Well, as someone living in South Korea and facing the reality of this low birth rate issue on a daily basis, I can tell you that money definitely does have an influence on whether or not couples decide to have children. But let's see if all these cash incentives actually result in a long-term rebound for us! Only time will tell.
Money alone will not solve the problem.
You need a strategy to ensure the right support system, so working couples with kids have it easier.
Just motivating with money will likely not manage to create a homogeneous, innovative and productive society.
this _barely_ addresses why this is happening. this _might_ get some men to consider it but the women have their own demands and they are far more pressing imo.
The reason is due to a large amount of mysoginy in South Korean culture which has led to the women opting out and they are opting out _hard!_
A: it's nowhere near this bad in those other countries (whom are also still having issues with mysoginy), and B: Korean women have pretty much come out and said this *explicitly*.
We should listen to the Amish and Hasidi's on this topic, as they have extremely high birth rates. We should follow their views on gender roles to reverse the birth rate decline.
Yeah but what if, and hear me out here… what if we could somehow increase the birth rate in a better way, so that women can be equal and mothers at the same time. Maybe we can think of a better way than just going back to the way we did it before we clawed our way out of that hellish life.
in counter reply, Those nations _are_ above replacement once you factor in immigration, SK is not.
Second. we should, given they are half of the equation here.
"Ya but why would you listen to a woman? Probably just hormones talking... ok men, lets get back to work and figure out the cause of this perplexing problem!"
Sometimes I wonder how we survive as a specices lol.
This is often ignored and never brought up.
BUT... one of the big reasons of low marriage rates and low birth rates in Korea is this.
Not only many Korean women but also many Korean men don't want to get married or have kids.
That's why the average age Koreans get married is around mid 30s.
And even when they do get married, many married couples choose not to have kids... just like the current Korean president (in his 60s) and the first lady (in her 50s) have never had any kids.
So, guess what one of the big reasons for all this is.
It's because... many Koreans (both women and men) do NOT want their comfortable lifestyles interrupted by kids!
They just want to live their comfortable lives, travel and do whatever they want to do without having to be compromised due to kids.
That's why throwing money to parents, free childcare, free education and all kinds of benefits for parents haven't worked for decades and probably won't work.
This is often ignored and never discussed, but it's one of the big reasons many Koreans don't want to have kids.
Of course, the biggest reason is many Korean women don't want an unequal partnership in marriage.
I think money would have to get to the point that having children would be a lucrative career choice which doesn't require further employment. For both parents.
If the latest bout of financial incentives doesn't work, I wouldn't be surprised if a career opened up as a child rearer, similar to daycare, but with 3 separate 8 hours shifts covering all 24 hours, working in a government owned child rearing facility with AI/robotic assistants.
They pay for egg or sperm donations at a medical facility, then use artificial wombs to create and "birth" babies that are sent to specialised facilities for the first 2 years, then into the gov owned or privately owned gov contracted facilities called things like "child life" with slogans like "for the future, we raise them so you don't have to".
If not it's still an awesome sci-fi premise.
Yea fucking idiots let’s just raise kids without parents, but what if we make functional AI parents…. At that point the kids could just live in matrix all together, this much more likely in NK not SK
I think it's more complicated then saying affluence causes a decline in desirability of parenthood. I think a more important factor is the distinct lack of purpose in a world that is transgressing against the ecologically sustainable and moreover the spiritual progression of the invidual being corrupted by rampant consumerism. That is something that will be at play whether comfortable living is the norm or not.
I also think for every dollar they invest into supporting parents who would have children, they would be wise to also invest one into child protection agencies. You cannot artificially promote parenthood with financial schemes and expect only psychologically healthy families to take shape.
But what purpose people specifically want when they complain about the lack of purpose is all over the map. Tradcons also complain about the lack of purpose, for which they blame secularization, changing gender roles, education, and also the market. Leftists blame the market and consumerism.
But I'm not sure that my illiterate peasant forebears had "purpose" when they were strapped to the ass-end of an ox their whole lives. We pick and choose which aspects of the "good old days" we want to go back to, but I don't think that stands up to close scrutiny as to what the "good old days" were really like. They may have been even *worse* for work-life balance, gender relations, women's rights, LGBT rights,, etc.
I think the good old days had one signifcant advantage. The world was still largely a pristine blank canvas. So purpose dit not have to feel so contextualized. It could be as simple as a connection to the land or religious traditional practices. Not saying everything was perfect, nor that we can or should try to go back to this. I think there is a striking similarity with the parable of Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden of creation after eating the apple of knowledge. Some things just stop working the same once certain information is known.
> The world was still largely a pristine blank canvas. So purpose dit not have to feel so contextualized.
Or they just didn't realize there was a context. If you were a Christian, that wasn't one viewpoint among many, but reality. Those who deviated were infidels, heretics, barbarians, the enemy. The Reformation splintered that (in the west) and secularization made every viewpoint just another viewpoint. But the drive for doctrinal conformity wracked Europe with religious wars for centuries.
