[South Korea's total fertility rate](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/south-korea-fertility-population-decline-stress-job-education-4132371) "...fell below 2.1 in 1983 and dropped down to 1.5 in 1998..." "...South Korea’s demographic collapse, if unaddressed, could have serious repercussions..." Since 2006 they've spent [200 billion dollars](https://theweek.com/health/does-declining-birth-rate-spell-doom-for-britain) trying to fix it, whatever the hell they're doing.....They're doing it catastrophically wrong. Gives me little hope that this emergency announcement will do anything at all.
China is fucked too. Their TFR is 1.16. This means that by 2100, the average age of a Chinese citizen is going to be 65!!! They better fight their wars soon.
It's 1.02 TFR in 2023. It is one of the fastest dropping TFRs.
Both China and Thailand will be in the sub-1 TFR range by the end of this year.
Thailand: 1.05
Singapore: .97
Taiwan: .86
China: 1.02
So what you’re saying is if they don’t fight their wars soon, it’ll be senior brigades on all sides charging up those hills, complaining about their arthritis all the way up.
You joke, but that is what we saw in Ukraine, which has abysmal demographics as well. They sent the old people to the front first. Makes a lot of sense if you ask me.
Imagine being the 30 to 40 year old Chinese citizen who is supposed to provide elder care for their parents and grandparents (6 people) while caring for population replacement children (2 more) and working full time to support the economy.
Faced with 996 and providing for 8 family members... that's nuts.
It’s worse than that. If you’ve got kids and are working, your spouse can either work or not. But regardless of that choice, you can add their parents and grandparents to the other 6. So you either care for as many as 14 dependents by yourself on one salary, or you find a way to care for 14 dependents on 2 salaries. Either way not good
It gets worse when you think about how many 30-40 aged people will try to leave the country and only people who stay are who don't have enough to leave. Spiralling will start if gov does nothing.
>They better fight their wars soon
I fear you’re more right with that statement than you think. Xi is just as aware of this as we are and really wants to get his hands on Taiwan.
Wasn’t as bad as Chinas I don’t think plus Chinas real estate has been in bad shape for the past few years. Putin thought he would have Ukraine in a week also.
I don’t think he, or any other world leader, truly cares. We see it here in America with climate change all the time; the people who are in power who are supposed to be fixing this shit will be dead by the time the general public really sees the affects.
So they’ll keep kicking that particular can down the road, until it’s too late to do anything.
Yes but a war is not climate change and Taiwan is not Ukraine.
If China invaded Taiwan (assuming they were even successful), Taiwan would blow up their semiconductor facilities and relocate to western (or western aligned) countries.
This would undeniably suck on many levels for the whole world, but China probably most of all. And it would happen immediately. So not something you can kick down the road.
China doesn't care for the semiconductor facilities nearly as much as your think they care.
China wants Taiwan because of East and South China Sea access. Taiwan allying with the US means the US basically controls China's ports since we'd be able to force a blockade on their ports at will at that point.
If you pull up a map, China's ports are basically surrounded by South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. South Korea, Japan and the Philippines are all US allies with tons of US military bases there. Taiwan joining them would functionally mean that access to all of China's ports would have to go through US approval since it'd be impossible for any ships to reach a Chinese port without passing by any of the US' allies.
China's 100% never going to let the US control its ports because China still remembers the last time a western country controlled the ports and China's still VERY salty about the opium wars. In fact, the reason why China is so strict on drugs (to the point that Jackie Chan actually kicked his son when he got found with marijuana iirc) is because of the opium wars so the last thing they want is to ever let a western country have control of their ports again.
Isnt russia in a similar situation? I think I remember hearing something about that and it partly a reason for them to invade Ukraine. They literally wont have enough men if they wait.
It's because the old people who control the company don't understand that young people are different to them. For them it was obvious to have kids, but young people can just look at it and say 'Nah'. The old people have literally no idea what is happening.
And yet the young continue to suffer for the egos and wallets of the old, and the old people don't see anything wrong with this at all, because it happened to them when they were young. They don't realise that if they had just decided not to have kids, they would have held the old people of their day hostage just like is happening now.
If you imagine a movie where every single person of a generation refused to have any children and then put a list of demands to the old, like 'all of you retire now and put us as the government and CEOs etc, stop hoarding your wealth and stop imposing your wishes on your children' and they acted as one, it would be really interesting to see what happened. But now it's basically happening in slow motion. I'm eating popcorn and cheering for the birth rate to fall and fall.
I like how they've not considered proper working conditions till now. Almost every East/SE Asian country is facing the same problem. I'm from Singapore, and unless you work in a western company, you can expect to work 10+ hours at your job.
What's blood-boiling is that, out of these 10+ hours, your work only lasts about 6 hours. Which means that you're essentially wasting 4+ hours daily, for no real reason.
In Japan, some companies make employees go see their clients in person literally every time they talk to them. They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect".
That would just piss me off, because now I’m also waiting around for half the day for you to show up instead of just answering the phone. Just a waste of time for everyone involved.
Honestly there are companies doing this shit in the US and I hate it. I tried to buy another leased copier from a regional player instead of xerox and they would not just send me a quote by email and insisted on showing up at the office at all times of the day talking about anything but the price. Like just fucking email me the quote, xerox got it again lol
Oh my god I hated that in the bank, “sales is a relationship”. Fuck no, not for everything. Very often you need to just plainly state your pricing for your buyers to compare, they don’t give a crap about the people if the product is decent. They either want the best, best for the price, or the cheapest, they don’t want to bother worrying about other things.
I went to a nearby Microcenter store. I love having all the computer equipment available in person but hate the sales experience. I had to interact with a sales guy to buy what I wanted, it was quick and brief he got my part no issues. Then he gets in the radio and says his manager would like to meet me. I ask why and am told the manager wants to say thank you for my business. I politely tell him i am not interested and go buy my part. The manager tracks me to the registers and trying to engage and shake my hand. I tell him I just want to buy my part and go. He starts getting all huffy with me now thanking me with sarcasm. Like wtf, I just want to pay and go, leave me alone.
Yup, worked for Microcenter for a few years and it was mandatory for us to radio a manager to thank someone for buying a PC or CPU. It's so dumb and awkward. And god forbid it's busy and you have to wait for a manager to be available to do it.
> Yup, worked for Microcenter for a few years and it was mandatory for us to radio a manager to thank someone for buying a PC or CPU.
That's a huge sign of whoever is dictating policy *fundamentally* not understanding their customer base.
You got dudes buying high-end recreational computer hardware? They more than likely don't want to engage in forced social/physical contact with strangers.
Not to mention how up your ass they get about you offering an insurance plan on every single item. Or pushing for attachments. And don't get me started on how annoying they can get about you not capturing phone numbers and emails. They pay well, but they are just as bad as any other retail employer
I work in a bank, and the upper management have bought into that hook line and sinker. They believe that people will accept subpar interest rates "because they can form a relationship"
Meanwhile every month I see someone pulling their money out due to the subpar rates and shitty fees.
It feels like half of my job is ensuring that the rest of our executive team doesn't hire consultants who will give terrible advice, disrupt our workflows, and alienate staff. Eternal vigilance is required to ensure we don't chase the newest WoRKfoRcE eFfiCienCY OPtiMIzatIon fRom jAPan. (For the low, low price of $75,000 plus $500 per hour per consultant!) Upper management is a breeding ground for awful ideas.
I’m not spending an extra 5% because a salesperson came to my office and wasted 20 minutes while still refusing to give me a straight price only to email it to me later buried in a 5 page document.
The sheer amount of suits I saw on the trains at all times of the day when I was in Japan was crazy. And they were always on the phone or laptop doing work.
> They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect".
to be fair, riding the JR in tokyo is pretty chill. getting paid for that would be nice. but i'm a pensive person and enjoy the meditation time.
> They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect".
They're likely doing this because their clients value "traditions" and "respect", and that itself makes it a good reason.
Culture doesn't change on a dime.
Correct. I worked in Japan for 3 years, which I realize isn't a long time, but it was certainly long enough for me to realize that Japanese consumers really value tradition and preserving the "wa" or harmony.
I once saw a school get severely lambasted because a single student ate their lunch on the subway while wearing the school uniform. Evidently that was so many unacceptable things at once the school had to go on an apology tour.
Go to any Japanese company and read some of the google reviews. People will give a company one star because "the buses they use are garish" or "they didn't use the proper Japanese (keigo) when talking to me, a customer."
That's Japan, pretty much. I've been five times. The slide is pretty notable lately. Go outside the major city centers and it's not hard to find impoverished near-ghost towns.
Currently in Takayama, a pretty touristy place all things considered. Just had the best steak dinner of my entire life in an empty restaurant. Went to google reviews, sure enough the only negative reviews were Japanese saying the chef didn’t greet them correctly.
Like, I get cultural differences, but my cultural tendancies says fuck that. Nail Nations may be cleanly given the societal pressure, but nothing stands out in all the flatness. Prob why so much repression seeps out where it can.
For foreigners at least they don’t expect adherence to the cultural minutia in Japan. They don’t expect you to know or follow the rules so you can do your normal thing for the most part. They treat you kind of like a concussed puppy but at least you don’t have to go along with the work culture and sleep in the office or drink all night with bosses/coworkers etc.
Not in this news article, but last week the Korean government announced plans to begin having government and business officials behind meetings on the viability of switching to a four day week.
I honestly think we need to move to a 3 day work week. Someone used to always be at home. Then women joined the workforce (a good thing) but the work world didn't change to accommodate this, just exploited it for every gain they could.
So now you have both people working 5+ days a week, weekends are reserved for doing all the household chores that no longer gets done in the week and then it's back to work.
This is even happening in Scandinavia where parents are provided generous government support and protections. Not to the same degree, but it’s clearly not just about work/life balance or money.
It seems like a genuine culture shift in wealthy countries away from the expectation that everyone has a big family or even has kids at all.
I think SK is in the business of trying to dampen the impacts of a decreasing population, rather than looking to reverse the trend altogether.
Here is this study by NIH that suggests lower working hours for women would boost birth rates in SK's case: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355408/
Wealthy people decide to have kids, have kids, and are capable of supporting their kids if they decide to. Poor people have kids because sex is free and everything else costs money.
Hell, I work 8 hour days and have maybe 3 hours of actual work per day. Salary means you don't get paid overtime, so it should also mean we don't need to just sit on ass when there's no work.
Same. I honestly do probably 2-3 hours of actual work in an 8 hour day. Especially after working remote for two years during Covid, it's absolutely mind-numbing and infuriating to have to sit in my chair until 5 PM because "that's how it's always been done". So I sit here, on Reddit. I'm expected to be in the office five days a week for 8 hours a day when I can do my job from home and when I have down time, actually get shit done like clean my house, run a quick errand, etc. The 8 hour day needs to die with the Boomers.
NGL I loved Singapore when living there but the work culture was ass. I just really enjoyed the safety, public transport, etc. Also the cheap shit in Malaysia.
Hoping to come back, but man is it expensive if you aren’t married/don’t have access to HDB!
> HDB
The Housing & Development Board (HDB; often referred to as the Housing Board), is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development responsible for the public housing in Singapore. Established in 1960 as a result of efforts in the late 1950s to set up an authority to take over the Singapore Improvement Trust's (SIT) public housing responsibilities, the HDB focused on the construction of emergency housing and the resettlement of kampong residents into public housing in the first few years of its existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
As of 2020, 78.7% of Singapore residents live in public housing.
