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How to fix Korea's birthrate? Put girls in school earlier, controversial report argues
(koreajoongangdaily.joins.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Capitalism? How about people just might not want kids enough for birthrate to be higher than 2?
Even North European countries with all their social programs and safety nets are way under 2.
It's almost like once you've stopped exerting religious and social pressure for every woman to have five kids and given access to birth control... The birth rate is going to drop.
And you know, that's not a bad thing. Especially when the global birthrate is still higher than replacement, and the planet is finite.
Short term, East Asia should be less racist and take a few immigrants. Long term, we will need to figure out another way to keep the species going within the next few centuries.
Or simply accept that population will go down
Population shrinking is probably a good thing, but population shrinking too quickly might be all sorts of bad.
It’s hard to see where we really are with so many variables, so many future decisions, but I believe we’ve passed the point of “good shrinking” and are well into “all sorts of instability and disruption”. If replacement rate is 2.1 kids/woman, and South Korea is already like 1.1, that’s a huge difference. As current generations pass, each succeeding one will be half its size. That’s a problem.
That can be solved by welcoming immigrants because it won't be solved by trying to force people to have kids. When social programs are introduced to help people raise a family you see a little bump in the numbers and then it goes back down again. It's as if people realize that having a family isn't just a financial decision, crazy right?
Medium term, yeah. After a few centuries you're reaching dangerously small levels, though, assuming normal mortality. Maybe you're onboard with extinction, but for a couple reasons I'm not, even as shit as we are.
Ok, so the only way to reverse it is to reduce access to birth control and go back on women rights.
There's a whole lot of stuff that people in this discussion are blaming for birthrate going down but if you look at historical data it was going down even before these things were issues, just because people are more educated, have access to birth control and women have rights over their body. You're not moving back above 2.1 without getting rid of these things.
Have you ever read A Brave New World? If we can get artificial wombs going - in a few centuries, which is a reasonable timeframe, I think - we could do it that way.
Yes, I know, it wasn't supposed to be a society to emulate, but that part at least seems fine to me. Getting rid of birth control would be dumb, absolutely agreed.
One is science fiction, the other is the reality we live in.
Which thing is the reality we live in?
The trajectory of the human population is intrinsically a far-future question, of course I'm bringing science fiction into it.
Artificial wombs are science fiction, the reality we live in is that babies need a mother and women don't want enough kids to renew our population when they're actually given the choice.
It's nice to dream, but let's face the fact that we're probably heading in a direction where human population will eventually be going down and is predicted to peak at this end of this century.
Like I said, in the medium term, sure. We'll still have billions for many decades after that, and then we have to start thinking about a solution.
Bingo and people here can't wrap their head around that
Yeah but what about eco-anxiety which is another big reason to not wanting a child, and which is another effect of capitalism
Eco anxiety wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s, birthrate in rich nations was still under 2 for locals.
During the time period when the highest tax brackets fell from 70% to 50%... Down to now 37%.
Surely the people holding the most money paying near half the taxes they used to didn't cause them to hold onto that money and drive more and more money up into their hands.
But I have it invested! So you can't tax it yet, but I rolled it into a company so you can't tax it or if you can you can't tax me the same way!
For capitalism to work there has to be strong legal bindings to taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor to make sure they don't get steamrolled by the system.
We having been pumping the breaks for years on those responsibilities, and more and more people in turn will get steamrolled and forced into starvation, homelessness. The mental health rates being low are directly tied to money in the middle and lower classes.
If we made a rule that for every 10 people who committed suicide do to scarcity that the richest person would be killed as well, we would run out of rich people not trying to promote subsidizing the poor pretty quick and trying to get the happiness of the people up instead of only worrying about profits.
That's crazy obviously... But we need healthier motivation to make the world a better place. That isn't a healthy one.
Look at historical data, birthrate just goes down as nations develop, it's true everywhere no matter how taxed the rich are or how much fertility programs exist. The whole world isn't the USA.
This simply doesn't matter. It's a purely economic issue that can be solved other ways besides the birth rate.
How come the stats are the same everywhere and numbers have been going down since way before the economy became an issue? Was the economy an issue in the 60s? Because people keep saying "back then you could raise a family on a single income!" but the birthrate was still going down!
It's funny how education, women rights and access to birth control are a much better indication of fertility levels than the economy, it's as if the economy doesn't have as much of a role in it and people are blaming it because that's the issue they're facing at the moment while ignoring that poor people have more kids than rich people.
Korea has that issue but the issue is the same everywhere and global population is predicted to start dropping by the end of the century, it won't just be an economic issue at this point.