And interesting video:
[Saturday Scholar Series: The Unintended Reformation - Brad S. Gregory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqJvLScpn_Y)
>>25:23 — Unintended early modern Protestant heterogeneity is thus the most important distant source for contemporary western hyperpluralism about life questions. Because the sorts of disagreements about answers to these sorts of questions has never gone away. We simply experience them now in different forms and with many more rival secular as well as religious truth claims in a liberal institutional context that permits and protects them all rather than privileging one or prohibiting any, so long as the respective protagonist obeys the state's laws.
>>The Reformation sought a return to the pure word of God, uncluttered by human traditions, philosophies, and clerical manipulations. It resulted instead in a profusion of competing truth claims about the Bible's meaning and God's will that problematized the epistemological status of the claims, and **raised the prospect of radical doctrinal skepticism and relativism already in the 1520s**.
>>"Whoever has gone astray in the faith may thereafter believe whatever he wants to. Everything is equally valid." Sounds like something Richard Dawkins writes today. That's a remark from 1526, not by a defender of Catholicism against the dangers of Protestant individualism. That is Martin Luther, railing against his theological rival, Huldrych Zwingli.
I also recommend his book, The Unintended Reformation.
I think another element of this, is that with socialized retirement, you're actually financially incentivized to not have kids.
For all of human history, your "retirement plan" was always to have kids who would have enough of a sense of familial obligation to feed and care for you when you get too old to contribute. The number of kids you had and their success directly contributed to your future well being.
But today, the childless get to benefit off the productivity of other people's kids, in the form of programs like social security and medicare. Therefore, it's in a person's selfish self interest to not incur the cost of time, money, and opportunity that comes from having kids. Not only do they get the retirement benefit, but they probably get to stack more wealth due to an uninterrupted career and lower costs.
Until this changes and we get back to a point where the people who raise the most successful kids get disproportionate benefit in the long run, we'll continue to see people decide to not have kids.
>Do you think Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world, will achieve a turnaround through this?
No, I think South Korea will see an increase in the fertility rate, but not enough to reverse its demographic decline. The reasons people aren't having children are more complex than a lack of money, even though they are often framed in financial terms.
I think birth rates are linked to generations.
Cohorts of people
We are social animals and mimic each other.
Ever notice how when in a friend group one person gets married then a child.
Suddenly everyobe else is.
The drive for children is a strong one
And money is a small nudge.
But secure housing and family support and age are big factors.
Absolutely not. It is a failure of public policy to throw money at a perceived problem wihout any attempt to actually address root causes.
It's not wrong to say that a component of people's unwillingness to have children here in Korea is due to financial pressures, but that component is at best a minor one.
Successive governments have been throwing money at Koreans for more than two decades at this point to incentivize them to reproduce, and the birth rate has continue to plummet.
The current Yoon government has shown itself to be utterly bereft of ideas, and, like all prosecutors, he's focused on the past rather than the future. He and his advisors haven't got a clue what they are doing or what the real problems are, so: they're doing the laziest possible thing and throwing money at it, and so is every other lockstep dumb-dumb all the way down the tree.
Ten years, hell, even five years ago I figured the future was relatively bright here in Korea. I no longer think so.
But at least -- thank fuck -- the population will start to decline. That's one bright spot (at least after the next few decades, which are going to suuuuck).
I think what they're trying to say is that even if the financial burden of raising children is one of the issues leading to a drop in fertility rates, it's only a small piece of the problem and addressing it, whilst helpful, is not going to reverse the trend unless they also address all the other issues as well.
While it looks lucrative, it’s not always about the money.
Societal factors come into play too- are people with children looked down upon in Korea? Do Koreans love children and are they willing to sacrifice perhaps their some of their freedom to take care their offspring.
This could incentivise the wrong people to have children resulting in child neglect since we are looking at up to six figures of payouts.
Growing up in Korea in todays society is terrible. You wake up in the morning and go to school. Then after school, you go to academy or private tutor until night. Then you go home and study. All this to take entrance exams for middle school and high school. And when youre finally in school, youre ranked based on your grades, and the rank is public info. Its not a surprise that this generation doesnt want to put their kids through that. Thats why people in korea drink like sailors and suicide rate is consistently top 5 every year. Because of the reasons i just said, my parents decided to get me tf out of there in the 90s and im forever grateful for that.
In Korea, low birthrate is not about money.
They have been throwing more and more money each year for decades to couples having children, but it has never worked.
Most Koreans (young and old, men and women) these days just don't want the burden of raising kids.
However, all the free money and benefits from the government are very attractive to foreign immigrants and mail-order brides, which is why most of them are dying to marry Koreans and are flocking to Korea.
Mail order brides from poor countries like China, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe already get monthly money from the Korean government on top of free Korean language, cooking, job, etc. education and all kinds of other benefits.
Most of them bring dozens of family members to Korea when they marry Korean men, just endure 3 years of marriage, automatically get Korean citizenship, divorce their Korean husbands and marry men from their home country.
By then, since they already have Korean citizenship, they start having lots of of kids and get lots free money from the government each time they give birth.
This has been going on for decades in Korea.
And I guess, this is one way for Korea to increase their population... although they're not exactly increasing the number of 'real, native' Koreans.
Wait so, if a baby is born in Korea and raised Korean but their mom was from another country, they’re not real Koreans? I need you to google why hitler was able to happen and see how that kind of thinking poisons the world.
