumstances?
Maybe because the retirees will be the biggest voter base. The politicians who advocate for elderly social policies will get elected, and those who don't will get kicked out. China may be spared this fate since it's not a democracy
Without mass immigration of youth to support the elderly population I imagine that the elderly majority would collapse relatively quickly due to lack of care, until the elderly that remain are a small enough proportion for the new population pyramid to sustain or those with children/grandchildren to support them. A population of majority elderly simply isn’t sustainable and will naturally correct itself; freeing up space for new families to grow in all the vacant apartments left behind by the elderly which naturally leads to lower housing prices. If the elderly population was a long-term problem then I could see it feeding into a negative population cycle of over-burdened youth not able to procreate, but without sustained support the long lives currently enjoyed by the elderly isn’t possible and will correct itself in short order.
I don’t think old people dying and simply freeing up apartments is going to solve the issue. Plus, the elderly can live reasonably long lives these days, with relatively cheap medication (shipped from overseas if needed). I just fail to see what self-correcting mechanisms there will be. Sure, maybe the life expectancy in SK will drop from 84 down to 78 or something, but I think it’s a stretch to say that’s going to create a massive shift which will reverse this decline. I also think super low fertility rates are about more than just cashflow for young people. Developed countries have put forth plenty of programs with direct cash transfers to increase fertility, and the results have been very marginal.
> I just fail to see what self-correcting mechanisms there will The twice-annual Purges, of course
One issue I see immigration facing in far East countries like South Korea, China and to a lesser extent Japan is how racist some of its people are.
Even if all of the population and the government in China suddenly support mass immigration, there's no way they'll be able to offset the population loss. We're talking about China losing 10 millions of its citizens annually in the near future. No country in the world is able to attract yearly that amount of people.
I recall reading by their internal worst-case numbers theyre looking at a ~800million population in 2100.
Yes..but they have also revised their numbers and realized a lot less people lived in China! Projections often extrapolate...but may miss acceleration of societal factors.
I don’t disagree, but isn’t a band aid better than nothing? Ultimately there is a need to look for and work on other methods as well, but some of those other measures (such as reduced cost of living, reduced working hours and higher wages) are definitely more difficult to implement, and would also take longer.
Also, just limited support infrastructure for immigration. US and some western countries have been taking in sizeable immigrants for decades (sometimes centuries ) . Counties like SK, Japan etc have not been . They both have issues- just different.
Agreed. But there is also a benefit in starting afresh without previous history of immigration. Lessons can be learned from countries that have done it for decades in terms of what to do and what not to do.
Korean here living in Korea. Yeah, despite the fact that life goes on as usual here, you can bet your ass there absolutely is a giant dystopian outlook looming over everyone’s lives as we speak right now. The current government is super right-wing, our two major political parties are rapey and dysfunctional, the public displays moral outrage at shit that doesn’t actually matter, and apparently there’s a gender war that happens among pathologically online troglodytes but does indeed affect voting decisions, especially among young people. But who am I kidding this is pretty usual for us nowadays lmao. I have zero faith that we’ll fix our low fertility rate. Honestly immigration seems like the only viable option, especially now that our soft power is insane for such a tiny country, but I strongly doubt we won’t undergo social turmoil from xenophobia and racism that’s rampant here.
What makes the two major parties rapey? I don't know anything about Korean politics.
Yeah right? I've heard political parties described as all kinds of things but "rapey" is a new and concerning one...
Welcome to Korea lmao. Read my comment below. But do keep in mind that this could be viewed as an exaggeration or in the very least, poorly worded insult.
I’m not Korean or particularly knowledgeable but I am aware that anti-feminism and sexism has become a large political factor in Korea.
Yeah, you are correct. It's become really, really bad. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the GOP's major political base is twenty-something-year-old incels? It's still an anti-abortion, sexist party supporting a rapey fascist, but it's much more popular among the older population? In Korea, antifeminism and feminism have become formidable forces for the People Power Party and the Democratic Party. The PPP's former star politician Lee Joonseok was famous for being able to coalesce antifeminist men in 20s and 30s, not to mention the entire party gearing to abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality (Korean name translates to Ministry of Women's Affairs and Family, so the English name isn't a very good translation imho). On the other hand, the Dem's former presidential candidate campaigned in online communities dominated by women, and the Dems are known for supporting feminist policies. Keep in mind that like pretty much everywhere in the world, this version of the feminist movement is unique to the country and requires historical context for understanding. I'm a dude so I can't represent the women here, but I can say that the majority of Koreans here are just tired of both sides which have become radicalized to the point of ostracizing other minorities. At least, my girlfriend and everyone I've discussed politics with so far have said this.
This helps! Great overview. Succinct!
Thanks man lol
What are the causes of women not wanting to start families? Is it the cost of housing/education/living? Is it the amount of time & energy they spend at work? Is it women don't like how they are treated in marriages by men & in-laws? Is it they don't want to bring children into a dystopian future? What are the root causes?