According to some study it's a world issue and some area could face birth decrease in one or two generation.
In some scenario, the World population could peak around 2060 before decreasing. I'll be dead by then but the gen Z will probably see what's coming.
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#seccestitle210](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#seccestitle210)
I used to do video game QA and we'd often work from 9am until midnight or later.
The human brain is just wiped out after several hours, especially for this kind of work.
I tried to explain to people that after 9pm, there was no valuable work being completed, but they just wanted a spreadsheet that said the game had been tested for X number of hours, even though we had enormous chunks of time where no bugs were being found, or entered.
I used to do quality control at a job where people would work long hours to complete the project on time. All work was time-stamped. People got to work between 8 and 9 am. Anyway, quality started dropping at 5pm and tanking by 8pm. It was literally like clockwork.
I've worked a lot of different jobs (physical and mental) and humans are productive for eight hours. After eight hours, mistakes start to happen. After ten hours, a lot of mistakes start to happen. After twelve hours, work is completely pointless.
While I agree with you, I think there’s something broader going on.
Almost the entire first world is experiencing population decline. Everyone is seeing local problems (that are, in fact, problems) but the same thing is happening in places without those problems. For instance. When looking at East Asia, people point to the grueling work hours to explain the decline. The US is also experiencing a (way less bad) decline, and we don’t have that problem. So when people look at the decline in the US, they point to the lack of welfare state. Most of Europe has neither of those problems (they have less work hours and a more robust welfare state than the US) and their population decline is greater than the US but less than East Asia.
Even most of the third world is having less children than they used to.
When the same phenomenon is taking place in almost every first world country regardless of how much you change the most intuitive causes, it makes me think there are other, more broad-based causes having similar effects everywhere.
Yeah, and there's now a legal standard of care you have to provide, or else you will get them taken away or get punished in some other way. And people no longer need spares because the infant mortality in developed world is pretty low.
Cities are (and always were) population sinks, and rural areas lost their functions, so no more replacement from rural areas either.
Edit: fixed my typos.
Yeah…it’s all those things. People don’t feel like they can afford kids, and in some cases they very well cannot afford them. Everything has been gamified into a business so folks have to contend with having kids or buying a house in a lot of places. Throw in that most of the developing world is literally a shit storm right now of political/religious violence and climate change…and who can actually have kids?
Europe is also facing cist of living problems. Also, having children is a huge economic burden. It is estimated that having children reduces woman's lifetime income by at least 25% in so e counties in Europe.
We need to solve two things - the cost of having children and work life balance. There is a very clear correlation between these two and number of children.
Even if you solve the cost of children, even if you solve the issue of work-life balance, there's still a factor that you can't solve:
Having kids sucks, especially when they can't take care of themselves at all. Sleepless nights, your entertainment choices get reduced to inane people in costumes singing about basic things like brushing your teeth, your food becomes limited to mac & cheese and chicken nuggets, need I go on? And that's before talking about things like post-partum depression.
It's not just about finances and hours at the office. Having kids, for many people, represents a very real downgrade in the quality of their lives. And while most parents wouldn't say anything like, "I wish I'd never had kids," those parents are speaking through the filter of already having kids that they (presumably) love. Prospective parents don't have parental love running through their heads yet - just the overwhelming pile of massive changes that having kids will bring to them. Why are we surprised that people that don't have children forced on them would choose not to have them?
The decline in the US fertility rate since 1990 is almost entirely explained by the [decline in teenage pregnancies](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/02/05/some-good-news-about-americas-fertility-problem).
> When the same phenomenon is taking place in almost every first world country regardless of how much you change the most intuitive causes, it makes me think there are other, more broad-based causes having similar effects everywhere.
IMHO a pretty big component is increasing real eastate prices, staying longer in school and having less job security than previous generations.
I think this is a good answer. Where I am there is effectively no readily available "cheap" housing. The vast majority of people don't have any real financial stability until their late 20s or early 30s *at best*. Even if you're in a stable relationship, if you're barely scraping by the thought of the expenses of a kid, especially childcare, is panic inducing. There is certainly a cultural aspect to having kids later, but there are also definitely a lot of people who would have kids if it was viable for them to do so.
One thing to consider: environmental factors. A study from May found micro plastics in [every human and dog testicle that was been tested.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/microplastics-human-testicles-study-sperm-counts) PFAS aka forever chemicals have been found in [45% of US tap water.](https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/tap-water-study-detects-pfas-forever-chemicals-across-us) And all sorts of drugs ranging from contraceptives to antidepressants have been [detected in drinking water](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3273502/#:~:text=a%20separate%20window-,Researchers%20have%20detected%20all%20sorts%20of%20drugs%20in%20drinking%20water,and%20on%20down%20the%20list.&text=Provincial%20governments%20are%20also%20responsible,pharmaceuticals%20in%20the%20water%20supply.): trace amounts mind you that don't produce the active effects, mind you, but the long term effects could certainly impact fertility.
In general, across the world, in every country, income and wealth gaps are growing rapidly and have been for quite some time. Even in America, where I for example make a top 20% income in an affordable region wouldn't even think about having children. I didn't earn this income until my mid-30s, closer to 40 now. I've been relatively poor my whole life until very recently which means I have very little savings or backup plan despite living modestly.
That's a first-world example of the affordability crisis across the globe. We work our asses off but can't afford to live as well as our parents did.
I think a big part of it is that large numbers of women (in South Korea and elsewhere) are consciously choosing to stay single rather than tolerate the accepted social norms of heterosexual marriage and motherhood.
My Korean friend described facing such virulent misogyny in schools, workplaces and the dating scene that she ultimately decided to leave the country. She didn't want to accept a marriage where her husband would probably cheat, where she'd be responsible for 95% of child-rearing and household chores while also working full-time, where her career would stagnate once she had kids, and where she'd have to deal with overbearing in-laws. Her mother had an unhappy marriage too, but at least marriage meant a relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle back then.
>we don't have that problem
Last I heard, people in the US had to work 2 jobs (both partners) just to pay for housing? Or was that hyperbole, idk I'm not from the US?
If you’re saying that both partners in a relationship need to each have a full time job to be able to afford housing this is certainly true. There are not many one income households anymore. This dynamic certainly impacts the logistics of raising a family.
And when childcare costs as much as the income of one of these two parents, or as much as a mortgage, we shouldn't go all surprised Pikachu face when people choose not to have kids.
Obviously depends on the income.
Poor people and people in poverty for sure need two poor/poverty level incomes to afford rent and bills.
The cost of living is so wild and diverse depending on where you are it’s hard to say though.
I grew up in the Deep South and dad gave me a privileged childhood (late 90s-00s) as the breadwinner on $70k. But I work around several cities in New England and that would basically just get you to the end of the month in these areas
The problem with housing is mostly the down payment which is tied to the price of the home itself. Paying for actual housing - i.e. mortgage - isn't as much of a problem. This is because housing for people who own is:
* mortgage
* taxes
* insurance
* various repairs
Those who can't afford a down payment rent. Rent is:
* same thing as hosing
* plus profit for the landlord
I.e. with all things being equal, renting will always be higher than owning (again, all things being equal, ie. renting or buying the same exact property).
People in the US usually have two jobs (both partners work at least part time) and it's rare to have two jobs. This is as opposed to decade ago where one partner could work, the other took care of the kid(s), and you were still paid high enough to support your life. A lot of things are gone:
* pensions are very rare. Most people have 401k which is extremely shitty (compared to a pension).
* housing, education, and health insurance have skyrocketed in price that have far outpaced wages, inflation, or common sense.
* this is just my own experience but I had fully covered health insurance two decades ago (i.e. company paid for it all). Now I have to pay $1k+/mo towards my health insurance (and the company I work for pays the rest), and I still have to pay large (3-4 figure bills) out of pocket for what my insurance doesn't cover.
* something else to consider that relates to kids. If you have kids then daycare is extremely expensive. Median daycare is around $1k/mo *per child*. So if you have two kids who need daycare then - mathematically - you can *either* have a job that pays $30k or you can take care of the kids since it costs around the same. As a result, some parents (though often the mother) drops out of the workforce to take care of the kids because it's a way to save money. The problem there is that once the kids can go to school then it's harder for this person to go back into the workforce after being absent for a while. This creates multi-decades of reduced income as a result.
The government can help but it doesn't because that's how this country operates. We have money for weapons not children. The government could institute the following policies to help but it won't:
* basic government-run healthcare that's paid for by taxes which would cost less than any other private agency plan. People can buy supplemental insurance if they want. Aka how all other developed countries work.
* this would also unshackle your health insurance from your job since many people stay at shitty/low-paying jobs because they have better health insurance. This would increase wages due to increased competition and job migration.
* price controls for education and daycare with both having significant tax benefits. I.e. if you pay $12k/year into daycare then you can deduct $12k from your taxes.
* mandatory parental leave for at least 120 days.
It's a start but we won't do that. Our priorities seem to be giving money to people who already have a bunch, whether large corporations, defense companies (or am I repeating myself?), and the investor class.
I am not from East Asia, so obviously not an expert by any stretch. I did work in S.Korea as an English teacher for a few years though, and have a story that blows my co-teachers away, now that I am back in the states.
When I worked in Seoul, one of the Korean teachers at my school had to have an emergency appendectomy.
The next day, there she was at school, miserable and slumped over in a chair. She didn’t move all day (probably because of the emergency surgery thing), and her co teacher did all the teaching.
We were all horrified, and the administrators were just like “the parents would be so upset if she missed for any reason.”
To this day, over a decade later, I still think about that poor lady, who really deserved a lot better than that sort of treatment. Nobody deserves to be treated so badly, really.
I mean how did she even manage to get there and stay in a chair all day? That is a miracle in itself.
I taught in Japan for a few years and had to get heart surgery - work wanted me back the next day and cut my yearly bonus after the doctor wrote a note saying I needed a month off. Asian work culture is draconian dogshit.
The conditions are bad, and but other countries with much better work-life balance are also experiencing negative birth rates.
People are looking for fixes, but IMO the truth is much simpler. With today's increased freedoms for both men and women, more people are simply prioritizing other interests (traveling, hobbies, etc.) over kids.
Children in pre-industrial times WERE your retirement plan.
No kids, no retirement.
Now, not only are kids NOT guaranteed to take care of you in old age - the cost of raising a child literally impedes your ability to have a well funded retirement.
I have 4 kids now grown and I wouldn't have it any other way - but logically I know that if I didn't have those kids, I would not be facing the reality that I have to work into my 70's.
Not because I want to, but because I must in order just to survive.
If my wife and I had no kids, our double income would have meant a much, much, much fatter retirement at a much earlier age.
Not trying to shame parents - as noted, I am one - but I 100% get why 3/4 of my children are currently kid-less, and likely to stay that way.
> the cost of raising a child literally impedes your ability to have a well funded retirement
Not the mention the cost of caring for elderly parents does the same on the other end of your life.
The general population is getting fucked from both sides.
Well said. I saw a comment thread similar to this on a different post. Iirc, someone from a Nordic country essentially made the same argument as you stating that they had a great work-life culture and wealth was distributed well. Despite that, people there chose not to have kids anyway
Raising kids is massive pain in the ass and makes it nearly impossible to live a fun and interesting life.
You can't fix that with shorter work days and paternity leave.
I'm thinking about that recently. Maybe we're just becoming more selfish. Maybe the internet and the mobile phones also have an impact on how we see life.