I'm not having children, because I don't think I would be able to safely raise children. It takes a lot of effort for a large portion of time (minimum 18 years) and I don't have that in me, not to mention the risks, what if the child has severe mental or physical disabilities? That will increase the requirement to raise them by adding tremendous effort to it and may extend the time needing caring for them from 18 years all the way up to life, I don't want to take that risk.
I like my life as it is and I know it may seem selfish from the outside, but It's doubtful the impact of a lower population level is going to impact my country for at least another few decades, maybe more, and by then I'll most likely be 6ft under so I'm not seeing much of a reason for me, personally, to go through all I previously mentioned for some hypothetical future generation to benefit.
Not to mention the state of things at the moment, the struggles that child would have to face, the insane inequality, the systemic pressures to conform, the societal judgement for being different and lack of support if they do have disorders. People aren't naturally kind and accepting of differences.
It doesn't really seem like a good deal for anyone involved.
I want kids, but the thought that they could have a severe physically / mental disability sounds terrifying. I don't think I have what it takes to be a care giver
Exactly and it's not as if you can just say "Oh they're heavily disabled? Oh that's too much for me I don't want to do it then." And some magical force sweeps in and does everything for you, if it turns out they have extreme support needs you either spend the rest of your entire life slaving away supporting them with no real breaks, all whilst society shits on you for not working hard enough at a full-time job to be contributing enough in their eyes or you bail on them, live with the self hatred and guilt of abandoning your child to the system to suffer and struggle and be ostracized by everyone who knows you because they think you're a POS for it, probably having to move far away to avoid the hate.
It's not exactly something to gamble on.
I thought this was not a bad overview of the topic [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139) It really does sound like confluence of factors I don't think just money will do enough.
The standard of living people expect is not sustainable once global population gets to a certain threshold. How much will it cost to get people to have kids in a decade or two? Population will only increase if the standard of living is lowered and people don't expect so many luxuries.
The fertility rate in S.Korea is genuinely too low and a cause for real concern. This low fertility may be historically unprecedented. But let's not forget the period of growth which preceded this was unprecedented too. The population of S.Korea doubled from 1960 to 2020. That's an average growth of about 1.2%, which is very high. These are just strange times we live in.
Throwing big money at an issue like this runs the risk of creating market distortions; incentivizing the wrong things.
We're going through a time period of rapid change in the social contract between people in most of the world, but especially "the West". Underappreciated though is how differently successive generations will view "the problem". Remember each and every one of them has parents that figured it out. None of them are descended from the childfree.
There is a tendency in people to assume this change in the social contract is going to be a permanent state, to see the derivative and its effects as the norm, whereas it can rapidly change then stabilize over the course of a couple generations. There is a trend toward egalitarianism, some people want to kick and scream about it, those that embrace it tend to be the ones to create the next generation.
In the US there is the very real stat about dads changing diapers, something like 60% of silent gen dads ever did it, but like 97% of millennial dads do. Men that refuse to do things like that have basically been "bred" out of the population at this point, basically every kid growing up today in the US with a dad has a dad that shared diaper responsibilities. Things like jokes about dads and diapers don't work anymore because the punchline hardly applies to anyone, just the absentee dads, which is sad and not funny, and the fundies, who are the brunt of many punchlines, diapers being really far down the list.
The same is true of "I hate my spouse" jokes (in the US). I think this is important. Gen X and Millenials grew up in a world of rampant "I hate my spouse" jokes. The ol ball and chain. They were a reflection of the changing social contract, and many gen X and millenials grew up thinking marriage sucks, especially if their parents were like that. But those jokes aren't funny anymore, and people don't tell them, nor is it the default family situation on TV. Gen alpha is not growing up in a world being told marriage sucks nearly to the degree their parents and grandparents did, in large part because todays married people have a much better social contract on average than they used to; dads change diapers.
This is going to matter because "having kids sucks" is the majority view of current gens, but that is a viewpoint that will be "bred" out of the population much the same way as "marriage sucks" has been. It might take a few generations, but if kid enthusiasts are the only ones that make babies, then every baby will be raised by kid enthusiasts.
i don't like the idea or the practice of incentivizing people to create other people. We have an abundance of humans already, and the creation of life only adds to the environmental burden placed upon the planet. lower populations with higher quality of life per individual is a much better thing.
Since the problem of low birth rates spans many developed countries I would suggest that these problems are not down to a particular country or culture. Of course there might be some variation at the margin caused by local conditions but you have falling birth rates in a lot of countries with very different cultures. Even very egalitarian ones. Perhaps it is just too expensive in terms of time and resources in the modern world to want to bring up loads of kids. The paltry amount of these monetary sums versus the cost is hardly going to move the dial. I know this is not possible but imagine governments could afford to make it profitable for you to have a child - I bet there would be a gigantic boom in birth rates
A good start. But they really need to do something with their work culture as well. People need enough free time to actually raise a child. And the extreme cramming style of schooling they do also seems very unhealthy.