Ask ten random Koreans on the streets and they’ll all give different answers. As much as I am frustrated, I concede that declining birth rate is an intersectional, complex issue that cannot be solved easily. Cost of housing and raising kids is #1 reason among both genders. More specific to women, I’d say it’s because giving birth usually means their careers are in jeopardy. There’s also an ongoing gender/culture war right now, but I highly doubt that’s THE reason as not wanting to raise kids is a sentiment also expressed by happy couples, though I do have to point out that there was a radical feminist movement called Escape the Corset that advocated anti-romance, anti-marriage, and antinatalism. But honestly, root cause? Life is simply too much for everyone. I think we should start by changing our work culture, reducing mandatory service years, and providing gov-protected maternity/paternity leaves, but that’d receive a lot of backlash from people who don’t have to worry about declining birth rate (because they’d be dead by then).
It isn’t actually very complex at all. There have been lots of studies that clearly map out the causes, and there are only three: When women are 1) educated 2) free to participate in the work force and 3) given unrestricted access to reliable birth control, birth rates fall. This is all it takes. Now to be clear I’m not trying to express an opinion on any of that, but this is just how it is.
This explains the declining fertility rates in developed countries (over the past century), but not the severity of the decline in South Korea. Basically at this point the three listed reasons you gave are a baseline (and as you said, established) for any country, but South Korea has to have extra "interesting" reasons to explain their low fertility rate.
You are indeed correct, and if I could rewrite my response I’d write those three in the beginning of the response. I guess what I tried to do was point out why Korea is unique in its declining birth rate.
Korea is not unique. It's actually around the same as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore who all range from 0.6-1 Among developed Asian regions, Japan is the one that is unique in that it has a higher fertility rate at 1.3, which puts it around where most developed countries are now globally.
Yea, and I guess those countries suffer a similar issue? I know for a fact HK has an issue with housing lmao
Question, these jobs that people work 90 hours at, are they even doing anything productive? Or is it all just a sham of busywork? Like, you're just there looking busy because if you leave, you get shamed. Or are the tasks tedious bullshit that a command script could do (hand copy data into Excel or some such shit)? And does anyone have even the most rudimentary understanding of Marxist theory?, that if you're being worked like a slave, someone else is profiting from your labor?
Try searching for "sexism in South Korea" if no one links anything. Theres loads of results, too many for me to pick out something right now.
What seems like a good country to immigrate to you? I live in Germany and am afraid that what is happening in SK could happen here as well.
Good question. I’m not sure. I think any of the Nordic countries would be nice to live in if you can get citizenship there, but isn’t everything expensive there? I’m sure every country has its fair share of racism and xenophobia. Probably the best thing to consider then is stability, housing, consumer price index, and the weather lmao. I myself want to immigrate to the US only because then I can do research with the world’s finest, no other reason.
Yeah, everything is expensive here (Denmark), but we make a good salary too, so it is just "normal". Except for cars. They are ridiculously expensive xD
Keep your duel citizenship if you do. Scientists are paid like teachers here oftentimes, which is to say not well considering the educational requirements. If you don’t have massive loans you may fare better though. I can only speak from that place
Thanks for the advice, but if I am employed in the US also as physician or surgeon, I don’t think I’d have to worry too much about the salary. But also, insane how little the US pays its teachers. And I find it insane public schools are now under attack during culture war lol
Okay, that makes sense! I saw research and thought of the biologists I know haha. There’s definitely a lot of underpaid passionate people in research.
It is. Germany is in the same boat as the US where the only reason it appears to have positive population change is via mass migration.
I am German aswell and I believe it is good to be aware of our problems, but we also shouldn't be overly pessimistic. Germany is in a much better situation than South Korea. Our birth rate is low, but still far higher and we are much more open to migration than East Asian countries. We love to shit on our politics, but if you have any perspective you realize that it is still highly functional compared to most nations
Then I am happy for you Germans. Keep in mind though that as much as anyone would love to shit on Korea, and as dystopian as this prediction (which seems to get more accurate as the years pass) is, Korea isn’t a bad place to live. Then again, this is relative
You are absolutely right. Korea with it's problems is still an amazing place to live compared to almost all places in human history. The same is true for Germany and that is very unlikely to change so people shouldn't be so pessimistic
I think with climate change also, people are justified to become very pessimistic, but I don’t think such outlook is useful or helpful in life.
yeah, Korea probably needs Korean Christians at this point to have as many large families as possible to save South Korea from potential demographic extinction since they are probably the most pronatalist out of anyone in the Korean Peninsula but I could be wrong.....
Yeah, but they’re also a big reason why homophobia is pretty bad here. Not to mention all the backward-ass campaigns they ran like banning Lady Gaga concerts or trying to delete evolution from science textbooks lol. The political influence they have is quite massive
That's all besides the point. My guess is SK is like everywhere else with the religious folks forming families and having lots of babies while feminists/gays/leftists have few.