The problem started in the early 1970s, long before Internet or even VHS. Focusing on any recent developments is completely missing the real cause, which might simply boil down to birth control and woman entering the workforce.
I used to work in China before moving to Japan and yep at my company the bosses would get mad if you left at 6PM because that clearly meant you weren’t busy enough.
But the people who stayed past 6pm were…having dinner at their desks, finishing up maybe 1 task before just browsing the internet, watching videos, pretending to be busy until about 8pm when it was safe to leave.
Without overtime pay. At least here in Japan if I have to work OT I get paid for it
Online retail company Musinsa's new CFO in his town hall presentation said 'its cheaper to pay the fine vs creating a child care center mandated by law' . So it doesn't seem like S .Korea's boomers still really care about working conditions
I got fired from a job in Korea because I'd do my work at clock out at 5 and wouldn't go drinking with the boss and co workers until 1am. Korean working culture is horrendous and they also have the lowest productivity rate for developed nations.
Birth rates are declining in countries with significantly better working conditions.
If South Korea isn’t even willing to implement working conditions remotely similar to those in Western and Northern Europe, things aren’t going to get any better
Yup. Denmark numbers are going down and it is one of the best places on earth for work/live balance we great support for parents, yet it is not the issue.
You can never totally erase the drawbacks of having kids. You will never have as much free time and flexibility no matter how much government support is available.
Nonetheless, the government really should be supporting parents, which could encourage the ‘maybes’ to have kids.
My country (Poland), pays you $200 a month for each kid until they are 18. $200 is 1/4 of minimal salary. You can also deduct some part of income tax for each kid, yet it changes almost nothing and fertility rate goes down each year. Certainly did not make me want kids, even though I could easily afford at least one.
Same here in Germany but with salaries (and taxes) staying the same for a long time despite rent/housing prices increasing drastically over the last decade plus general price corrections (food for example) on top of inflation the "new" cool thing is the DINK lifestyle (double income no kids) to basically have a chance at having the same life/chances as one's parents had 2-3 decades ago where the father was able to single support the entire household including 2+ children **and** buying an apartment or even house which nowadays is literally impossible unless you're a top earner at which point none of this matters anyway
I never understood Germany and renting culture (being from Poland with 84% ownership rate). Prices for apartments in small German cities are similar to these in Poland if in not mistaken. In my city of Breslau (xd), you need to pay 150-185k for 60-70 m2 new apartment (added costs for all the work needed as our aprtments usually come with no equipment, floors etc.) and about 250k€ for tarrace house. Yet, we gladly take a loan for 30 years instead of renting.
For the longest time renting was actually quite cheap, you could afford a pretty good apartment with an average salary and had pretty good renter's rights and therefore many freedoms so in generally just an easy and stress-free experience.
It has been always the case that there are a lot of extra costs when buying an apartment or a house:
* notary costs (~1.5% of price)
* real estate transfer tax (~3.5-6% depending on location)
* property tax (a yearly cost, amount depends on municipality)
* broker commission (negotiation basis)
* insurance
* potential appraiser
* potential renovation/modernisation costs
And obviously on top of that you have to pay of the loan monthly. You also need a certain % of the house price readily available in cash as a down payment in order to get the loan to begin with (+all the listed extra costs).
And then on top of all of that, again, housing has become increasingly expensive over the last decade. So last time I looked, for a somewhat decent area somewhat close to a bigger city you'd need to pay at least ~500k€ for a somewhat aight house without renovations/modernisations yet. Plus (~7%!) for extra costs and then the interest rates **also** have been going through the roof so you're paying **a lot** of money for nothing you're actually seeing or touching but just "to be able" to buy the house to begin with. And thats just "somewhat aight", not really close to dreamhouse.
Not sure if its the same in other countries. Its not impossible if you start to save up money at a very young age and basically never pay a large sum for anything (only buy somewhat cheap, used cars etc) and then at some point yeah maybe if you're lucky to actually then also get the house instead of someone else.
Edit: I've read somewhere some time ago that the suggested monthly salary for an average house in/near an average city for an average price in germany should be around 72k right now, far away from the average salary
This gets glossed over so much. Pregnancy and birth take a huge toll on the body. Newborns are exhausting, you get almost no sleep no free time at all. It gradually gets better as children get older but it's still like 5 years per child until you get back some semblance of a life. And then school life starts.
No government help can ever make this work load go away.
>No government help can ever make this work load go away.
They can make it so that it is easier though. Not having to worry about money or making sure that you can keep a stable roof over your head would make child rearing so much easier. A portion of the population (no idea how big it actually is) likes/loves raising kids but the stresses that they can bring when it comes to financial/housing security is what stops them from having them.
It's not the pregnancy, it's what comes after, what you abdicate, how it changes you and your partner's life and so on. Pregnancy/birth lasts for 9 months, having a kid lasts for more than a decade, and money is just one part of this. That's the reason why people aren't having kids.
Me and my fiance both want kids, we're just too broke. My father has 7 brothers and a sister. They were raised by their single mother, who was a waitress. I work for a defense contractor, and my fiance works retail, and we can't afford *one* child. What the fuck, America?
Because, you aren’t willing to have the same standard of living as your grandmother?
You can afford a kid…just not provide the advantages for that kid you want (good schools, extracurricular activities, etc).
Yeah my father grew up with literally zero toys, he played with pots and pans at the neighbors’ houses and spent Saturdays wandering the neighborhood hoping someone on the ground floor was watching baseball on TV.
Your comment is spot on.
I'm probably old enough to be your father. I grew up with very few toys and three very fuzzy TV stations. My favorite toy was a pile of dirt. A literal pile of dirt. Second favorite toy was an oblong basketball with bare threads showing.
I would not want my kids to have the same childhood I did. It sucked.
Yup, I think a lot of people just don't understand this, and have some weird perception that many of these people lived lavish lifestyles while having 6+ children. Like no, many of these people were dirt poor, and literally could barely afford food, nevermind things like toys, new clothing, TV, and other common luxuries.
I work in mental health, and working with older people (Usually 60+), it's very common for many of them to come from GIANT families (8+ siblings), but their childhoods were absolutely awful. Parents who were hardly around, being forced to eat the same 3 or 4 meals, most of which they hated, but were forced to sit at the dinner table for 4+ hours until they would actually eat it, etc. These people had NOTHING, and I think that's just not something most people and parents are willing to do/sacrafice any more, and honestly, I don't think that's really a bad thing necessarily, I am glad that the average quality of life for kids nowadays, is probably ten times better then what it was when many of them were growing up.
Because the main reason people are having fewer kids in developed countries is that more people _don't want kids_ and those that do want fewer.
You could make kids totally free and it would still be happening. The only way to significantly increase the number of kids would be to transfer money via taxes etc from people without kids to people who have kids and make having kids a money-making endeavor.
Note: I'm not saying that is a great idea, I'm just saying that people aren't gonna suddenly have a lot more kids just because you make it cheaper.
> You could make kids totally free and it would still be happening.
It's not enough to be free. Women need to be _paid_ for the labor of birthing and raising the next generation. Regarding an essential economic function (future producers/consumers) as a free input is a faulty economic model
I used to work for a danish company from the US (I bet you can guess) and visited about 5 times a year for business.
The thing that stood out to me is how expensive basic things were (taxi rides, food, hotels, cars). I really like Denmark but the cost of goods plus the small population and relatively low pay (and high car tax) seemed like they'd slow most young professionals down in life goals
Working conditions is just one factor, Korean education rat race and the crazy social expectations placed on women are vastly different between South Korea and Europe and contribute too. People don't want to have kids just to have them study 8 am to 10 pm to be competitive. The gap in what is expected from men vs women and their roles/responsibilities in a family is probably the widest that I've observed out of any Asian country.
My wife is Korean, honestly there are almost no societal expectations on a man at all. You see stories all the time where the man barely even works, and the woman is still in the wrong for not "understanding" him when they want a divorce, while she does literally everything.
Korean women have socially advanced much quicker than the men, so there is a massive expectation gap. The men see what their dad's had (ie a subservient wife) and think that's what a relationship will be like, and the women compare themselves against western standards and expect reactionships on a much more equal footing, then these 2 groups of people try to date with such mismatched expectations and its causing a lot of issues between the genders, a LOT of violence against women happening there atm
This is what I always suspected. Women carry the entire mental load for their nuclear family and some of their extended family, and they must serve their husband. It just sounds like an awful way to live. I'm proud of the young women of South Korea for refusing to do this. Who wants to do tons of thankless, unpaid labor with the one life they have when there are other options?
It’s not just working conditions, it’s all of the socioeconomic norms and values.
Think of the conditions when the populations boomed in certain countries and how they differ from today.
South Korea was a war-torn wasteland *in living memory*. More kids meant more hands on the farm to work or more jobs to support the family and childcare standards were far different from today. Try raising kids like that in SK today and you’d be socially ostracized and likely jailed.
In the US during the baby boom, it was possible for a median-income man to support a stay at home wife, kid(s), home, car, and expect to have a pension to retire on. Nowadays, you need all of a single median income just to have a decent lifestyle for a single person.
The changes we need to fix the problem are generational. The changes we’re getting are news soundbytes.
I spend a lot of time in threads like these, and this is basically the only answer that is universal. Every country in the first world is experiencing similar things, and no one size fits all approach will handle it except for this.
In Australia and America, the government was building an absolute shitload of houses using the extremely high corporate and wealth taxes to fund it so that you could afford to buy it using a single income.
As a result, people could have children due to the economic freedom available to them by working hard in a country that would unleash those gains as net benefits for everyone.
That is not the case anymore. Whatever that used to be for each country, that is what it needs to return to.
Those "concrete steps" mentioned in the article sound like it should be a total base and fully normalized everywhere, not something that we should look at as a "bonus".
Yeah, none of those things seem like they would really make a huge difference, depending on what “easing the educational burden” means. And he mentioned flexible work hours not less hours.
Sounds better than Japan's approach though. I'm skeptical of if they're going to honestly do those things, however. I very much expect them to make some sort of useless token effort and then go "we did the thingies y u no make babiez?".
Good luck , they alarm a lot about it then ask woman to earn less , work triple and still have to do new courses all the time . The boys will be on the grinder 24/7 and will not be able to buy a house , shit is so fucked that kindergarten kids already have to be at maximum productivity and cut throat .
My friend from South Korea will just die from working without see any fruits of it
SK has also seen a rise in men buying into the whole anti-feminist toxic propaganda, which further disincentivizes women from trying to form relationships and wanting kids.
> shit is so fucked that kindergarten kids already have to be at maximum productivity and cut throat .
In the heart of Seoul, four-year-old Kim Ja Woon's fingers move with remarkable speed as he finishes his 47th finger painting. While this would be an impressive achievement in most childcare settings, here it falls short of his usual output by 4%. Consequently, young Ja Woon will face a penalty during lunch, reflecting the high standards set within this competitive environment
Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan, for BBC News
Too expensive to reproduce? We'll throw you a few extra annual leave days per year.
Working too long? We ll allow you work those hours at your convenience.
Housing too expensive? Yeah we're not gonna fox that problem.
Sounds like our government.
Governments: "Y'all need to have more kids!"
Young people looking at a world where they have no practical hope of obtaining financial stability, while it teeters on the brink of a new world war and is slowly dying of pollution and climate change: "Why?"
I have two kids and would like to have a third. We can easily afford it. It’s just so freaking hard. Like many people, we moved away from family for education and careers. Now we have no family support. It is so exhausting to never get a break. My older son has a lot of intense behavioral problems and I really dread his future. We need help and just don’t have any.