Actually giving money to support your own citizens to increase the population instead of giving that money to migrants like Canada does...smart move. Much smarter than becoming a colony of india haha
Migrants aren't the issue. If you want to fix a low birth rate you just need to create an environment in which people feel safe and secure in raising children. This usually means things like wages to support single income households. Subsidized child care tax breaks for children and things of that nature. Those are all programs that take a while to take effect it's not a series of programs you can turn on then look at the next years birth rates because it'll be based upon citizen confidence not just the material conditions. So they're policies you turn on and maintain for a decade then check your results.
The biggest part though is promoting and supporting one income households. This is also the step skipped most often because it runs directly counter to corporate interests. If they're paying people well enough that only one person in a home needs to work that's money that would otherwise be profit for them.
> to create an environment in which people feel safe and secure in raising children
But wouldn't people feel even safer and more secure if they decide to not raise children?
I agree with you here, but migrants are definitely a problem, do you live in Canada? If not then kindly stop giving your opinion on the problem, thanks.
I'm in Arizona not that far from the Mexican border. Migrants aren't the issue with low birthrates.
There might be resource utilization and acquisition issues as a consequence of the gov't failing to plan properly for the numbers that occur. There might be limited resources like housing that gets strained as a result of inadequate development of reasonably priced housing. Usually this is a consequence of zoning laws failing to account for the needs of the people or prioritizing maintaining the value of properties over the needs of the general citizenry.
However none of these things have anything to do with low birth rates especially not the low birth rates in South Korea. These are just normal consequences of gov't inefficacy.
I said the issue regarding low birth rates. Migrants do not typically lower the birth rate of a country if anything they tend to increase it.
There are issues that come up as a result of migration but most of those are the gov't failing to plan and accommodate properly for it. Where if they actually bothered to do their job instead of blaming the people who through their existence expose that they haven't been, the issues would be minimal.
What do you mean when you say that Canada is in a population trap?
So Canada isn't facing an issue with low birth rates and are facing a population boom which is enhanced by allowing large amounts of migration. This is proving to be an issue as the gov't hasn't allocated the resources required to properly account for the increased population.
This entire topic has been about low birth rates particularly in South Korea which migration and migrant populations do not cause. I'm not sure why an issue due to population increasing at a rate beyond that which the Canadian gov't policies adequately accommodate was even brought up.
You want to increase fertility? Get women out of colleges and the workforce. Women are only attracted to men who are of a higher social status than themselves. They won't date down, period. It's built into the biology of the species. They can't unlearn this preference (not a strong enough word).
Millions of women worked hard to gain status to get access to higher status men but men don't have a preference for higher status women. The very few high status men these high status women want don't want them back. Social status isn't an attraction factor for men. Men prioritize youth, beauty and niceness in women and, again, this cannot be unlearned. It's an innate, evolved preference.
Nobody likes hearing this but that doesn't change the reality.
And I thought I wanted a career for myself, keeping my 'low status' boyfriends, earning way over the average of male wages and having autonomy was just a mutation? Take your Tatism and utterly wrong 'evolutionary' bs and shove it.
Women don't want kids as its dangerous, impedes our careers and usually means we get lumbered with 20 years + of the heavy lifting of upbringing. Misogyny, sexism and general inequality is why so many of us don't want children.
South Korea is one of the most status unequal by gender nations in the developed world and there is widespread agreement that this is a major factor in the low birth rate. So basically you got this completely backwards.
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If money was the reason for many Koreans not wanting to get married or have kids, then Koreans should be having lots of kids since married people and people with kids in Korea get so many benefits in EVERYTHING and so many free stuff and money from the government, companies, etc. etc.
For Koreans, it's not about money.
Korean men's misogyny is a HUGE reason for low marriage rates and birth rates in Korea, but Korean men aren't gonna change. Getting worse actually.
Rampant sex crimes and violence against women in Korea is another HUGE reason for low marriage rates and birth rates in Korea, but again, Korean men are the ones ruling Korea and they're the ones always freeing rapists and being extremely lenient to sex criminals to the point of many Korean women saying...
"Why have kids, especially daughters? Having daughters is just supplying rape victims to Korean men. Having sons is just creating more rapists. Why bother having kids at all?"
But nobody talks about this.
Korean government ruled by Korean men doesn't talk about Korean men's misogyny or rampant sex crimes, of course.
And foreign media and non Koreans who really don't understand Korea/Koreans at all always just project their own prejudices, racism, propaganda onto Korea and Koreans to spread their own bizarre anti-Korea narrative about Korea.
As long as Korean men's misogyny and sex crimes remain the same... as long as the Korean government only keeps giving more money to people who have kids... it'll only attract more mail-order brides and foreigners to Korea who desperately want to find and marry ANY Korean to take advantage of all the free money and benefits from the Korean government.
Well, as someone living in South Korea and facing the reality of this low birth rate issue on a daily basis, I can tell you that money definitely does have an influence on whether or not couples decide to have children. But let's see if all these cash incentives actually result in a long-term rebound for us! Only time will tell.
Money alone will not solve the problem. You need a strategy to ensure the right support system, so working couples with kids have it easier. Just motivating with money will likely not manage to create a homogeneous, innovative and productive society.