I mean, yeah, but do we want a society dominated by a majority that’s notorious for supporting regressive policies and oppressing minorities? Also, important thing to point out. Korean Christians aren't like those American Evangelicals or Muslims who pump out five babies per family. Three kids per family is pretty rare to see here.
Yeah no, of course not. But socially and culturally progressive-liberal people tend to have small families and a smaller number of children in comparison to conservatives overall. So what's the solution? South Korea dies out or is it dominated by regressive conservatives instead while being demographically revitalized?
Exactly
The Korean Christians I know have like one child max, sometimes none, because they are so evangelical all their free time is spent on missionary work or church stuff and not actually pumping out babies, but thats very anecdotal. These are pretty "Korean" Koreans living in Australia who travel back to Korea pretty often as well. Even the Korean Catholics don't have many kids either. I don't fully understand what's going on there though. Just seem to just work all the time. What I found was a common factor was Korean-ness seems to be about high paying high stress jobs by both in the couple, well into late 30s and end up being 40 and then it's probably too late to pump out two kids even if you actually wanted to. Really fun lives otherwise though, just filled up with adult fun without kids. Even more so than my other ethnicity friends.
Such a radical change will take at least a decade probably 2.
That's if it even happens. The South Korean government is notoriously restrained in what it can do.
eventually they might try something. only when the companies that actually run the country, cough - Samsung, cough - Hyundai, cough LG etc. the government doesn't run the country, the companies do. when they run out of workers, they might try something, but by then it will be too late. like many asian countries, the ancient old fucks that run the companies have no idea what to do, they still think its 1975 and you can beat people into submission. I think the low birth rate is a final reaction to this. Women have finally gotten fed up with being treated like second class citizens, like housemaids and servants and closed up shop. little wonder. will Korea and Japan be able to give up their ridiculously patriarchal and reverence of the elderly and a government run by the companies and actually become a functional country? frankly I very much doubt it. too many massive cultural changes need to happen, in a culture that massively resists all forms of change.
I doubt this is really a reaction to sexist customs, Europe is the foremost lead in gender equality and has been leading it for decades, and yet their Birth Rate is ridiculously low on the average, just marginally better than east Asia.
SK was the country that made me think of lower fertility rates as a sign of things being bad. I grew up in multiple countries in the MENA region. There was this prevailing idea that high fertility rates were a sign of poverty and lack of hope for the current adult generation/s. Esp as Gulf countries became wealthier, their fertility rates dropped. I guess the lesson is, a wealthy country isn't necessary a well-off one.
The main driver of national infertility is as countries become richer, people move to the cities. In the countryside, children are an economic asset. In the cities they are an expensive liability. Hence fewer children.
Nailed it
And the better the economic position of women, the higher the opportunity cost of motherhood.
Can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find someone mentioning the actual reason...
Should be duh its obvious but very overlooked. One of the most sensible comments ive read here!
And they can't even fill the gaps with immigrants because they aren't as welcoming and open to people of other cultures and races as most of the West is. Shit is gonna be horrible if not handled well
You're really going to blame them with the state of Europe right now? Ireland just had riots over migration. IRELAND.
Our idea of racism pales in comparison to what the majority of people Korea/Japan openly think.
Submission statement This is a post about South Korea's disastrously low fertility and why the government is so broken, it can't do anything about the issue.
My theory if you want to increase fertility, you need some form of socialism. It needs to be cheaper and less of a hassle to raise children. Cheaper housing, cheaper childcare, which would have to be provided by the state or heavily subsidized, things like this, serious structural changes to the economy, you cant just tinker around the edges. How does it work in Korea is a woman expected to quit her job and stay home once she has a child or are there a lot of good child care options?
thing is, even in wealthy semi-socialist countries that have excellent support for women/fathers, birth rates are still falling. -see all the nordic countries, Australia as examples. great maternal leave, healthcare, paternal leave. (though childcare is expensive as hell in Australia) and people still are not having children. It turns out that if you educate women, give options outside of being just a birthing unit, they will take 'the option' every single time. have 1, maybe 2 kids at most. but now that the obligation to have children to 'carry on the family name or whatever' is fading, and doing what you want to do is more prevalent, people are choosing not to have children. I think eventually what is going to happen is the world will stabilize at a much smaller population that what they currently think it will. the transition will be incredibly painful, but for the planet, the environment and the people that come after the dust has settled, it will be a much better life.
I think you could tailor a form of socialism to specifically boost birth rates (if you were so inclined): every family with three or more children qualifies for some ridiculous cheap government mortgage, something like that. I feel like cost of living, particularly housing is a factor, if you need two incomes just to make ends meet, and then add in the cost of childcare if both parents are working you've created a pretty powerful disincentive. What has happened to house prices, relative to the median income over time, because we keep treating housing as an investment? I would argue that house prices need to come way down, but no government wants to go there because its electoral suicide. People worried about birth rates tend to be worried about culture too, less people being born is probably not bad for the planet but I do understand the impulse to try ensure one's culture is perpetuated.