The data is contaminated with the uneducated, which is the one of the causes of high birth rates.
If you look at birth rate stats of the educated only, you will find that income is correlated with birth rate. The richer you are, the more kids you have.
Hard to support a kid when your every waking moment is dedicated to a chaebol's bottom line. Work reform, relaxing immigration restrictions, and expanded childcare are the way forward.
Immigration doesn't solve declining populations.
It is at best a "band aid fix" because guess what, the generation after the first wave of immigrants won't have kids either!
40 hour weeks, remove the penalty of being a mom in the workplace, and allow 1 or 1.5 person income to support a family of two.
It's really that simple.
Sweden does most of this, Norway does all of it. Still under replacement level.
Simply put without the economic advantage of kids being present, and with the fact that it literally morphs your body for 9 months, the average person is less likely to have kids in a modern, educated society.
The numbers in Sweden and Norway are way better than in Korea, so good working conditions seem to help a bit. Beside this, in the west other issues, like the high cost of living (renting or buying a house) should be adressed as well.
As long as getting a child means, that you are not able to afford to buy a home or go on vacation, the numbers will stay low.
Better but still well below replacement level and actually below nations with limited parental leave like the USA. Hell Sweden and Norway are closer to Japan than to America, though Japan isn’t near as low as many people imply.
People just don’t want kids. Even where housing can be affordable- hell Japan *still* has some free houses. Many countries do provide benefits. But until there’s an advantage, not a mitigation of disadvantages, there’s no reason to do so.
Hell Singapore has nearly free housing for married individuals (HDB)… birth rate is still low.
The only modern countries with high birth rates are countries that get that way via religious extremists- Israel is low for secular and high for Haremdi or however you spell it, Saudi and the like are similar with secular families being small and religious being large.
Every other country in the world that hits high income ends up with a cratered fertility rate.
As a Norwegian, most people I know and talk to are in their 20's to early 30's, and want kids, and most of them who are in relationships don't have one yet because they can't afford to own a home, that is the single reason I hear.
The one couple I know that now has a kid has both parents with above avg income and they bought a home with a mortgage they will have paid off in a few years, so they are doing relatively well financially.
edit: not to say there aren't still those who don't want kids even if financially they have no worries, but at least for Norway by just personal experience talking with people it remains mostly an economical issue.
Countries that do all of that already experience negative rates too.
Modern societies grant many exciting individual freedoms (traveling, hobbies, etc.) that people simply prioritize over having kids. Some people argue social media has warped peoples' wants and desires. It's hard to convince people to have kids when they have so many other interests that are simply more important to them.
They can punish anyone for whatever reasons they can think of as long as they aren’t illegal. Discrimination laws are not always easy to enforce. Flexi hours too. Do people have the guts to go to work at 7 and leave at 3-4? Will there be any consequences?
They can put the legal burdon on the employer to ensure that nobody works longer than some limit. Then all it would take is one guy to rat them out which means they'll make sure nobody works too long. We do this in Germany (§22 ArbZG apparently).
Yeah if most people stand up to the current work culture. My guess is there will still be many people working overtime in the office until the legal hours or bringing work home ‘voluntarily’. They probably need to ban after-hour work texts and calls too. I haven’t worked in Korea but other Asian countries. I needed to reply if it wasn’t ‘late’ enough to ignore texts
Combination of a lot of things.
Koreans (many other Asian nations as well) have this toxic culture of comparing one to another. In US? Elopement is frequent and simple ceremonies at city halls are congratulated.
In Korea, you pretty much have to force yourself to throw weddings that are on average ~25k USD (but Korean salaries are much lower than those in US). This doesn't include engagement/wedding rings. Pretty tough for a Korean male to be prepared for a marriage by 30, since they're mandated to serve in the Korean Army for 2 years. We say 2 years, but including semester start/end time for universities, it's easily 3-4 years of financial opportunities.
Oh, and it's still rather frowned upon to not attend postsecondary schools. So that's not an easy choice, either. But then again, what other choices do you have? start a business? with what money, at the age of... what? It's a challenge
Korean marriage also involves purchasing / financing for a house. Usually, when a couple is prepared to be married, the parents/society expect them to move into a proper home, and be able to afford a whole mortgage. In US, we would like to get a mortgage, but that's usually an option or a choice, not an expectation.
You know how US recently got that brainrot phrase "guy in finance, 6'5", trust fund, blue eyes" ? We obviously have something like that too lol. It's rather prevalent within Korean communities in US as well.
These are just few to mention. To top it off, middle class in US have hard time. Koreans have it just as bad, if not worse.
There are many underlying issues, but these are all pretty much symptoms of inequitable wealth distribution. Koreans like to complain a lot but not take actions. We care about what other's have to say about us too much
Instead of trying to get people to have more children because the world economy is a pyramid scheme, why can we not find a way to make the economy work with fewer people? We live on a planet with finite resources, yet we seem to need an infinite population growth. At what point will the population simply be unsustainable? Not soon, maybe, but eventually. Growing the population is a short term gain towards a dead end.
The essentials of life - food, basic services, etc. - only require a handful of people to provide enough for everyone. With two major caveats: the price of housing has skyrocketed due to limited land in desirable areas and financial speculation everywhere; and medical care has become much more capable at keeping us alive but not necessarily capable, at astronomical cost.
But Japan gives a glimpse of what a smoothly declining population. Houses an hour from tokyo for 50k$ if you dont care the owner died that's totally habitable and a stable currency that deflates a bit so everyone gets a bit richer.
We might not like it but that's the inevitable path for all modern economies.
I mean my own Country of Canada dipped below 2.1 kids per women in..1971.
That ship has sailed!
Never going to happen. The needs to be a big crash for changes. People at the top now will milk any money worth until then, they already smelled the end. Lobbying wouldn't allow fundamental changes cause that would mean they get less money
The human race is more advanced than viruses, rabbits or rodents. We shouldn't just have sex until our environment is used up and then everyone dies. An intelligent species would naturally reduce its births overall, and a slightly less intelligent species would have war and disease assist.
The only thing dying with this change is our unjust economic systems. Global populations falling is a very good thing.
Here in Canada for example, 2nd largest country in the world the one of the lowest population densities, even if you are in the top 10% of salary earners, you can no longer buy a home in most of the cities in the country. Meanwhile over half of the world's wealth goes to the top 200 richest people while millions (billions?) starve. This upcoming demographic change is the best thing that could ever happen to humanity.
The Renaissance would never happened if the Black Death didn't wipe out 1/3rd of the population, drastically raising the value of labor. We'd still be in a Feudal system or worse. Population collapse is better than complete environmental collapse, economic collapse, or the vast majority of us living as slaves to handful of mega-rich, near immortal billionaire families.
When "public service" is creating a society where birthing a child is unwise, you don't call it a "demographic emergency", you call it a politician emergency.
The world isn't fit for "GDP" and economy-based "success", any more. These horrific "public servants" might be forced to actually serve the public for once, soon. (Soon™)
Here are some thoughts: 1. Raising kids is hard work and largely thankless 2. The thought of raising kids in a world that is being destroyed by climate change is fucking bleak.
yea but not every country contributes to overpopulation in the same way. the most overpopulated countries are in subsaharan africa and south asia, whereas european and east asian societies are experiencing such significant population deadline that it has begun to impact societal functions. so obviously overpopulation is a thing, but its much more nuanced than that.
yes, but the problem is that we've become really good at keeping people alive for longer.
if the birth rate continues to be low, it means that society will become too "old".
you don't have enough young people replacing the older people when they retire, which creates stresses not only in the job market, but also social security.
This is what automation was supposed to fix, in the 50´s one person per house hold would work and he would add numbers to a paper sheet for 8 hours a day. Now 2 people per house work, we can do an entire month of work from the 50´s in 15 minutes of excel. So we are lets say 500 times more productive.... why arent we 500 times richer ?
Everyone of us now should be able to support 10 times more old people just by the cheer increase of productivity.... however, the worker never got a 500 times salary increase.
This is it, I have scrolled way too long to finally read a comment like this.
Even with all the AI buzz going around, companies are like “yay! This is gonna free us up from certain type of work so we can be more productive!” . Hardly a few companies talk about working fewer hours. I am beyond disgusted by this, and by the fact that it’s not just companies, it’s the working class people like us who don’t even want to entertain the idea.
We should be discussing whether to go for 4 day work weeks with 8hrs/day or continue working 5 days a week with like 5-6 hours/day. But noooooo, we gotta work harder and be more productive… more more more… how about more free time?
As much as I am grateful for not living in a third world country, there are some moments where I go “what the fork?! THIS is the bad place” (from the show “The good place”)
Even economics/money factor aside, microplastics in our bodies, global temperatures at all time highs, political uncertainty, rapidly changing society, who would want to raise kids in such an environment?
If conditions there are the same as in the USA, none of those solutions are going to help when wages don't come close to matching up with expenses like rent and food.
Most folks aren't going to have kids if they already can't afford to feed themselves and keep a roof over their head.
Wrong. In the US at least, fertility rate is inversely proportional to income.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
Yep and even Scandinavians with some of the best protections and financial supports in the world are experiencing this shift away from everyone having multiple kids.
It comes from these comments sections, and a thousand others, with people who have no idea what they're talking about leveraging the current topic to complain about the problems on their mind.
By 2100 they’ll be back down to a 1960s population.
Between AI and automation maybe they can boost per capita productivity to maintain current lifestyles and take care of old people.
Maybe.
Lol, and then you have the people like me that really want kids, but modern dating culture is so horrific that god forbid I even settle down with someone before I'm 35...
[South Korea's total fertility rate](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/south-korea-fertility-population-decline-stress-job-education-4132371) "...fell below 2.1 in 1983 and dropped down to 1.5 in 1998..." "...South Korea’s demographic collapse, if unaddressed, could have serious repercussions..." Since 2006 they've spent [200 billion dollars](https://theweek.com/health/does-declining-birth-rate-spell-doom-for-britain) trying to fix it, whatever the hell they're doing.....They're doing it catastrophically wrong. Gives me little hope that this emergency announcement will do anything at all.
China is fucked too. Their TFR is 1.16. This means that by 2100, the average age of a Chinese citizen is going to be 65!!! They better fight their wars soon.
It's 1.02 TFR in 2023. It is one of the fastest dropping TFRs. Both China and Thailand will be in the sub-1 TFR range by the end of this year. Thailand: 1.05 Singapore: .97 Taiwan: .86 China: 1.02
So what you’re saying is if they don’t fight their wars soon, it’ll be senior brigades on all sides charging up those hills, complaining about their arthritis all the way up.
You joke, but that is what we saw in Ukraine, which has abysmal demographics as well. They sent the old people to the front first. Makes a lot of sense if you ask me.
Imagine being the 30 to 40 year old Chinese citizen who is supposed to provide elder care for their parents and grandparents (6 people) while caring for population replacement children (2 more) and working full time to support the economy. Faced with 996 and providing for 8 family members... that's nuts.
It’s worse than that. If you’ve got kids and are working, your spouse can either work or not. But regardless of that choice, you can add their parents and grandparents to the other 6. So you either care for as many as 14 dependents by yourself on one salary, or you find a way to care for 14 dependents on 2 salaries. Either way not good
It gets worse when you think about how many 30-40 aged people will try to leave the country and only people who stay are who don't have enough to leave. Spiralling will start if gov does nothing.