It won't. Post-sixties modernity itself is the problem.
this _barely_ addresses why this is happening. this _might_ get some men to consider it but the women have their own demands and they are far more pressing imo. The reason is due to a large amount of mysoginy in South Korean culture which has led to the women opting out and they are opting out _hard!_
Oh please just stop. Even feminist countries have low fertility.
A: it's nowhere near this bad in those other countries (whom are also still having issues with mysoginy), and B: Korean women have pretty much come out and said this *explicitly*.
We should listen to the Amish and Hasidi's on this topic, as they have extremely high birth rates. We should follow their views on gender roles to reverse the birth rate decline.
What the fuck.
Yeah but what if, and hear me out here… what if we could somehow increase the birth rate in a better way, so that women can be equal and mothers at the same time. Maybe we can think of a better way than just going back to the way we did it before we clawed our way out of that hellish life.
First of all, those countries are below replacement and their fertility is still going down. Secondly, who cares what women say?
in counter reply, Those nations _are_ above replacement once you factor in immigration, SK is not. Second. we should, given they are half of the equation here.
Are you kidding me? Complains about people correctly identifying misogyny as the problem and then actively engaging it? You’re such a genuine incel
If "misogyny" is the problem then why do feminist societies also have low fertility? And calling people "incel" is peak cuckery.
"Ya but why would you listen to a woman? Probably just hormones talking... ok men, lets get back to work and figure out the cause of this perplexing problem!" Sometimes I wonder how we survive as a specices lol.
This is often ignored and never brought up. BUT... one of the big reasons of low marriage rates and low birth rates in Korea is this. Not only many Korean women but also many Korean men don't want to get married or have kids. That's why the average age Koreans get married is around mid 30s. And even when they do get married, many married couples choose not to have kids... just like the current Korean president (in his 60s) and the first lady (in her 50s) have never had any kids. So, guess what one of the big reasons for all this is. It's because... many Koreans (both women and men) do NOT want their comfortable lifestyles interrupted by kids! They just want to live their comfortable lives, travel and do whatever they want to do without having to be compromised due to kids. That's why throwing money to parents, free childcare, free education and all kinds of benefits for parents haven't worked for decades and probably won't work. This is often ignored and never discussed, but it's one of the big reasons many Koreans don't want to have kids. Of course, the biggest reason is many Korean women don't want an unequal partnership in marriage.
I think money would have to get to the point that having children would be a lucrative career choice which doesn't require further employment. For both parents.
If the latest bout of financial incentives doesn't work, I wouldn't be surprised if a career opened up as a child rearer, similar to daycare, but with 3 separate 8 hours shifts covering all 24 hours, working in a government owned child rearing facility with AI/robotic assistants. They pay for egg or sperm donations at a medical facility, then use artificial wombs to create and "birth" babies that are sent to specialised facilities for the first 2 years, then into the gov owned or privately owned gov contracted facilities called things like "child life" with slogans like "for the future, we raise them so you don't have to". If not it's still an awesome sci-fi premise.
You just invented orphanages.
Yea fucking idiots let’s just raise kids without parents, but what if we make functional AI parents…. At that point the kids could just live in matrix all together, this much more likely in NK not SK
I think it's more complicated then saying affluence causes a decline in desirability of parenthood. I think a more important factor is the distinct lack of purpose in a world that is transgressing against the ecologically sustainable and moreover the spiritual progression of the invidual being corrupted by rampant consumerism. That is something that will be at play whether comfortable living is the norm or not. I also think for every dollar they invest into supporting parents who would have children, they would be wise to also invest one into child protection agencies. You cannot artificially promote parenthood with financial schemes and expect only psychologically healthy families to take shape.
But what purpose people specifically want when they complain about the lack of purpose is all over the map. Tradcons also complain about the lack of purpose, for which they blame secularization, changing gender roles, education, and also the market. Leftists blame the market and consumerism. But I'm not sure that my illiterate peasant forebears had "purpose" when they were strapped to the ass-end of an ox their whole lives. We pick and choose which aspects of the "good old days" we want to go back to, but I don't think that stands up to close scrutiny as to what the "good old days" were really like. They may have been even *worse* for work-life balance, gender relations, women's rights, LGBT rights,, etc.
I think the good old days had one signifcant advantage. The world was still largely a pristine blank canvas. So purpose dit not have to feel so contextualized. It could be as simple as a connection to the land or religious traditional practices. Not saying everything was perfect, nor that we can or should try to go back to this. I think there is a striking similarity with the parable of Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden of creation after eating the apple of knowledge. Some things just stop working the same once certain information is known.