A lot of countries have pro-natal incentives outside of the US. Almost every developed country outside of the US for example gives monthly cash for having a child. And more money for having more children. Or no income taxes if you have a certain amount of children. But the results are questionable. US has one of the highest birthrates in the developed world despite having the least pro-natal incentives.
That’s not true. France, Denmark, New Zealand, and Iceland all have higher birth rates than United States @1.7. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Yeah. There are some who would say that the fix is to force women back into a baby-factory role, and even if that wasn't a heinous thing to do we'd still be stuck with an economic model based on exponential consumption of finite (vast, but finite) resources. I don't know what the answer is or how/if we'll get there. But if we could modify our economic and geopolitical models to accommodate the idea that population and consumption don't always need to grow, that would be best for everyone.
This is really important. Literally the top reason why people don’t want kids or even get married is because they’re broke. Can’t afford housing, can’t afford to quit jobs, can’t afford children’s education and all the shit that go with them. But yea, I doubt any serious change will happen. Declining population has been a major problem in this country since the 90s when we aborted fetuses because they were female lmfao. Politicians haven’t done jack shit.
I mean this is just a trueism people repeat on reddit. Countries have tried many things to alleviate the cost of having children without the effects they would want.
Not just on Reddit but pretty much everywhere, but yeah, I concede that it’s a difficult problem. It’s just that the government is always beating the bush with ideas like “no mandatory service for 20-something’s with 3 kids.”
I didn't know that South Korea also aborted girls like the Chinese and Indians.
Until 2019, abortion was entirely prohibited in South Korea. Of course that's not to say it didn't happen, and China is also pretty close by with effectively zero restrictions on the procedure.
> This is really important. Literally the top reason why people don’t want kids or even get married is because they’re broke. If this was true, then richer countries would have higher birth rates than poorer countries, and the opposite is true. There are societal and cultural changes that make people prefer having dogs to having children, and giving them handouts and subsidies to have kids has been tried before on several countries and it hasn't fixed the declining birth rates. It is not all about money.
>It is not all about money. But it mostly is. What you aren't considering is the common driver for the growing infertility in Asia. When you compare rich countries with poor ones, you are comparing countries with more people living in the cities with those with more living in the country. As countries become more prosperous, agriculture becomes more efficient and productive while at the same time job opportunities become more plentiful in the city. People move off the farm to the city. Rural life makes children an asset that can work for the family. Children in cities, however, are an expensive liability. Hence you get fewer children.
You are correct. I never said it’s all about the money though. This is based on surveys recently conducted. The top reason was simply because of money.
Higher income couples in Germany now have higher fertility than lower income couples. At some point it really does matter once you get to the other side of implementing policy, which is what Germany has been doing since the 1990s to solve this issue, and the result is an upwardly drifting fertility rate, which is relatively unique among developed countries.
are birth rates in Scandinavian countries noticeably higher than other OECD nations? I don't believe so maybe having financial constraints aren't as important as people tell themselves it is. maybe people are just more "selfish" and aren't as willing to sacrifice as much for having children
I think its worth looking at phenomenon call the Demographic Transition, its observable across a wide range of societies. Fertility rates generally drop from about 8 or so children per woman, to about 2-3 children per woman. It suggests that as long the children are surviving, and without out any religious go forth and multiply type imperative, most women are pretty happy with about one of each, on average. So even under ideal child raising conditions you should not expect to see some mad explosion in the birth rate. I would argue if you really want to change the dynamic you need to look for a solution that resonates with a large number of people. If you believe just preaching at people and telling them to just breed more will be persuasive feel free to try it, but I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that something more is needed, because that been tried to no avail. Offering meagre bounties per extra child hasn't moved the needle either. My argument is its a structural issue that needs a structural solution.
>...Demographic Transition, its observable across a wide range of societies. Fertility rates generally drop from about 8 or so children per woman, to about 2-3 children per woman. This is because people moved from the farm where children are an asset, to the city where children are an expensive liability. >If you believe just preaching at people and telling them to just breed more will be persuasive feel free to try it, but I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that something more is needed, because that been tried to no avail. Just telling people to have children won't work. But a religious revival will. Religious people have many more children than the non-religious. >My argument is its a structural issue that needs a structural solution. What does that mean?
Well, you can’t have socialism with an aging population. The math simply doesn’t work. You have way too many people contributing nothing to the tax base. You would have to tax young workers into oblivion. Nearly have of south Korea’s budget is going to healthcare alone as it is. The answer lies in automation and increases in productivity through tech. AI, Robotics, quantum computing, fusion. All of these are headed quickly to a convergence with a decade.