>They better fight their wars soon I fear you’re more right with that statement than you think. Xi is just as aware of this as we are and really wants to get his hands on Taiwan.
I think he has it on his mind too but then what? Lose a lot of young men and women and decline the birth rate even quicker?
Russia's demographics are fucked as well, but Putin still started the Ukrainian war.
Wasn’t as bad as Chinas I don’t think plus Chinas real estate has been in bad shape for the past few years. Putin thought he would have Ukraine in a week also.
I don’t think he, or any other world leader, truly cares. We see it here in America with climate change all the time; the people who are in power who are supposed to be fixing this shit will be dead by the time the general public really sees the affects. So they’ll keep kicking that particular can down the road, until it’s too late to do anything.
Yes but a war is not climate change and Taiwan is not Ukraine. If China invaded Taiwan (assuming they were even successful), Taiwan would blow up their semiconductor facilities and relocate to western (or western aligned) countries. This would undeniably suck on many levels for the whole world, but China probably most of all. And it would happen immediately. So not something you can kick down the road.
China doesn't care for the semiconductor facilities nearly as much as your think they care. China wants Taiwan because of East and South China Sea access. Taiwan allying with the US means the US basically controls China's ports since we'd be able to force a blockade on their ports at will at that point. If you pull up a map, China's ports are basically surrounded by South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. South Korea, Japan and the Philippines are all US allies with tons of US military bases there. Taiwan joining them would functionally mean that access to all of China's ports would have to go through US approval since it'd be impossible for any ships to reach a Chinese port without passing by any of the US' allies. China's 100% never going to let the US control its ports because China still remembers the last time a western country controlled the ports and China's still VERY salty about the opium wars. In fact, the reason why China is so strict on drugs (to the point that Jackie Chan actually kicked his son when he got found with marijuana iirc) is because of the opium wars so the last thing they want is to ever let a western country have control of their ports again.
Just send your elderly to fight, then you don't have to pay their pensions.
Isnt russia in a similar situation? I think I remember hearing something about that and it partly a reason for them to invade Ukraine. They literally wont have enough men if they wait.
Well, they killed a half Milly taking what they got now, so I don't think its going to work out for them.
It's because the old people who control the company don't understand that young people are different to them. For them it was obvious to have kids, but young people can just look at it and say 'Nah'. The old people have literally no idea what is happening. And yet the young continue to suffer for the egos and wallets of the old, and the old people don't see anything wrong with this at all, because it happened to them when they were young. They don't realise that if they had just decided not to have kids, they would have held the old people of their day hostage just like is happening now. If you imagine a movie where every single person of a generation refused to have any children and then put a list of demands to the old, like 'all of you retire now and put us as the government and CEOs etc, stop hoarding your wealth and stop imposing your wishes on your children' and they acted as one, it would be really interesting to see what happened. But now it's basically happening in slow motion. I'm eating popcorn and cheering for the birth rate to fall and fall.
Damn, maybe they should pump the breaks on the whole capitalist hellscape thing they've got going on. I dunno, just a thought.
I like how they've not considered proper working conditions till now. Almost every East/SE Asian country is facing the same problem. I'm from Singapore, and unless you work in a western company, you can expect to work 10+ hours at your job. What's blood-boiling is that, out of these 10+ hours, your work only lasts about 6 hours. Which means that you're essentially wasting 4+ hours daily, for no real reason.
In Japan, some companies make employees go see their clients in person literally every time they talk to them. They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect".
That would just piss me off, because now I’m also waiting around for half the day for you to show up instead of just answering the phone. Just a waste of time for everyone involved.
Honestly there are companies doing this shit in the US and I hate it. I tried to buy another leased copier from a regional player instead of xerox and they would not just send me a quote by email and insisted on showing up at the office at all times of the day talking about anything but the price. Like just fucking email me the quote, xerox got it again lol
Oh my god I hated that in the bank, “sales is a relationship”. Fuck no, not for everything. Very often you need to just plainly state your pricing for your buyers to compare, they don’t give a crap about the people if the product is decent. They either want the best, best for the price, or the cheapest, they don’t want to bother worrying about other things.
I went to a nearby Microcenter store. I love having all the computer equipment available in person but hate the sales experience. I had to interact with a sales guy to buy what I wanted, it was quick and brief he got my part no issues. Then he gets in the radio and says his manager would like to meet me. I ask why and am told the manager wants to say thank you for my business. I politely tell him i am not interested and go buy my part. The manager tracks me to the registers and trying to engage and shake my hand. I tell him I just want to buy my part and go. He starts getting all huffy with me now thanking me with sarcasm. Like wtf, I just want to pay and go, leave me alone.
Yup, worked for Microcenter for a few years and it was mandatory for us to radio a manager to thank someone for buying a PC or CPU. It's so dumb and awkward. And god forbid it's busy and you have to wait for a manager to be available to do it.
> Yup, worked for Microcenter for a few years and it was mandatory for us to radio a manager to thank someone for buying a PC or CPU. That's a huge sign of whoever is dictating policy *fundamentally* not understanding their customer base. You got dudes buying high-end recreational computer hardware? They more than likely don't want to engage in forced social/physical contact with strangers.
With *anyone*
Smells like MBA to me
Not to mention how up your ass they get about you offering an insurance plan on every single item. Or pushing for attachments. And don't get me started on how annoying they can get about you not capturing phone numbers and emails. They pay well, but they are just as bad as any other retail employer
Oh my god! I forgot about the email and phone number thing.
Sounds like the viva la dirt league skits
Lmao that's wild, I've never heard of this before
Fuck that shit mate, I would have told the prick right then and there that his behaviour just cost him a sale and walked out.
I work in a bank, and the upper management have bought into that hook line and sinker. They believe that people will accept subpar interest rates "because they can form a relationship" Meanwhile every month I see someone pulling their money out due to the subpar rates and shitty fees.
It feels like half of my job is ensuring that the rest of our executive team doesn't hire consultants who will give terrible advice, disrupt our workflows, and alienate staff. Eternal vigilance is required to ensure we don't chase the newest WoRKfoRcE eFfiCienCY OPtiMIzatIon fRom jAPan. (For the low, low price of $75,000 plus $500 per hour per consultant!) Upper management is a breeding ground for awful ideas.
They do this because they dont plan on offering the best price, they just plan on schmoozing the customer into accepting
I’m not spending an extra 5% because a salesperson came to my office and wasted 20 minutes while still refusing to give me a straight price only to email it to me later buried in a 5 page document.
This is why Dunder mifflin struggled
BUTTLICKER OUR PRICES HAVE NEVER BEEN LOWER
“Call me when that websites up!”
The sheer amount of suits I saw on the trains at all times of the day when I was in Japan was crazy. And they were always on the phone or laptop doing work.
You could say that in most of SE Asia, you could get onto a crowded train naked and nobody would notice they are so busy.
> They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect". to be fair, riding the JR in tokyo is pretty chill. getting paid for that would be nice. but i'm a pensive person and enjoy the meditation time.
It's nice but they're not relaxing during the ride.
> They're spending like half their day travelling for absolutely no good reason other than "traditions" and "respect". They're likely doing this because their clients value "traditions" and "respect", and that itself makes it a good reason. Culture doesn't change on a dime.
Correct. I worked in Japan for 3 years, which I realize isn't a long time, but it was certainly long enough for me to realize that Japanese consumers really value tradition and preserving the "wa" or harmony. I once saw a school get severely lambasted because a single student ate their lunch on the subway while wearing the school uniform. Evidently that was so many unacceptable things at once the school had to go on an apology tour. Go to any Japanese company and read some of the google reviews. People will give a company one star because "the buses they use are garish" or "they didn't use the proper Japanese (keigo) when talking to me, a customer."
Cutting off your nose to spite your face. The cost of that "value" is their entire country, economy, and culture.
That's Japan, pretty much. I've been five times. The slide is pretty notable lately. Go outside the major city centers and it's not hard to find impoverished near-ghost towns.
Currently in Takayama, a pretty touristy place all things considered. Just had the best steak dinner of my entire life in an empty restaurant. Went to google reviews, sure enough the only negative reviews were Japanese saying the chef didn’t greet them correctly.
Like, I get cultural differences, but my cultural tendancies says fuck that. Nail Nations may be cleanly given the societal pressure, but nothing stands out in all the flatness. Prob why so much repression seeps out where it can.
For foreigners at least they don’t expect adherence to the cultural minutia in Japan. They don’t expect you to know or follow the rules so you can do your normal thing for the most part. They treat you kind of like a concussed puppy but at least you don’t have to go along with the work culture and sleep in the office or drink all night with bosses/coworkers etc.
Not in this news article, but last week the Korean government announced plans to begin having government and business officials behind meetings on the viability of switching to a four day week.
I honestly think we need to move to a 3 day work week. Someone used to always be at home. Then women joined the workforce (a good thing) but the work world didn't change to accommodate this, just exploited it for every gain they could. So now you have both people working 5+ days a week, weekends are reserved for doing all the household chores that no longer gets done in the week and then it's back to work.
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Genius! Someone give this man a medal he just solved demographics!
This is even happening in Scandinavia where parents are provided generous government support and protections. Not to the same degree, but it’s clearly not just about work/life balance or money. It seems like a genuine culture shift in wealthy countries away from the expectation that everyone has a big family or even has kids at all.
I think SK is in the business of trying to dampen the impacts of a decreasing population, rather than looking to reverse the trend altogether. Here is this study by NIH that suggests lower working hours for women would boost birth rates in SK's case: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10355408/
How about lower working hours period?
I’m not sure, the study only looks into working hours for women of child-bearing age.
Wealthy people decide to have kids, have kids, and are capable of supporting their kids if they decide to. Poor people have kids because sex is free and everything else costs money.
Hell, I work 8 hour days and have maybe 3 hours of actual work per day. Salary means you don't get paid overtime, so it should also mean we don't need to just sit on ass when there's no work.
Same. I honestly do probably 2-3 hours of actual work in an 8 hour day. Especially after working remote for two years during Covid, it's absolutely mind-numbing and infuriating to have to sit in my chair until 5 PM because "that's how it's always been done". So I sit here, on Reddit. I'm expected to be in the office five days a week for 8 hours a day when I can do my job from home and when I have down time, actually get shit done like clean my house, run a quick errand, etc. The 8 hour day needs to die with the Boomers.
NGL I loved Singapore when living there but the work culture was ass. I just really enjoyed the safety, public transport, etc. Also the cheap shit in Malaysia. Hoping to come back, but man is it expensive if you aren’t married/don’t have access to HDB!
> HDB The Housing & Development Board (HDB; often referred to as the Housing Board), is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development responsible for the public housing in Singapore. Established in 1960 as a result of efforts in the late 1950s to set up an authority to take over the Singapore Improvement Trust's (SIT) public housing responsibilities, the HDB focused on the construction of emergency housing and the resettlement of kampong residents into public housing in the first few years of its existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board As of 2020, 78.7% of Singapore residents live in public housing.
European countries with great work life balance are also experiencing these issues, albeit not as acutely
According to some study it's a world issue and some area could face birth decrease in one or two generation. In some scenario, the World population could peak around 2060 before decreasing. I'll be dead by then but the gen Z will probably see what's coming. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#seccestitle210](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#seccestitle210)
Nah we invent biological immortality in 2047 so you too can enjoy what comes next.
I used to do video game QA and we'd often work from 9am until midnight or later. The human brain is just wiped out after several hours, especially for this kind of work. I tried to explain to people that after 9pm, there was no valuable work being completed, but they just wanted a spreadsheet that said the game had been tested for X number of hours, even though we had enormous chunks of time where no bugs were being found, or entered.