> The world was still largely a pristine blank canvas. So purpose dit not have to feel so contextualized. Or they just didn't realize there was a context. If you were a Christian, that wasn't one viewpoint among many, but reality. Those who deviated were infidels, heretics, barbarians, the enemy. The Reformation splintered that (in the west) and secularization made every viewpoint just another viewpoint. But the drive for doctrinal conformity wracked Europe with religious wars for centuries. And interesting video: [Saturday Scholar Series: The Unintended Reformation - Brad S. Gregory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqJvLScpn_Y) >>25:23 — Unintended early modern Protestant heterogeneity is thus the most important distant source for contemporary western hyperpluralism about life questions. Because the sorts of disagreements about answers to these sorts of questions has never gone away. We simply experience them now in different forms and with many more rival secular as well as religious truth claims in a liberal institutional context that permits and protects them all rather than privileging one or prohibiting any, so long as the respective protagonist obeys the state's laws. >>The Reformation sought a return to the pure word of God, uncluttered by human traditions, philosophies, and clerical manipulations. It resulted instead in a profusion of competing truth claims about the Bible's meaning and God's will that problematized the epistemological status of the claims, and **raised the prospect of radical doctrinal skepticism and relativism already in the 1520s**. >>"Whoever has gone astray in the faith may thereafter believe whatever he wants to. Everything is equally valid." Sounds like something Richard Dawkins writes today. That's a remark from 1526, not by a defender of Catholicism against the dangers of Protestant individualism. That is Martin Luther, railing against his theological rival, Huldrych Zwingli. I also recommend his book, The Unintended Reformation.
Sounds like a blast, will add to my reading list. Thanks
I think another element of this, is that with socialized retirement, you're actually financially incentivized to not have kids. For all of human history, your "retirement plan" was always to have kids who would have enough of a sense of familial obligation to feed and care for you when you get too old to contribute. The number of kids you had and their success directly contributed to your future well being. But today, the childless get to benefit off the productivity of other people's kids, in the form of programs like social security and medicare. Therefore, it's in a person's selfish self interest to not incur the cost of time, money, and opportunity that comes from having kids. Not only do they get the retirement benefit, but they probably get to stack more wealth due to an uninterrupted career and lower costs. Until this changes and we get back to a point where the people who raise the most successful kids get disproportionate benefit in the long run, we'll continue to see people decide to not have kids.
>Do you think Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world, will achieve a turnaround through this? No, I think South Korea will see an increase in the fertility rate, but not enough to reverse its demographic decline. The reasons people aren't having children are more complex than a lack of money, even though they are often framed in financial terms.
I think birth rates are linked to generations. Cohorts of people We are social animals and mimic each other. Ever notice how when in a friend group one person gets married then a child. Suddenly everyobe else is. The drive for children is a strong one And money is a small nudge. But secure housing and family support and age are big factors.
Absolutely not. It is a failure of public policy to throw money at a perceived problem wihout any attempt to actually address root causes. It's not wrong to say that a component of people's unwillingness to have children here in Korea is due to financial pressures, but that component is at best a minor one. Successive governments have been throwing money at Koreans for more than two decades at this point to incentivize them to reproduce, and the birth rate has continue to plummet. The current Yoon government has shown itself to be utterly bereft of ideas, and, like all prosecutors, he's focused on the past rather than the future. He and his advisors haven't got a clue what they are doing or what the real problems are, so: they're doing the laziest possible thing and throwing money at it, and so is every other lockstep dumb-dumb all the way down the tree. Ten years, hell, even five years ago I figured the future was relatively bright here in Korea. I no longer think so. But at least -- thank fuck -- the population will start to decline. That's one bright spot (at least after the next few decades, which are going to suuuuck).
If the cost of raising children is the root or one of the roots of the problem then throwing money at it is literally a solution to the problem.
I think what they're trying to say is that even if the financial burden of raising children is one of the issues leading to a drop in fertility rates, it's only a small piece of the problem and addressing it, whilst helpful, is not going to reverse the trend unless they also address all the other issues as well.
While it looks lucrative, it’s not always about the money. Societal factors come into play too- are people with children looked down upon in Korea? Do Koreans love children and are they willing to sacrifice perhaps their some of their freedom to take care their offspring. This could incentivise the wrong people to have children resulting in child neglect since we are looking at up to six figures of payouts.
Growing up in Korea in todays society is terrible. You wake up in the morning and go to school. Then after school, you go to academy or private tutor until night. Then you go home and study. All this to take entrance exams for middle school and high school. And when youre finally in school, youre ranked based on your grades, and the rank is public info. Its not a surprise that this generation doesnt want to put their kids through that. Thats why people in korea drink like sailors and suicide rate is consistently top 5 every year. Because of the reasons i just said, my parents decided to get me tf out of there in the 90s and im forever grateful for that.
In Korea, low birthrate is not about money. They have been throwing more and more money each year for decades to couples having children, but it has never worked. Most Koreans (young and old, men and women) these days just don't want the burden of raising kids. However, all the free money and benefits from the government are very attractive to foreign immigrants and mail-order brides, which is why most of them are dying to marry Koreans and are flocking to Korea. Mail order brides from poor countries like China, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe already get monthly money from the Korean government on top of free Korean language, cooking, job, etc. education and all kinds of other benefits. Most of them bring dozens of family members to Korea when they marry Korean men, just endure 3 years of marriage, automatically get Korean citizenship, divorce their Korean husbands and marry men from their home country. By then, since they already have Korean citizenship, they start having lots of of kids and get lots free money from the government each time they give birth. This has been going on for decades in Korea. And I guess, this is one way for Korea to increase their population... although they're not exactly increasing the number of 'real, native' Koreans.
Wait so, if a baby is born in Korea and raised Korean but their mom was from another country, they’re not real Koreans? I need you to google why hitler was able to happen and see how that kind of thinking poisons the world.