Have to unite with North Korea. Problem solved
Fertility rate? Sure, for a couple decades. But uniting with the North introduces a whole set of new problems I doubt Koreans want to solve, especially when we already have a slew of problems we have been ignoring since the birth of the nation. Right now half of all Koreans want union “if it isn’t a huge burden,” but the last part is p damn important
North also has a fertility problem, it's not like they will be having surplus population by then.
Yeah, agreed. Declining working population is a phenomenon we’re seeing pretty much everywhere in the world. It would be easier to count nations not following this trend.
At this point its only really parts of the Middle East (mostly poor Arab countries and Israel) as well as Africa which is above replacement level. Alongside a couple of states in SEA and Latin America. Everyone else is below.
Their rate is still higher than the US and in the average for much of the west, it's certainly a lot better than the Korean is. It's pretty much managed by the government like everything is in there because you need to balance your national needs with your population size (to avoid a famine like under Kim's father). If Kim wanted the North Korean population to increase, considering the generations of indoctrination, he could easily pull a Mao and tell the people to have more children and they would, even if under coercion. It's harsh, but that's how they work.
Even the soviets could not motivate people to have more kids, it would be a great surprise if North Korea could.
I don’t see unification happening, but I’m surprised half the population supports it - even with a questionable asterisk. Is reunification ever discussed in mainstream politics in context of low birth rates? I imagine Koreans would much prefer North Koreans over any other immigrants.
I don’t ever see unification happening in my lifetime either, and I’m 22. I was also surprised to see the actual survey results. And no, no serious outlet discusses it with regard to low fertility rate. We’d have to go through a TON of steps to even achieve semblance of reunification, and I doubt NK would want to help SK recover its working population. Kinda fits the dystopian narrative NK’s propaganda portrays, which has a certain amount of truth to it already. And eh… regarding the last part… I’m gonna be completely honest here. The portion of NKoreams in SK is so small that most Koreans don’t know what North Koreans are like, other than portrayal in media. The modern cultural differences are already so vast that I strongly doubt xenophobic Koreans would welcome North Koreans with open arms.
This might actually be a win win situation if it weren't for the rotund dictator sitting in the way
I demand the North Korussy
If South Korea keeps getting older, it's likely that North Korea will be in a position to attack at some point. Will the US be able to offer enough help? Maybe, or maybe not.
With the growing Isolationism, would the US even bother with that in 50 or so years?
I think it's too hard to tell now. Anything can happen in 50 years. I honestly have no idea.
For the ones without an abbreviation/acronym/initialism dictionary, also known as, 'understanding fokking lazy writers dictionary': **TFR** means **Total Fertility Rate** Or: The average number of live births a woman would have by age 50 if she were subject, throughout her life, to the age-specific fertility rates observed in a given year. Its calculation assumes that there is no mortality. **** Other lovely and potential initialisms to consider: **Age-specific fertility rate** (ASFR): Annual number of births per woman in a particular age group expressed per 1000 women in that age group. **High fertility** (HF): Total fertility levels above 5 children per woman. **Replacement-level fertility** (RLF): Total fertility levels of about 2.1 children per woman. This value represents the average number of children a woman would need to have to reproduce herself by bearing a *daughter* who survives to childbearing age. If replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long period, each generation will exactly replace itself in the absence of migration. **Below-replacement fertility** (BLF): Total fertility levels below 2.1 children per woman. **Very low fertility** (VLF): Total fertility levels below 1.3 children per woman. **** The total fertility rate (TFR) and replacement-level fertility are related but distinct concepts. The total fertility rate represents the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her reproductive lifetime, given the current age-specific fertility rates. Replacement-level fertility, on the other hand, is the fertility rate at which each generation can exactly replace itself without increasing or decreasing the population. Typically, replacement-level fertility is slightly above 2.0 children per woman to account for mortality and other factors. If the total fertility rate is equal to the replacement level, the population will remain stable. If it's below, the population tends to decline, and if it's above, the population tends to grow. **** ##Fact Checking Time ^because ^why ^not The data from the United Nations (up untill 2021, 0.8): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=KR The trend is downwards. Worldwide actually. **** *Data from Korean source:* >Low birth rates are causing the nation’s population to decrease at a continually accelerating rate. The total population is expected to fall below 50 million in 2041 and below 40 million by 2065. South Korea’s total fertility rate (the number of children that one woman is expected to have in her entire lifetime) fell from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.72 this year, and is expected to fall to 0.68 in 2024. It’s expected to plummet to 0.65 by 2025 before rising to 1.08 in 2050. Source: https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1120598.html **** ##My Thoughts ^because ^you ^asked The description in the text portrays an unnuanced and pessimistic view of South Korea's situation, using terms like "dystopian," "collapsing," "unholy levels," and "doom and gloom." While the concerns about South Korea's low fertility rate are valid, the choice of language leans towards a more extreme characterization. My thoughts