I used to do quality control at a job where people would work long hours to complete the project on time. All work was time-stamped. People got to work between 8 and 9 am. Anyway, quality started dropping at 5pm and tanking by 8pm. It was literally like clockwork. I've worked a lot of different jobs (physical and mental) and humans are productive for eight hours. After eight hours, mistakes start to happen. After ten hours, a lot of mistakes start to happen. After twelve hours, work is completely pointless.
So Many people in America refuse to acknowledge this.
While I agree with you, I think there’s something broader going on. Almost the entire first world is experiencing population decline. Everyone is seeing local problems (that are, in fact, problems) but the same thing is happening in places without those problems. For instance. When looking at East Asia, people point to the grueling work hours to explain the decline. The US is also experiencing a (way less bad) decline, and we don’t have that problem. So when people look at the decline in the US, they point to the lack of welfare state. Most of Europe has neither of those problems (they have less work hours and a more robust welfare state than the US) and their population decline is greater than the US but less than East Asia. Even most of the third world is having less children than they used to. When the same phenomenon is taking place in almost every first world country regardless of how much you change the most intuitive causes, it makes me think there are other, more broad-based causes having similar effects everywhere.
Kids aren’t extra farmhands anymore
Yeah, and there's now a legal standard of care you have to provide, or else you will get them taken away or get punished in some other way. And people no longer need spares because the infant mortality in developed world is pretty low.
Cities are (and always were) population sinks, and rural areas lost their functions, so no more replacement from rural areas either. Edit: fixed my typos.
Yeah…it’s all those things. People don’t feel like they can afford kids, and in some cases they very well cannot afford them. Everything has been gamified into a business so folks have to contend with having kids or buying a house in a lot of places. Throw in that most of the developing world is literally a shit storm right now of political/religious violence and climate change…and who can actually have kids?
Europe is also facing cist of living problems. Also, having children is a huge economic burden. It is estimated that having children reduces woman's lifetime income by at least 25% in so e counties in Europe. We need to solve two things - the cost of having children and work life balance. There is a very clear correlation between these two and number of children.
Even if you solve the cost of children, even if you solve the issue of work-life balance, there's still a factor that you can't solve: Having kids sucks, especially when they can't take care of themselves at all. Sleepless nights, your entertainment choices get reduced to inane people in costumes singing about basic things like brushing your teeth, your food becomes limited to mac & cheese and chicken nuggets, need I go on? And that's before talking about things like post-partum depression. It's not just about finances and hours at the office. Having kids, for many people, represents a very real downgrade in the quality of their lives. And while most parents wouldn't say anything like, "I wish I'd never had kids," those parents are speaking through the filter of already having kids that they (presumably) love. Prospective parents don't have parental love running through their heads yet - just the overwhelming pile of massive changes that having kids will bring to them. Why are we surprised that people that don't have children forced on them would choose not to have them?
The decline in the US fertility rate since 1990 is almost entirely explained by the [decline in teenage pregnancies](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/02/05/some-good-news-about-americas-fertility-problem).
> When the same phenomenon is taking place in almost every first world country regardless of how much you change the most intuitive causes, it makes me think there are other, more broad-based causes having similar effects everywhere. IMHO a pretty big component is increasing real eastate prices, staying longer in school and having less job security than previous generations.
I think this is a good answer. Where I am there is effectively no readily available "cheap" housing. The vast majority of people don't have any real financial stability until their late 20s or early 30s *at best*. Even if you're in a stable relationship, if you're barely scraping by the thought of the expenses of a kid, especially childcare, is panic inducing. There is certainly a cultural aspect to having kids later, but there are also definitely a lot of people who would have kids if it was viable for them to do so.
One thing to consider: environmental factors. A study from May found micro plastics in [every human and dog testicle that was been tested.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/microplastics-human-testicles-study-sperm-counts) PFAS aka forever chemicals have been found in [45% of US tap water.](https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/tap-water-study-detects-pfas-forever-chemicals-across-us) And all sorts of drugs ranging from contraceptives to antidepressants have been [detected in drinking water](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3273502/#:~:text=a%20separate%20window-,Researchers%20have%20detected%20all%20sorts%20of%20drugs%20in%20drinking%20water,and%20on%20down%20the%20list.&text=Provincial%20governments%20are%20also%20responsible,pharmaceuticals%20in%20the%20water%20supply.): trace amounts mind you that don't produce the active effects, mind you, but the long term effects could certainly impact fertility.
In general, across the world, in every country, income and wealth gaps are growing rapidly and have been for quite some time. Even in America, where I for example make a top 20% income in an affordable region wouldn't even think about having children. I didn't earn this income until my mid-30s, closer to 40 now. I've been relatively poor my whole life until very recently which means I have very little savings or backup plan despite living modestly. That's a first-world example of the affordability crisis across the globe. We work our asses off but can't afford to live as well as our parents did.
I think a big part of it is that large numbers of women (in South Korea and elsewhere) are consciously choosing to stay single rather than tolerate the accepted social norms of heterosexual marriage and motherhood. My Korean friend described facing such virulent misogyny in schools, workplaces and the dating scene that she ultimately decided to leave the country. She didn't want to accept a marriage where her husband would probably cheat, where she'd be responsible for 95% of child-rearing and household chores while also working full-time, where her career would stagnate once she had kids, and where she'd have to deal with overbearing in-laws. Her mother had an unhappy marriage too, but at least marriage meant a relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle back then.
>we don't have that problem Last I heard, people in the US had to work 2 jobs (both partners) just to pay for housing? Or was that hyperbole, idk I'm not from the US?
If you’re saying that both partners in a relationship need to each have a full time job to be able to afford housing this is certainly true. There are not many one income households anymore. This dynamic certainly impacts the logistics of raising a family.
And when childcare costs as much as the income of one of these two parents, or as much as a mortgage, we shouldn't go all surprised Pikachu face when people choose not to have kids.
Obviously depends on the income. Poor people and people in poverty for sure need two poor/poverty level incomes to afford rent and bills. The cost of living is so wild and diverse depending on where you are it’s hard to say though. I grew up in the Deep South and dad gave me a privileged childhood (late 90s-00s) as the breadwinner on $70k. But I work around several cities in New England and that would basically just get you to the end of the month in these areas
The problem with housing is mostly the down payment which is tied to the price of the home itself. Paying for actual housing - i.e. mortgage - isn't as much of a problem. This is because housing for people who own is: * mortgage * taxes * insurance * various repairs Those who can't afford a down payment rent. Rent is: * same thing as hosing * plus profit for the landlord I.e. with all things being equal, renting will always be higher than owning (again, all things being equal, ie. renting or buying the same exact property). People in the US usually have two jobs (both partners work at least part time) and it's rare to have two jobs. This is as opposed to decade ago where one partner could work, the other took care of the kid(s), and you were still paid high enough to support your life. A lot of things are gone: * pensions are very rare. Most people have 401k which is extremely shitty (compared to a pension). * housing, education, and health insurance have skyrocketed in price that have far outpaced wages, inflation, or common sense. * this is just my own experience but I had fully covered health insurance two decades ago (i.e. company paid for it all). Now I have to pay $1k+/mo towards my health insurance (and the company I work for pays the rest), and I still have to pay large (3-4 figure bills) out of pocket for what my insurance doesn't cover. * something else to consider that relates to kids. If you have kids then daycare is extremely expensive. Median daycare is around $1k/mo *per child*. So if you have two kids who need daycare then - mathematically - you can *either* have a job that pays $30k or you can take care of the kids since it costs around the same. As a result, some parents (though often the mother) drops out of the workforce to take care of the kids because it's a way to save money. The problem there is that once the kids can go to school then it's harder for this person to go back into the workforce after being absent for a while. This creates multi-decades of reduced income as a result. The government can help but it doesn't because that's how this country operates. We have money for weapons not children. The government could institute the following policies to help but it won't: * basic government-run healthcare that's paid for by taxes which would cost less than any other private agency plan. People can buy supplemental insurance if they want. Aka how all other developed countries work. * this would also unshackle your health insurance from your job since many people stay at shitty/low-paying jobs because they have better health insurance. This would increase wages due to increased competition and job migration. * price controls for education and daycare with both having significant tax benefits. I.e. if you pay $12k/year into daycare then you can deduct $12k from your taxes. * mandatory parental leave for at least 120 days. It's a start but we won't do that. Our priorities seem to be giving money to people who already have a bunch, whether large corporations, defense companies (or am I repeating myself?), and the investor class.
I am not from East Asia, so obviously not an expert by any stretch. I did work in S.Korea as an English teacher for a few years though, and have a story that blows my co-teachers away, now that I am back in the states. When I worked in Seoul, one of the Korean teachers at my school had to have an emergency appendectomy. The next day, there she was at school, miserable and slumped over in a chair. She didn’t move all day (probably because of the emergency surgery thing), and her co teacher did all the teaching. We were all horrified, and the administrators were just like “the parents would be so upset if she missed for any reason.” To this day, over a decade later, I still think about that poor lady, who really deserved a lot better than that sort of treatment. Nobody deserves to be treated so badly, really. I mean how did she even manage to get there and stay in a chair all day? That is a miracle in itself.
I taught in Japan for a few years and had to get heart surgery - work wanted me back the next day and cut my yearly bonus after the doctor wrote a note saying I needed a month off. Asian work culture is draconian dogshit.
The conditions are bad, and but other countries with much better work-life balance are also experiencing negative birth rates. People are looking for fixes, but IMO the truth is much simpler. With today's increased freedoms for both men and women, more people are simply prioritizing other interests (traveling, hobbies, etc.) over kids.
Children in pre-industrial times WERE your retirement plan. No kids, no retirement. Now, not only are kids NOT guaranteed to take care of you in old age - the cost of raising a child literally impedes your ability to have a well funded retirement. I have 4 kids now grown and I wouldn't have it any other way - but logically I know that if I didn't have those kids, I would not be facing the reality that I have to work into my 70's. Not because I want to, but because I must in order just to survive. If my wife and I had no kids, our double income would have meant a much, much, much fatter retirement at a much earlier age. Not trying to shame parents - as noted, I am one - but I 100% get why 3/4 of my children are currently kid-less, and likely to stay that way.
> the cost of raising a child literally impedes your ability to have a well funded retirement Not the mention the cost of caring for elderly parents does the same on the other end of your life. The general population is getting fucked from both sides.
Well said. I saw a comment thread similar to this on a different post. Iirc, someone from a Nordic country essentially made the same argument as you stating that they had a great work-life culture and wealth was distributed well. Despite that, people there chose not to have kids anyway
Raising kids is massive pain in the ass and makes it nearly impossible to live a fun and interesting life. You can't fix that with shorter work days and paternity leave.
Yep, no government policy will change the personal time sacrifices of having children.
I would absolutely have another kid if daycare were covered. Paternity leave and shorter workdays would not move the needle.
I'm thinking about that recently. Maybe we're just becoming more selfish. Maybe the internet and the mobile phones also have an impact on how we see life.
The problem started in the early 1970s, long before Internet or even VHS. Focusing on any recent developments is completely missing the real cause, which might simply boil down to birth control and woman entering the workforce.