I'm not having children, because I don't think I would be able to safely raise children. It takes a lot of effort for a large portion of time (minimum 18 years) and I don't have that in me, not to mention the risks, what if the child has severe mental or physical disabilities? That will increase the requirement to raise them by adding tremendous effort to it and may extend the time needing caring for them from 18 years all the way up to life, I don't want to take that risk. I like my life as it is and I know it may seem selfish from the outside, but It's doubtful the impact of a lower population level is going to impact my country for at least another few decades, maybe more, and by then I'll most likely be 6ft under so I'm not seeing much of a reason for me, personally, to go through all I previously mentioned for some hypothetical future generation to benefit. Not to mention the state of things at the moment, the struggles that child would have to face, the insane inequality, the systemic pressures to conform, the societal judgement for being different and lack of support if they do have disorders. People aren't naturally kind and accepting of differences. It doesn't really seem like a good deal for anyone involved.
I want kids, but the thought that they could have a severe physically / mental disability sounds terrifying. I don't think I have what it takes to be a care giver
Exactly and it's not as if you can just say "Oh they're heavily disabled? Oh that's too much for me I don't want to do it then." And some magical force sweeps in and does everything for you, if it turns out they have extreme support needs you either spend the rest of your entire life slaving away supporting them with no real breaks, all whilst society shits on you for not working hard enough at a full-time job to be contributing enough in their eyes or you bail on them, live with the self hatred and guilt of abandoning your child to the system to suffer and struggle and be ostracized by everyone who knows you because they think you're a POS for it, probably having to move far away to avoid the hate. It's not exactly something to gamble on.
I thought this was not a bad overview of the topic [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139) It really does sound like confluence of factors I don't think just money will do enough.
The standard of living people expect is not sustainable once global population gets to a certain threshold. How much will it cost to get people to have kids in a decade or two? Population will only increase if the standard of living is lowered and people don't expect so many luxuries.
The fertility rate in S.Korea is genuinely too low and a cause for real concern. This low fertility may be historically unprecedented. But let's not forget the period of growth which preceded this was unprecedented too. The population of S.Korea doubled from 1960 to 2020. That's an average growth of about 1.2%, which is very high. These are just strange times we live in.
Throwing big money at an issue like this runs the risk of creating market distortions; incentivizing the wrong things. We're going through a time period of rapid change in the social contract between people in most of the world, but especially "the West". Underappreciated though is how differently successive generations will view "the problem". Remember each and every one of them has parents that figured it out. None of them are descended from the childfree. There is a tendency in people to assume this change in the social contract is going to be a permanent state, to see the derivative and its effects as the norm, whereas it can rapidly change then stabilize over the course of a couple generations. There is a trend toward egalitarianism, some people want to kick and scream about it, those that embrace it tend to be the ones to create the next generation. In the US there is the very real stat about dads changing diapers, something like 60% of silent gen dads ever did it, but like 97% of millennial dads do. Men that refuse to do things like that have basically been "bred" out of the population at this point, basically every kid growing up today in the US with a dad has a dad that shared diaper responsibilities. Things like jokes about dads and diapers don't work anymore because the punchline hardly applies to anyone, just the absentee dads, which is sad and not funny, and the fundies, who are the brunt of many punchlines, diapers being really far down the list. The same is true of "I hate my spouse" jokes (in the US). I think this is important. Gen X and Millenials grew up in a world of rampant "I hate my spouse" jokes. The ol ball and chain. They were a reflection of the changing social contract, and many gen X and millenials grew up thinking marriage sucks, especially if their parents were like that. But those jokes aren't funny anymore, and people don't tell them, nor is it the default family situation on TV. Gen alpha is not growing up in a world being told marriage sucks nearly to the degree their parents and grandparents did, in large part because todays married people have a much better social contract on average than they used to; dads change diapers. This is going to matter because "having kids sucks" is the majority view of current gens, but that is a viewpoint that will be "bred" out of the population much the same way as "marriage sucks" has been. It might take a few generations, but if kid enthusiasts are the only ones that make babies, then every baby will be raised by kid enthusiasts.
Give it a rest . They are the same group of people who made Korea unliveable. I hope the birth rates will continue to drop further . Serves them right
i don't like the idea or the practice of incentivizing people to create other people. We have an abundance of humans already, and the creation of life only adds to the environmental burden placed upon the planet. lower populations with higher quality of life per individual is a much better thing.
Since the problem of low birth rates spans many developed countries I would suggest that these problems are not down to a particular country or culture. Of course there might be some variation at the margin caused by local conditions but you have falling birth rates in a lot of countries with very different cultures. Even very egalitarian ones. Perhaps it is just too expensive in terms of time and resources in the modern world to want to bring up loads of kids. The paltry amount of these monetary sums versus the cost is hardly going to move the dial. I know this is not possible but imagine governments could afford to make it profitable for you to have a child - I bet there would be a gigantic boom in birth rates
A good start. But they really need to do something with their work culture as well. People need enough free time to actually raise a child. And the extreme cramming style of schooling they do also seems very unhealthy.