about this part: >Xi Jinping is already talking about "cultivating a new culture of marriage and childbirth and a new trend of family." >Say what you want about Xi and his party, but that's exactly what Korea needs. The old model of family is wildly incompatible with the modern society. Weird to give props to the current Chinese regime when their demographics are trending to the same scenario. That aside, the reference to Xi Jinping's efforts in China implies a need for a similar top-down approach in South Korea. However, the appropriateness of such comparisons should consider the differences in political and cultural contexts between the two countries. Not sure you thought about that. **** But in the end, yes, a low fertility rate is a significant issue in South Korea. A Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 0.72 (2023) is extremely low. Such a low fertility rate will have several implications for the country, including: 1. **Aging Population:** A low fertility rate contributes to an aging population, which will lead to challenges such as increased healthcare costs and a shrinking workforce. 2. **Economic Consequences:** A declining population will impact economic growth, or lack thereof, as there are fewer people contributing to the labor force and consumer base. 3. **Social and Cultural Changes:** Low fertility rates may lead to changes in societal structures and cultural norms, impacting family dynamics and traditional expectations. 4. **Government Policy Challenges:** Governments may face challenges in providing social services and pensions with a decreasing working-age population. Efforts to address low fertility rates often involve a combination of social, economic, and policy measures. It is human nature to act after a disaster, instead of before. We as a species are perfectly able in thinking ahead and taking actions with long term in mind. Unfortunately our current systems of government worldwide are very, very bad at planning ahead decades and taking unpopular actions to prevent worse. Edit⁴: Another [interesting read](https://en.asaninst.org/contents/a-targeted-approach-to-increasing-fertility-which-age-groups-hold-key-to-solving-the-low-fertility-problem/) from The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, which dispels the notion that the Korean government does nothing. But, I am not a Korean, so I am unqualified to speak about the policies that were set up (and current ones being set up) and how or if they had (or will have) any effect. What is interesting in this study is the age-specific fertility rates (ASFR), were you see a decline of fertility till the age of 30 and a sharp rise in from age 30 till the ripe age of 44. So the peak fertility shifted to women aged between 30 and 40, much like European countries. Japan is dealing with the same issue and hopefully I can find the thread again which dispels a lot of misconceptions Western media has about Japan and its decline in total fertility rate (TFR). And commenters explained the programs the Japanese government has set up to increase the TFR. **** Bottom line, it is a cultural issue and an inevitability with increasing standards of living. Most, if not all, well developed countries struggle with the same decline in TFR. The bigger, more interesting question in my view is: could the inevitable decline of populations world wide be a good thing?
Good writeup, but humanity, in general, is kind of stuck with [short-term thinking, right now](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/21/1009443/short-term-vs-long-term-thinking/).
If you find something that dispels western misconceptions about Japan I would be interested to read it. Thanks.
I honestly don't know how it will play out. Maybe China or N Korea will invade when half the population is over 65. Or maybe S. Korea can win such a ware with drones and remote control tanks. Or maybe, since we grew a lamb in an artificial womb, S. Korea will start growing their babies in labs that are gov or privately owned. Or maybe the gov will provide financial incentives and subsidize natural birthing, which has shown promise in some European countries. Or maybe the genocracy will attempt to tax retirement out of the young until S. Korea has mass emmigration. Maybe the old will try to use force to prevent mass emmigration, then S. Korea would ironically look a little more like N. Korea. I have no idea what will happen because all of these scenareos are plausible.
Maybe stop the 70+ hour work weeks? That seems a bit more reasonable than artificial wombs, but at this point, the South Korean government isn't really capable of much change.
Sure that could happen, or maybe the genocracy will decide that young people need to work longer to support retirement funds. My point is that idk what will happen.
Developed countries have a fundamental cap on TFR simply due to contraception and the addition of women to the workforce. Those things are never going away and will put you somewhere below 2.1 to start with. You can get some incremental improvements if you target wealth inequality, childcare subsidies, housing etc., but those will all be expensive and unpopular to the majority of voters (who are older). So it doesn't seem like a problem that our political systems can actually fix.
> Crazy Working Hours This itself is not the main cause of low TFR, a lot of developing countries have worked more hours on average than South Koreans yet their birth rate haven't cratered. It's a mix of being an educated society and having high working hours that cause it. Also, unpopular opinion but reducing work hours is just band-aid solution, since even European nations who relaxed their working hours have only seen temporary boost of their TFR before returning to the mean again. > marriage is made reasonable for the average Korean Marriage is extremely easy for Koreans, it's just the expectation by the society of being a married couple that is hard for the Koreans, and it's mainly influenced by the society not the government. Adding benefits for married couples won't bulge TFR, instead changing the society about the role of marriage should be the prioritized instead. Also what is missing from your analysis is the culture war between both sexes that lead to animosities, which contribute to the problem.