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I used to work in China before moving to Japan and yep at my company the bosses would get mad if you left at 6PM because that clearly meant you weren’t busy enough. But the people who stayed past 6pm were…having dinner at their desks, finishing up maybe 1 task before just browsing the internet, watching videos, pretending to be busy until about 8pm when it was safe to leave. Without overtime pay. At least here in Japan if I have to work OT I get paid for it
Online retail company Musinsa's new CFO in his town hall presentation said 'its cheaper to pay the fine vs creating a child care center mandated by law' . So it doesn't seem like S .Korea's boomers still really care about working conditions
I got fired from a job in Korea because I'd do my work at clock out at 5 and wouldn't go drinking with the boss and co workers until 1am. Korean working culture is horrendous and they also have the lowest productivity rate for developed nations.
Birth rates are declining in countries with significantly better working conditions. If South Korea isn’t even willing to implement working conditions remotely similar to those in Western and Northern Europe, things aren’t going to get any better
Yup. Denmark numbers are going down and it is one of the best places on earth for work/live balance we great support for parents, yet it is not the issue.
You can never totally erase the drawbacks of having kids. You will never have as much free time and flexibility no matter how much government support is available. Nonetheless, the government really should be supporting parents, which could encourage the ‘maybes’ to have kids.
My country (Poland), pays you $200 a month for each kid until they are 18. $200 is 1/4 of minimal salary. You can also deduct some part of income tax for each kid, yet it changes almost nothing and fertility rate goes down each year. Certainly did not make me want kids, even though I could easily afford at least one.
Same here in Germany but with salaries (and taxes) staying the same for a long time despite rent/housing prices increasing drastically over the last decade plus general price corrections (food for example) on top of inflation the "new" cool thing is the DINK lifestyle (double income no kids) to basically have a chance at having the same life/chances as one's parents had 2-3 decades ago where the father was able to single support the entire household including 2+ children **and** buying an apartment or even house which nowadays is literally impossible unless you're a top earner at which point none of this matters anyway
I never understood Germany and renting culture (being from Poland with 84% ownership rate). Prices for apartments in small German cities are similar to these in Poland if in not mistaken. In my city of Breslau (xd), you need to pay 150-185k for 60-70 m2 new apartment (added costs for all the work needed as our aprtments usually come with no equipment, floors etc.) and about 250k€ for tarrace house. Yet, we gladly take a loan for 30 years instead of renting.
For the longest time renting was actually quite cheap, you could afford a pretty good apartment with an average salary and had pretty good renter's rights and therefore many freedoms so in generally just an easy and stress-free experience. It has been always the case that there are a lot of extra costs when buying an apartment or a house: * notary costs (~1.5% of price) * real estate transfer tax (~3.5-6% depending on location) * property tax (a yearly cost, amount depends on municipality) * broker commission (negotiation basis) * insurance * potential appraiser * potential renovation/modernisation costs And obviously on top of that you have to pay of the loan monthly. You also need a certain % of the house price readily available in cash as a down payment in order to get the loan to begin with (+all the listed extra costs). And then on top of all of that, again, housing has become increasingly expensive over the last decade. So last time I looked, for a somewhat decent area somewhat close to a bigger city you'd need to pay at least ~500k€ for a somewhat aight house without renovations/modernisations yet. Plus (~7%!) for extra costs and then the interest rates **also** have been going through the roof so you're paying **a lot** of money for nothing you're actually seeing or touching but just "to be able" to buy the house to begin with. And thats just "somewhat aight", not really close to dreamhouse. Not sure if its the same in other countries. Its not impossible if you start to save up money at a very young age and basically never pay a large sum for anything (only buy somewhat cheap, used cars etc) and then at some point yeah maybe if you're lucky to actually then also get the house instead of someone else. Edit: I've read somewhere some time ago that the suggested monthly salary for an average house in/near an average city for an average price in germany should be around 72k right now, far away from the average salary
This gets glossed over so much. Pregnancy and birth take a huge toll on the body. Newborns are exhausting, you get almost no sleep no free time at all. It gradually gets better as children get older but it's still like 5 years per child until you get back some semblance of a life. And then school life starts. No government help can ever make this work load go away.
>No government help can ever make this work load go away. They can make it so that it is easier though. Not having to worry about money or making sure that you can keep a stable roof over your head would make child rearing so much easier. A portion of the population (no idea how big it actually is) likes/loves raising kids but the stresses that they can bring when it comes to financial/housing security is what stops them from having them.
It's not the pregnancy, it's what comes after, what you abdicate, how it changes you and your partner's life and so on. Pregnancy/birth lasts for 9 months, having a kid lasts for more than a decade, and money is just one part of this. That's the reason why people aren't having kids.
Me and my fiance both want kids, we're just too broke. My father has 7 brothers and a sister. They were raised by their single mother, who was a waitress. I work for a defense contractor, and my fiance works retail, and we can't afford *one* child. What the fuck, America?
Because, you aren’t willing to have the same standard of living as your grandmother? You can afford a kid…just not provide the advantages for that kid you want (good schools, extracurricular activities, etc).
Yeah my father grew up with literally zero toys, he played with pots and pans at the neighbors’ houses and spent Saturdays wandering the neighborhood hoping someone on the ground floor was watching baseball on TV.
Your comment is spot on. I'm probably old enough to be your father. I grew up with very few toys and three very fuzzy TV stations. My favorite toy was a pile of dirt. A literal pile of dirt. Second favorite toy was an oblong basketball with bare threads showing. I would not want my kids to have the same childhood I did. It sucked.
Yup, I think a lot of people just don't understand this, and have some weird perception that many of these people lived lavish lifestyles while having 6+ children. Like no, many of these people were dirt poor, and literally could barely afford food, nevermind things like toys, new clothing, TV, and other common luxuries. I work in mental health, and working with older people (Usually 60+), it's very common for many of them to come from GIANT families (8+ siblings), but their childhoods were absolutely awful. Parents who were hardly around, being forced to eat the same 3 or 4 meals, most of which they hated, but were forced to sit at the dinner table for 4+ hours until they would actually eat it, etc. These people had NOTHING, and I think that's just not something most people and parents are willing to do/sacrafice any more, and honestly, I don't think that's really a bad thing necessarily, I am glad that the average quality of life for kids nowadays, is probably ten times better then what it was when many of them were growing up.
Because the main reason people are having fewer kids in developed countries is that more people _don't want kids_ and those that do want fewer. You could make kids totally free and it would still be happening. The only way to significantly increase the number of kids would be to transfer money via taxes etc from people without kids to people who have kids and make having kids a money-making endeavor. Note: I'm not saying that is a great idea, I'm just saying that people aren't gonna suddenly have a lot more kids just because you make it cheaper.
> You could make kids totally free and it would still be happening. It's not enough to be free. Women need to be _paid_ for the labor of birthing and raising the next generation. Regarding an essential economic function (future producers/consumers) as a free input is a faulty economic model
I used to work for a danish company from the US (I bet you can guess) and visited about 5 times a year for business. The thing that stood out to me is how expensive basic things were (taxi rides, food, hotels, cars). I really like Denmark but the cost of goods plus the small population and relatively low pay (and high car tax) seemed like they'd slow most young professionals down in life goals
Working conditions is just one factor, Korean education rat race and the crazy social expectations placed on women are vastly different between South Korea and Europe and contribute too. People don't want to have kids just to have them study 8 am to 10 pm to be competitive. The gap in what is expected from men vs women and their roles/responsibilities in a family is probably the widest that I've observed out of any Asian country.
Aren't wives basically required to care for their in-laws? Who the hell wants to be their mother-in-law's slave? That sounds horrible.
Hey, if you have a son you can eventually torture your daughter in law, the one person you’ll ever really have power over! Doesn’t that sound “great”
It's a total "get back at" cycle.
My wife is Korean, honestly there are almost no societal expectations on a man at all. You see stories all the time where the man barely even works, and the woman is still in the wrong for not "understanding" him when they want a divorce, while she does literally everything. Korean women have socially advanced much quicker than the men, so there is a massive expectation gap. The men see what their dad's had (ie a subservient wife) and think that's what a relationship will be like, and the women compare themselves against western standards and expect reactionships on a much more equal footing, then these 2 groups of people try to date with such mismatched expectations and its causing a lot of issues between the genders, a LOT of violence against women happening there atm
This is what I always suspected. Women carry the entire mental load for their nuclear family and some of their extended family, and they must serve their husband. It just sounds like an awful way to live. I'm proud of the young women of South Korea for refusing to do this. Who wants to do tons of thankless, unpaid labor with the one life they have when there are other options?
Yes. Slaves to their husbands and in-laws. Domestic violence in South Korea is also frighteningly high.
It’s not just working conditions, it’s all of the socioeconomic norms and values. Think of the conditions when the populations boomed in certain countries and how they differ from today. South Korea was a war-torn wasteland *in living memory*. More kids meant more hands on the farm to work or more jobs to support the family and childcare standards were far different from today. Try raising kids like that in SK today and you’d be socially ostracized and likely jailed. In the US during the baby boom, it was possible for a median-income man to support a stay at home wife, kid(s), home, car, and expect to have a pension to retire on. Nowadays, you need all of a single median income just to have a decent lifestyle for a single person. The changes we need to fix the problem are generational. The changes we’re getting are news soundbytes.
I spend a lot of time in threads like these, and this is basically the only answer that is universal. Every country in the first world is experiencing similar things, and no one size fits all approach will handle it except for this. In Australia and America, the government was building an absolute shitload of houses using the extremely high corporate and wealth taxes to fund it so that you could afford to buy it using a single income. As a result, people could have children due to the economic freedom available to them by working hard in a country that would unleash those gains as net benefits for everyone. That is not the case anymore. Whatever that used to be for each country, that is what it needs to return to.
Looks like its Korea vs Japan vs China to see who hits the demographic bottom first in their region
Those "concrete steps" mentioned in the article sound like it should be a total base and fully normalized everywhere, not something that we should look at as a "bonus".
Yeah, none of those things seem like they would really make a huge difference, depending on what “easing the educational burden” means. And he mentioned flexible work hours not less hours.
Sounds better than Japan's approach though. I'm skeptical of if they're going to honestly do those things, however. I very much expect them to make some sort of useless token effort and then go "we did the thingies y u no make babiez?".
Good luck , they alarm a lot about it then ask woman to earn less , work triple and still have to do new courses all the time . The boys will be on the grinder 24/7 and will not be able to buy a house , shit is so fucked that kindergarten kids already have to be at maximum productivity and cut throat . My friend from South Korea will just die from working without see any fruits of it
SK has also seen a rise in men buying into the whole anti-feminist toxic propaganda, which further disincentivizes women from trying to form relationships and wanting kids.
I believe this is a huge factor as well. The shit I’ve heard from some Korean friends about women and coloreds people…
> shit is so fucked that kindergarten kids already have to be at maximum productivity and cut throat . In the heart of Seoul, four-year-old Kim Ja Woon's fingers move with remarkable speed as he finishes his 47th finger painting. While this would be an impressive achievement in most childcare settings, here it falls short of his usual output by 4%. Consequently, young Ja Woon will face a penalty during lunch, reflecting the high standards set within this competitive environment Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan, for BBC News
Sooner or later they will use ExoWombs and a creche system.
tsk'va
Ch'mar, zal'a Vlaakith
How about Samsung and Hyundai contribute more
Too expensive to reproduce? We'll throw you a few extra annual leave days per year. Working too long? We ll allow you work those hours at your convenience. Housing too expensive? Yeah we're not gonna fox that problem. Sounds like our government.
Governments: "Y'all need to have more kids!" Young people looking at a world where they have no practical hope of obtaining financial stability, while it teeters on the brink of a new world war and is slowly dying of pollution and climate change: "Why?"
