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?
In: Other
Treat females like shit, and what do they expect? Lots of Korean children were adopted out of country because unless they were listed in the child’s father’s book of last names, these kids born to single mothers were without status as far as schools, jobs, etc., so they did not have the opportunity to be successful.
Didn’t hurt the fathers so much, but the mothers suffered. The country is misogynistic. Live in a place where you are not treated as an equal? Fuck- why should they reproduce?
And, yes, it is going to happen all over. It will be terrible for a generation or two or three, but the world’s population needs to decrease. Oh no! Cry some: technology can manage to feed even more people than we already have. Well, folks, it ain’t just about feeding miserable people. It’s about life on planet earth as a whole. Yes, even the insects! How many people can you stuff into a car? Why would you want to?
South Korea is only the beginning. Gee, it will be a different world with women having equal control, won’t it?
People age.
Old people retire, no longer pay as much tax and require more healthcare.
Young people need to be around to support the aging population.
With a declining birth-rate and low net migration the government ends up spending a larger proportion of a smaller tax income on care for the elderly.
One major democratic problem with an aging population is that the aging population tends to vote for policies that benefit them.
Why should they vote for reduced childcare costs, better maternity leave, etc., when their pensions and benefits are shrinking?
Fertility crises’ have happened before, for example, in the Late Roman Empire there was a fertility crises amongst Romans. The normal consequence is you’re conquered by people who aren’t having a fertility crisis, however we’re in luck as everyone is having a fertility crises!
The reality is the crises will never be resolved because we’re dealing an interplay of culture and incentives. In effect, culture seems to be the most cost efficient way to keep fertility high and culture slowly evolves in response to incentives. Hence, we’re stuck using a slow tool (incentives) to react to a rapid problem (population collapse). Moreover, if Rome is an example to go by, statemon will opt for vwry minor incentives for having children that won’t actually offset the financial and opportunity costs of having children.
The scary thing is we’re actually way more productive than we have been throughout history so the working age population is going to be able to support the aging population way longer than we all expect, then it’ll just buckle and it’ll be brutal.
Once the brutally passes things will be fairly bright though:
– We won’t have to worry about climate change ad renewables will be able to sustain our reduced population.
– They’ll be less competition for labour so they’ll be less wealth inequality (depending on automation).
-Land and homes will be cheap.
And here is the white pill. If you can have children and you can convince at least one of the children to give you at least one grandkid you’re grandchild will probably get to live a better life than the boomers. They’ll likely be on the other side of the bust and they’ll live through the next boom.
there are like six, seven, maybe eight reasons? One of the problematic things that the rest of the world sees, is that it’s really expensive to live, and raising children more so, as you need a home for them, a proper home, and not a small apartment with the bare minimum. the second reason is time-management, both for work and for school, long working hours means parents are home late, which means kids has to be not home longer, so they study longer, and since they study longer people can work longer, there is also having to choose between having a career and having a family, which is more a quote onquote girl problem, as they would call it, basically there are few policies that support working moms, and they don’t help enough, which brings us onto a related topic, gender roles, women are expected to manage household and childcare responsibilities, but with 80 hour work weeks, there just aint time there is also the growth of voulentary celibate, can’t have kids if ya don’t have sex.. ok, so maybe it’s just two reasons, one socio-economic, and one cultural.
And at the current rate, it will hit 0 in 20 years.
To fix this, they need to allow people the possibility to raise children, they do so by building fucktons of apartments build for 2 adults and 3 children, give a preference and lower price to new parents, and having 3 children decreased the payment by 20% per child or something.
Work should be 8 hours, with two 15 minutes breaks and a one hour lunch, with a pay to support a family of 5 as well at least 40 days of total vacation days, this includes national days and whatnot where nobody works.
School life must also be changed to be 8 hours, so that you give kids time to hang out, fuck, and create tons of young mothers and fathers, forcing people into work that requires no special education, but also pays enough to feed, clothe, and home a family of 5.
Lastly, is not treating women like shit, give up to a year off for babies, that can be split between the mother or father of the child.
Some companies are paying people to have children, and more of that will also help alot.
In no way is South Korea the only place where this is becoming an issue. The population growth rate has been declining world wide since the 1960s, back then the growth rate was +2.2% and now it’s down to +0.88%. This is including the aging population, where the median age has gone from 20-22 in the 1960s to now being 30+.
According to this website [https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-projections/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-projections/) projections show that we will reach a global population limit around 2086 with around 10.43 billion, before a slow and steady population decline. In fact, Europe is already in a declining population (a net change of -1,283,113) and that’s after taking in almost 800,000 migrants. South Korea is also on a decline, with a net population of -0.08% in 2024 currently.
Things won’t change until women aren’t punished for having kids. I love my son but the economic damage his existence caused has been catastrophic to my career and long term future. This doesn’t even take into account the severe drop in quality of life for new parents. Of course women see this and are saying “no thanks”.
I asked my casual girlfriend (Korean, in her 40s, no children) if she will move back to Korea someday. She very matter-of-factly answered, “Oh, no. They hate women there.” As if it were a stupid question. Her home is Flushing, NY and it always will be.
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.
Let’s say if you have 500 men and women, who are all 30 years old. And let’s ignore things like infertility, premature deaths, and assume everybody lives till 60 and then dies.
With a fertility rate of 2.0, each woman gives birth to 2 babies. Again, let’s assume it’s perfectly 50% sex ratio. So this group of 1000 will have produced 1000 babies, 500 girls and 500 boys. Now you have a population of 2000.
Thirty years later, your first generation dies off. And the 1000 babies have grown into adults, who then produce another 1000 babies. So, with a fertility rate of 2.0, your population stays constant at 2000.
But what about 0.68?
It means your first generation 1000 people produced only 500×0.68 = 340 babies, with 170 boys and 170 girls. You have a population of 1340.
Thirty years later, your first generation of 1000 people dies. The second generation of 340 produces 170×0.68=116 babies, with 58 girls. Your population just dropped from 1340 to 456. That’s a 66% decline in one generation.
Another 30 years passes, the 3rd gen of 58 women produces 58×0.68=40 babies. Second gen of 340 dies off, so you’re left with a population of 156. Similarly, one generation later, with only 20×0.68=14 new babies, your population is now only 54. After another 30 years, you’re at 19.
So a 66% drop in one generation, 88% drop in two, 96% drop in three, and 99% drop in four. Your population practically goes extinct within 3 to 4 generations.
It’s actually worse than this, cuz not all babies make it to adulthood. So the actual replacement rate (fertility rate needed to maintain population) is going to be higher than 2.0.
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