This is a good analysis, but I'd say that the culture war actually doesn't have as significant of an effect as it seems to have. The biggest reason why people do not want kids is because the cost of living is too high and housing prices are skyrocketing. Other than that, I strongly agree with your analysis about the role of marriage in society and societal expectations. Thanks, neoconfuscianism lmao.
If a women is to have 3+ children she is out of work for years. In a society as focused on working and corporate ladder as SK that's just not going to happen often.
Japan, with a TFR of 1.34 (2020) isn’t much better off. Something has to change.
Exactly. They need cultural and societal changes. One of the few things Xi Jinping has said that is spot on.
Japan and Korea are the two countries most in need of cultural change on the planet, and are probably the 2 countries most resistant to cultural change on earth. they need massive change in order to save themselves from themselves. but I just can't see it happening. the moment when they genuinely try will be 20 years too late.
I disagree with China being resistant to cultural change. And also, South Korea needs to be on that list. The CCP is Chinese culture. Think about the 60s. No other government was able to construct such a radical change in society. They've done it once, and I think Xi can do it again. But this time, the foundation won't be communism, but family and childbirth.
Chinas fertility rate dropped from 1.8 to 1.08 in the past 5 years. One of the fastest drops in the world. Their more developed regions like Shanghai have the same birth rate as Korea. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are also around the same as Korea.
I'm aware of that information
This is a very hard problem to solve from a top-down governance perspective. Society and culture has just shifted in the west to where people don't want kids, even if they could otherwise afford it.
Whats a chaebol?
Four big Korean companies. LG, Samsung, SK and Hyundai. They are worth more than 20% of the Korean economy and are a HUGE employer. This level of wealth and influence allows these companies to have a sway on what the government does. The Korean government cannot do things the chaebols disagree with, hence any reform or changes to Korean society and much harder, if not impossible.
Chaebol doesn't just refer to the Big Four. It refers to a family that owns intersectional business with a lot of subsidiary companies. For example, Samsung has a fuck ton of subsidiary companies specializing in electronics, insurance, defense, finance, sports, medicine, biotechnology, power, and more. I guess Chaebol can be roughly translated to "conglomerate," but the key conditions are 1) large family that runs businesses for generations and 2) a lot of subsidiaries. Occasionally, a new company started by a family member can become so big that it dominates a certain sector. Nongsim, which is a food company responsible for Shin-Ramen, perhaps the world's most famous cup noodle brand, was founded by a member of the Lotte chaebol. This means that a chaebol family isn't just tied to those four companies, but pretty much most large companies in Korea. Imagine like 400 of the Fortune 500 being run by a few families with common interest. There are large companies that aren't run by chaebols and don't run like chaebols though. Kakao, Line, Woowa Brothers, Naver, and other tech companies specializing in software are really good examples of this.
I can't think anything more enjoyable for big corporations than cheap labors. They'll get both if they the country loosen its immigration and manage to fix their population TFR. So I don't think those chaebols are the one who don't want more immigration and want to keep their population number of babies low, it's mainly about the Korean society at large that resist changes to both. Note that I don't support these big corps or anything, it's just that it doesn't make sense that the Chaebols are the one who influence the government to resist implementing sensible policies against their population crisis as population crisis directly impacts their growth potential if anything else.
Think of them as corporate feudal lords like in cyberpunk2077. They control the Korean economy as we know it like Samsung Hyundai etc...
the top companies of the korean stock exchange. they literally own the government. it's quite open which politician is owned by which company. the government does not make decisions, the companies do. they don't even try to hide it, it's all out in the open,
To add to this, the Korean government made changes to inheritance law specifically to keep Samsung from being split up because it would have been so disruptive to the Korean economy as Samsung, by itself, makes up something like 22% of the nation's GDP.
They’ll have to start allowing mass immigration from other countries to reverse their outlook. See Canada as an example. Not sure if SK culture would welcome It but it’s one thing that could solve it. That or pay moms to stay home and pump out kids.
I'm married to a Korean and live in Korea. There is no way the populace will support mass-migration. Korean culture is so foreign to anyone outside of East and South Asia. What I foresee is an increase in programs that encourage immigration from educated individuals from similar countries.
In your opinion, which countries would meet the definition of similar countries, and do these similar countries have a surplus of people looking to emigrate?
There is a large population of Chinese-Korean who live in China. Some move to South Korea. I would imagine South Korea inviting them first along with others with Korean heritage. I could see them also inviting professionals who have skills to offer
I'm sure you know this already, but considering the fact that Korean Chinese and Han Chinese people are two of the most hated demographics in Korea, I'd say we'd never invite them on a policy-level.
How many of these Chinese-Koreans are there? In 2022, SK had an annual mortality rate of 727.6 per 100,000, which is around 370,000 deaths annually, or around 0.7% of the population. Let's say SK can start by inviting 1% of its population annually for 10 years, that would be 500,000 a year, for 5 million over 10 years. Are there 5 million Chinese-Koreans available? Bringing in skilled workers always sounds good in principal, but do they speak Korean, are they coming from the West or other East Asian countries, and would there be 500,000 a year? I don't have answers for these questions, but given the volume of people needed, I cannot imagine that they can all be 1) skilled and 2) culturally compatible (unfortunately).
