Also in several counties and cities, and some parts of Busan and Seoul the fertility rates have reached 0.30 children per woman (And still falling quickly nationwide). How bad and severe this is for SK?
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Dropping fertility rates is REALLY REALLY bad. I use the words really in big letters and a lot to express how bad it is. It’s gets catastrophic really quickly, but only once you cross a threshold.
There’s a few phases to it.
Phase 1: Normal fertility rates – nothing to be concerned about. 2.1 children per couple will keep us exactly where we are. No growth isn’t optimal, but it’s viable. Our economic systems our ponzi schemes, so we require continued growth. This is an accepted fact. If you’ve got a better system, we’re all ears, but this is what we have to work with for now.
Phase 2: fertility rates below 2.1 but above 1.9. There’s some variance here. 2 children per couple keeps us normal, in your brain, but we have to remember some children don’t make it, people die, things happen. It goes the other way too. Sometimes less people die than we expect. Technology advances, we do better. 1.9 isn’t a problem but we should look closely.
Phase 3: When we get below 1.9 this is concerning. At this point, we are below replacement rate. The next generation will have a peak population 5% lower than the current. So we go from 100 people in the generation to 95 (using easy numbers). The next generation goes from 95 to 88. The next generation is 79 people.
In the span of 3 generations, our population is down 21%. So what’s the big deal?
In a normal species, this isn’t a problem. If a generation is a little smaller because of maybe a food shortage, if there’s a food surplus in the next generation (which we see in nature all the time, one population of prey growing as a generation of predators wasn’t able to gather enough to survive due to the lack of prey) it rebounds.
We’re not a normal species. Humans are a species that has grown dependent on technology, specifically, infrastructure. Roads, electricity, buildings. All the things we really kind of take for granted in a developed country. Well, the problem with depopulation is that this infrastructure has a minimum population required to maintain it. I’ll throw some numbers out for an example.
For a population of 100 people, we need 5 people to work in the power plant, 5 to work the farms, 5 to maintain the roads, 10 to work the essential stores, 5 to drive trucks and so on. You get the point. Let’s say that magic number is that 70 of the jobs are really mission critical to daily human life. If the job isn’t done for the day it might not be a problem (people get to call in sick) but a week or a month is a problem. Like, food shortages, blackouts and other major issues. The other 30 jobs done by the generation are mostly luxury jobs. Concert security guard, nail technician, Hermes employees. It’s inconvenient to us first-worlders to not have these, but it’s not really a problem. We’ll live just fine. But without power, for example, farming becomes a problem. We can’t keep the food cold in the store or the truck. Now we can’t rely on getting essential food and we need to grow our own very locally. This gets out of hand very, very quickly.
Back to the numbers. I don’t know the magic number that is the essential threshold. COVID tested it for sure and it was a problem but we made it through because we could reopen jobs that it turned out we REALLY needed quickly. When it comes to depopulation, it takes 15-30 years to grow a useful human (fun fact, a lot of humans are totally fucking useless, anyway.) And some of those essential jobs are really specialized. We don’t need to have just 70 people. We need 70 people with the required sets of skills. The fact of the matter is, it’s easier to just have 200 people total, or 300, or 400 and get those 70 filled because we’re more likely to fill all the roles correctly. Here’s the thing with infrastructure too, it scales. The amount of super critical jobs for 100 people might be 70, but for 200 it’s maybe only 110. This is good infrastructure. This is why we don’t know where the exact threshold is.
The big problem is that whole 30 years to grow a human issue. Once we cross that threshold? GG. There’s no going back. We’re going to need to respond critically right then and there, full on totalitarianism to fill some of these critical roles IF we even have the total population to pull it off. We may not. It may be too late overall.
Back to the original question. Remember how I gave you those ranges of 1.9 and 2.1. Korea is at 0.6 children per couple. They are 1/3 of replacement rate. That means the next generation will only be 120 people. The following generation will be 72 people IF that rate holds. They are trending downwards, meaning that the current generation will likely only have 24 grand children per 100 people. I think SKs real projections are even WORSE than that. If the critical number of jobs was even say 60 per 100, SK is BLOWING By that in one generation. Once you cross that threshold, life gets A LOT harder, not easier. So that downward trending fertility rate isn’t going to continue down steadily, it’s going to fall off a cliff even harder. Which makes life harder. Which makes fertility rate drop further. Which makes life harder. Which makes fertility rate drop further.
And this is the culmination of the problem. We enter a death spiral we have absolutely 0 hope of pulling out of, in one generation and we don’t know where they tipping point is.
So, /u/ghostoutlaw, why aren’t the alarm bells going off yet?
Great question, this is a global problem. Locally though, we typically put our heads in the sand and/or can’t open our eyes wide enough to see the problem. Globally, fertility rates are still higher but concerning. SK is very, very low. They can stave off the collapse by importing people, automation and some other tactics. But those are limited options. USA has been at 1.6 for something like 50+ years now. The only reason we don’t notice it is because of the insane amounts of immigration we allow for. It completely offsets this. But that’s not a solution for when the globe crosses the treshold.
Don’t believe me about the infrastructure spiral? Take Detroit. Price of electricity in Detroit is over 20c/kwh. That’s REALLY high. It costs the same amount of money to maintain that power plant but it’s now spread out over less people. For reference, I think my last electric bill I was around 12 or 13c/kwh. But the logic mentioned holds, essentially, cost to maintain services remains the same but is now divided amongst less people, meaning per person cost goes up.
Food shortages, poverty, crime, power shortages, infrastructure failure. These all come with population decline and collapse and gets worse as it gets worse. It’s a plane in a tailspin with no hope of pulling out and no ejection seat.
The solution is simple and pleasurable: start fucking. It’s really that easy.
But what is so scary is that we don’t know we crossed the threshold until it’s too late and how quickly the collapse happens.
Population collapse is the biggest threat to humanity within the next 50 years. We’re well past the danger zone, globally, and we don’t have any indication of this trend reversing anytime soon.
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