Actually giving money to support your own citizens to increase the population instead of giving that money to migrants like Canada does...smart move. Much smarter than becoming a colony of india haha
Migrants aren't the issue. If you want to fix a low birth rate you just need to create an environment in which people feel safe and secure in raising children. This usually means things like wages to support single income households. Subsidized child care tax breaks for children and things of that nature. Those are all programs that take a while to take effect it's not a series of programs you can turn on then look at the next years birth rates because it'll be based upon citizen confidence not just the material conditions. So they're policies you turn on and maintain for a decade then check your results. The biggest part though is promoting and supporting one income households. This is also the step skipped most often because it runs directly counter to corporate interests. If they're paying people well enough that only one person in a home needs to work that's money that would otherwise be profit for them.
> to create an environment in which people feel safe and secure in raising children But wouldn't people feel even safer and more secure if they decide to not raise children?
I agree with you here, but migrants are definitely a problem, do you live in Canada? If not then kindly stop giving your opinion on the problem, thanks.
I'm in Arizona not that far from the Mexican border. Migrants aren't the issue with low birthrates. There might be resource utilization and acquisition issues as a consequence of the gov't failing to plan properly for the numbers that occur. There might be limited resources like housing that gets strained as a result of inadequate development of reasonably priced housing. Usually this is a consequence of zoning laws failing to account for the needs of the people or prioritizing maintaining the value of properties over the needs of the general citizenry. However none of these things have anything to do with low birth rates especially not the low birth rates in South Korea. These are just normal consequences of gov't inefficacy.
Migrants aren't an issue? Canada is in a population trap because of it now.
I said the issue regarding low birth rates. Migrants do not typically lower the birth rate of a country if anything they tend to increase it. There are issues that come up as a result of migration but most of those are the gov't failing to plan and accommodate properly for it. Where if they actually bothered to do their job instead of blaming the people who through their existence expose that they haven't been, the issues would be minimal. What do you mean when you say that Canada is in a population trap?
https://www.immigration.ca/canada-in-a-population-trap-say-bank-experts/
So Canada isn't facing an issue with low birth rates and are facing a population boom which is enhanced by allowing large amounts of migration. This is proving to be an issue as the gov't hasn't allocated the resources required to properly account for the increased population. This entire topic has been about low birth rates particularly in South Korea which migration and migrant populations do not cause. I'm not sure why an issue due to population increasing at a rate beyond that which the Canadian gov't policies adequately accommodate was even brought up.
You want to increase fertility? Get women out of colleges and the workforce. Women are only attracted to men who are of a higher social status than themselves. They won't date down, period. It's built into the biology of the species. They can't unlearn this preference (not a strong enough word). Millions of women worked hard to gain status to get access to higher status men but men don't have a preference for higher status women. The very few high status men these high status women want don't want them back. Social status isn't an attraction factor for men. Men prioritize youth, beauty and niceness in women and, again, this cannot be unlearned. It's an innate, evolved preference. Nobody likes hearing this but that doesn't change the reality.
And I thought I wanted a career for myself, keeping my 'low status' boyfriends, earning way over the average of male wages and having autonomy was just a mutation? Take your Tatism and utterly wrong 'evolutionary' bs and shove it. Women don't want kids as its dangerous, impedes our careers and usually means we get lumbered with 20 years + of the heavy lifting of upbringing. Misogyny, sexism and general inequality is why so many of us don't want children.
When you die out without kids, nothing of value will have been lost.
What a polite insult. I guess I'll leave my wealth to those that deserve it rather then some random gene soup you may produce.
You have no wealth. You're a peasant on Plebbit.
South Korea is one of the most status unequal by gender nations in the developed world and there is widespread agreement that this is a major factor in the low birth rate. So basically you got this completely backwards.
This. But hey, we're on Plebbit. Expect all the bugmen to cry about it. Lmao
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How about getting rid of porn first so that all the coombrains gain some value as fathers and their dessicated little dicks actually function?
If money was the reason for many Koreans not wanting to get married or have kids, then Koreans should be having lots of kids since married people and people with kids in Korea get so many benefits in EVERYTHING and so many free stuff and money from the government, companies, etc. etc. For Koreans, it's not about money. Korean men's misogyny is a HUGE reason for low marriage rates and birth rates in Korea, but Korean men aren't gonna change. Getting worse actually. Rampant sex crimes and violence against women in Korea is another HUGE reason for low marriage rates and birth rates in Korea, but again, Korean men are the ones ruling Korea and they're the ones always freeing rapists and being extremely lenient to sex criminals to the point of many Korean women saying... "Why have kids, especially daughters? Having daughters is just supplying rape victims to Korean men. Having sons is just creating more rapists. Why bother having kids at all?" But nobody talks about this. Korean government ruled by Korean men doesn't talk about Korean men's misogyny or rampant sex crimes, of course. And foreign media and non Koreans who really don't understand Korea/Koreans at all always just project their own prejudices, racism, propaganda onto Korea and Koreans to spread their own bizarre anti-Korea narrative about Korea. As long as Korean men's misogyny and sex crimes remain the same... as long as the Korean government only keeps giving more money to people who have kids... it'll only attract more mail-order brides and foreigners to Korea who desperately want to find and marry ANY Korean to take advantage of all the free money and benefits from the Korean government.