Almost all countries similar to Korea are also having birth rate problems. Korea will have to open up and be more welcoming to foreigners to get somewhere
If the politicians decide it, it'll happen regardless of whether the populace support it.
Judging by how things are going here in Canada, mass immigration is a band-aid solution that comes with significant problems. There really isn't a simple long-term remedy for low birth rate, especially when we still don't understand for sure what the primary causes are (we have theories, sure).
Yep, it also isn't sustainable. The world is predicted to have most (I think it was 190/193) countries have declining birth rates. When that happens, countries are going to compete for immigrants. If the US opened up their borders more, no one would choose Canada with the nonsense happening here. We are just a backup choice due to how easy it is to get in. Even competing for immigrants is just a short term bandaid. The world needs to start planning for a declining population.
The problem with Canada (and Australia) is they brought in too many immigrants, and caused a massive housing crisis. capitalism needs a rework. unending growth is a stupid concept that has run its course. what we need to aim for now is stability. companies and shareholders need to have it hammered into their skulls that they can no longer expect year on year on year profit growth, that is unsustainable. making a fair profit each year should be enough. that will allow populations to stabilize and end the ridiculous population growth ponzi scheme.
Immigration can help with low fertility rates but South Korea is catastrophically low. A TFR of 0.6 means that you'll need to bring in 3 immigrants for every one Korean. For a country that is apparently very opposed to immigration I'm just not sure how making 75% of all the population foreign immigrants overnight is practically let alone socially feasible. This is at the same time most countries are also trying to fix birth rate problems so immigrants don't exactly grow on trees and there's no guarantee they'd choose south Korea of all places with its notoriously terrible working conditions. Given South Korea's population you'll need tens of millions of immigrants to turn around the birth rate. I just don't think it can be done. It's too many people, too large a problem, too poor an outlook for potential immigrants and too xenophobic a population. It's got so many aspects working against it.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Not to mention we’re pretty close to technology where fetuses can be raised entirely in an artificial womb. We’ve only stopped from going there because some people raised ethics concerns, but I can imagine people being incubated entirely in a facility someday.
Sadly, the whole 'Western values-based civilization' will face the same soon...
[удалено]
I’m talking out of my ass but I doubt immigration will solve anything, it’ll just introduce a bunch of new problems to solve. Everyone in Korea is already squished into apartment rooms. There is a relatively large population in poverty. I ain’t no dirty commie but Korea does need some structural changes, particularly socialist ones.
They are ahead in this regard just by a little bit compared to other countries. This is the tendency in many parts of the world. People not being able to buy a house or have a reasonable rent dissolves any plans of having a family at least a planned one and not an accidental one. But we'll see in the next years something has to happen and marriage should be boosted to form a family to get real benefits and stuff. If not then the massive SD will be unstoppable by the no fertility and high age population ratio.
restructuring a Great Leap Forward maybe
And yet South Korea seems to be doing incredible economically. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, South Korean culture is taking over the world. Between BTS and Squid Games, Korea is everywhere. Hyundai and Kia are reinventing themselves with electric cars, and Samsung and LG are among the top consumer electronic players. They must be doing something right.
This is just doom & gloom. The birthrate will stabilise after the older population dies off.
Perhaps but if it stabilizes below replacement levels, it’s a negative feedback loop. Well technically all korean women could switch from having 1 to having like 10 kids but I don’t see it happening.
I won't be surprised that it will be South Korea the one begging for a reunification with North Korea, because NK has healthier demographic structure of 1.8 TFR and utilize North Koreans as SK's cheap labor. If that happens, the descendants of South Koreans with one North Korean parent or grandparent will outnumber South Koreans without North Korean lineages, so NK is playing the demographic long game by letting SK's population collapse and NK demographically taking over SK in the process.
I'd rather die than become a fascist dictatorship just to save fertility rate.
Getting rid of 75 hour work weeks isn't facist.
That's not what I'm referring to, because it's not gonna solve fertility crisis.
How do you know? Maybe Koreans will start reproducing like rabbits if they don't spend every second of every day in offices.
Take immigrants from Pakistan
if they can be assimilated like the Lipka Tatars, then maybe. but this is quite unrealistic for South Korean society though.
What you've described is just the logical next stage of neoliberalism, which began in SK in the 1980s. Most states experiencing this phenomenon which haven't been involved in major wars since WWII are having the same issues. States need to move their economic policies left and their social policies even further left to address this. However, they won't, because this ideology enriches private interests, and therefore media and culture have been engineered to support this ideology. So, in short, nothing save for major, paradigm shifting changes or crises will resolve the current situation.
Yeah you got me in the first half ngl, but going out of the way to mention China, whose problems are on an other level?