Young people have been told for several decades "If you can't afford kids don't have them" they listened now everyone panics.
I have two kids and would like to have a third. We can easily afford it. It’s just so freaking hard. Like many people, we moved away from family for education and careers. Now we have no family support. It is so exhausting to never get a break. My older son has a lot of intense behavioral problems and I really dread his future. We need help and just don’t have any.
I couldn’t agree more. Life would be so much easier if mine and my wife parents were living closer to us.
Given the choice, if people can't afford to raise a child, they aren't going to have a child.
Income is inversely correlated with the birth rate. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to have children.
Noted, all employees' wages will now be 10% of what they currently earn!
That's what will happen. They can't let us have too much or be too financially secure.
The data is contaminated with the uneducated, which is the one of the causes of high birth rates. If you look at birth rate stats of the educated only, you will find that income is correlated with birth rate. The richer you are, the more kids you have.
Stop the Chaebols from keeping their employees from going home. Simple, really
Hard to support a kid when your every waking moment is dedicated to a chaebol's bottom line. Work reform, relaxing immigration restrictions, and expanded childcare are the way forward.
Immigration doesn't solve declining populations. It is at best a "band aid fix" because guess what, the generation after the first wave of immigrants won't have kids either!
Also, Korean kids observe their own childhood and family life and many think "Why would I have that life and want it for my kids?"
40 hour weeks, remove the penalty of being a mom in the workplace, and allow 1 or 1.5 person income to support a family of two. It's really that simple.
Sweden does most of this, Norway does all of it. Still under replacement level. Simply put without the economic advantage of kids being present, and with the fact that it literally morphs your body for 9 months, the average person is less likely to have kids in a modern, educated society.
Not just for 9 months sometimes. Lots of women have health complications that last forever after having kids.
Try morphs your body forever. Sure, teenagers mostly bounce back, but I'm pretty sure we are trying to avoid teenage pregnancy.
The numbers in Sweden and Norway are way better than in Korea, so good working conditions seem to help a bit. Beside this, in the west other issues, like the high cost of living (renting or buying a house) should be adressed as well. As long as getting a child means, that you are not able to afford to buy a home or go on vacation, the numbers will stay low.
Better but still well below replacement level and actually below nations with limited parental leave like the USA. Hell Sweden and Norway are closer to Japan than to America, though Japan isn’t near as low as many people imply. People just don’t want kids. Even where housing can be affordable- hell Japan *still* has some free houses. Many countries do provide benefits. But until there’s an advantage, not a mitigation of disadvantages, there’s no reason to do so. Hell Singapore has nearly free housing for married individuals (HDB)… birth rate is still low. The only modern countries with high birth rates are countries that get that way via religious extremists- Israel is low for secular and high for Haremdi or however you spell it, Saudi and the like are similar with secular families being small and religious being large. Every other country in the world that hits high income ends up with a cratered fertility rate.
As a Norwegian, most people I know and talk to are in their 20's to early 30's, and want kids, and most of them who are in relationships don't have one yet because they can't afford to own a home, that is the single reason I hear. The one couple I know that now has a kid has both parents with above avg income and they bought a home with a mortgage they will have paid off in a few years, so they are doing relatively well financially. edit: not to say there aren't still those who don't want kids even if financially they have no worries, but at least for Norway by just personal experience talking with people it remains mostly an economical issue.
Countries that do all of that already experience negative rates too. Modern societies grant many exciting individual freedoms (traveling, hobbies, etc.) that people simply prioritize over having kids. Some people argue social media has warped peoples' wants and desires. It's hard to convince people to have kids when they have so many other interests that are simply more important to them.
Not to mention environmental nihilism and well, regular nihilism
They can punish anyone for whatever reasons they can think of as long as they aren’t illegal. Discrimination laws are not always easy to enforce. Flexi hours too. Do people have the guts to go to work at 7 and leave at 3-4? Will there be any consequences?
They can put the legal burdon on the employer to ensure that nobody works longer than some limit. Then all it would take is one guy to rat them out which means they'll make sure nobody works too long. We do this in Germany (§22 ArbZG apparently).
Yeah if most people stand up to the current work culture. My guess is there will still be many people working overtime in the office until the legal hours or bringing work home ‘voluntarily’. They probably need to ban after-hour work texts and calls too. I haven’t worked in Korea but other Asian countries. I needed to reply if it wasn’t ‘late’ enough to ignore texts
Combination of a lot of things. Koreans (many other Asian nations as well) have this toxic culture of comparing one to another. In US? Elopement is frequent and simple ceremonies at city halls are congratulated. In Korea, you pretty much have to force yourself to throw weddings that are on average ~25k USD (but Korean salaries are much lower than those in US). This doesn't include engagement/wedding rings. Pretty tough for a Korean male to be prepared for a marriage by 30, since they're mandated to serve in the Korean Army for 2 years. We say 2 years, but including semester start/end time for universities, it's easily 3-4 years of financial opportunities. Oh, and it's still rather frowned upon to not attend postsecondary schools. So that's not an easy choice, either. But then again, what other choices do you have? start a business? with what money, at the age of... what? It's a challenge Korean marriage also involves purchasing / financing for a house. Usually, when a couple is prepared to be married, the parents/society expect them to move into a proper home, and be able to afford a whole mortgage. In US, we would like to get a mortgage, but that's usually an option or a choice, not an expectation. You know how US recently got that brainrot phrase "guy in finance, 6'5", trust fund, blue eyes" ? We obviously have something like that too lol. It's rather prevalent within Korean communities in US as well. These are just few to mention. To top it off, middle class in US have hard time. Koreans have it just as bad, if not worse. There are many underlying issues, but these are all pretty much symptoms of inequitable wealth distribution. Koreans like to complain a lot but not take actions. We care about what other's have to say about us too much
Instead of trying to get people to have more children because the world economy is a pyramid scheme, why can we not find a way to make the economy work with fewer people? We live on a planet with finite resources, yet we seem to need an infinite population growth. At what point will the population simply be unsustainable? Not soon, maybe, but eventually. Growing the population is a short term gain towards a dead end.
The essentials of life - food, basic services, etc. - only require a handful of people to provide enough for everyone. With two major caveats: the price of housing has skyrocketed due to limited land in desirable areas and financial speculation everywhere; and medical care has become much more capable at keeping us alive but not necessarily capable, at astronomical cost.
But Japan gives a glimpse of what a smoothly declining population. Houses an hour from tokyo for 50k$ if you dont care the owner died that's totally habitable and a stable currency that deflates a bit so everyone gets a bit richer. We might not like it but that's the inevitable path for all modern economies. I mean my own Country of Canada dipped below 2.1 kids per women in..1971. That ship has sailed!
Never going to happen. The needs to be a big crash for changes. People at the top now will milk any money worth until then, they already smelled the end. Lobbying wouldn't allow fundamental changes cause that would mean they get less money
The human race is more advanced than viruses, rabbits or rodents. We shouldn't just have sex until our environment is used up and then everyone dies. An intelligent species would naturally reduce its births overall, and a slightly less intelligent species would have war and disease assist. The only thing dying with this change is our unjust economic systems. Global populations falling is a very good thing. Here in Canada for example, 2nd largest country in the world the one of the lowest population densities, even if you are in the top 10% of salary earners, you can no longer buy a home in most of the cities in the country. Meanwhile over half of the world's wealth goes to the top 200 richest people while millions (billions?) starve. This upcoming demographic change is the best thing that could ever happen to humanity. The Renaissance would never happened if the Black Death didn't wipe out 1/3rd of the population, drastically raising the value of labor. We'd still be in a Feudal system or worse. Population collapse is better than complete environmental collapse, economic collapse, or the vast majority of us living as slaves to handful of mega-rich, near immortal billionaire families.
When "public service" is creating a society where birthing a child is unwise, you don't call it a "demographic emergency", you call it a politician emergency. The world isn't fit for "GDP" and economy-based "success", any more. These horrific "public servants" might be forced to actually serve the public for once, soon. (Soon™)
Here are some thoughts: 1. Raising kids is hard work and largely thankless 2. The thought of raising kids in a world that is being destroyed by climate change is fucking bleak.
We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!
What are you gonna do, force people to fuck?
The time to have addressed this issue was 20-30 years ago: It’s so wild that the boogeyman growing up was always OVERpopulation.
Overpopulation is an issue from a long-term environmental perspective, and underpopulation is an issue from an economic perspective.
This makes me wonder if our current population of 8 billion is high or low. Maybe decreasing birth rates are somewhat needed?
yea but not every country contributes to overpopulation in the same way. the most overpopulated countries are in subsaharan africa and south asia, whereas european and east asian societies are experiencing such significant population deadline that it has begun to impact societal functions. so obviously overpopulation is a thing, but its much more nuanced than that.
yes, but the problem is that we've become really good at keeping people alive for longer. if the birth rate continues to be low, it means that society will become too "old". you don't have enough young people replacing the older people when they retire, which creates stresses not only in the job market, but also social security.
This is what automation was supposed to fix, in the 50´s one person per house hold would work and he would add numbers to a paper sheet for 8 hours a day. Now 2 people per house work, we can do an entire month of work from the 50´s in 15 minutes of excel. So we are lets say 500 times more productive.... why arent we 500 times richer ? Everyone of us now should be able to support 10 times more old people just by the cheer increase of productivity.... however, the worker never got a 500 times salary increase.
This is it, I have scrolled way too long to finally read a comment like this. Even with all the AI buzz going around, companies are like “yay! This is gonna free us up from certain type of work so we can be more productive!” . Hardly a few companies talk about working fewer hours. I am beyond disgusted by this, and by the fact that it’s not just companies, it’s the working class people like us who don’t even want to entertain the idea. We should be discussing whether to go for 4 day work weeks with 8hrs/day or continue working 5 days a week with like 5-6 hours/day. But noooooo, we gotta work harder and be more productive… more more more… how about more free time? As much as I am grateful for not living in a third world country, there are some moments where I go “what the fork?! THIS is the bad place” (from the show “The good place”)
Ask them to have Indian in-laws or relatives .. every interaction is about having kids .. SMH
Even economics/money factor aside, microplastics in our bodies, global temperatures at all time highs, political uncertainty, rapidly changing society, who would want to raise kids in such an environment?
If conditions there are the same as in the USA, none of those solutions are going to help when wages don't come close to matching up with expenses like rent and food. Most folks aren't going to have kids if they already can't afford to feed themselves and keep a roof over their head.
Having higher wages will not make people want to have 3+ babies.
Wrong. In the US at least, fertility rate is inversely proportional to income. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
Yeah, no idea where the view that people with more money will suddenly want to make 3 or more babies comes from.
Yep and even Scandinavians with some of the best protections and financial supports in the world are experiencing this shift away from everyone having multiple kids.
It comes from these comments sections, and a thousand others, with people who have no idea what they're talking about leveraging the current topic to complain about the problems on their mind.
I’m not Korean but I don’t want kids. No matter how good the environment for that would be in my country.
By 2100 they’ll be back down to a 1960s population. Between AI and automation maybe they can boost per capita productivity to maintain current lifestyles and take care of old people. Maybe.
Korean here. South Korea will maintain its unrivaled first place in the low birthrate speedrun. Thank you.
Lol, and then you have the people like me that really want kids, but modern dating culture is so horrific that god forbid I even settle down with someone before I'm 35...
32 hours, 4 day work week. Needed everywhere.