SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world.
This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country.
How does the developed world pull out of this type of tailspin? Japan and other nations are also facing this exact same issue and we seem to be not paying attention to it.
The core issue is that in most of the developed world, people do not have enough children. And even immigrants in their second generation and beyond also do not have enough children, as such it appears to be a cultural/way of life/society norms problem. It is as if the developed modern world is currently designed as a population sink.
This is going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years.
Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less.
1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies.
Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times have changed. In a near future where wars will be fought with robots and drones, you need less manpower (and their wives/kids); and thus you need much less of your general population; and much more of a few specialized people to achieve your goals.
We are getting there, whether we are self-aware of it or not.
This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. Immigrants children grow up to greatly out earn their parents pay way more in taxes than they their parents. The only immigrant group that could be considered a liability are older low skilled workers who have passed the age to have kids and live a couple of decades of working years. The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.
This is nihilistic and terribly misinformed. A LOT of foundational economic activity is what we derisively call "unskilled labor," performed by the very "semi-educated humans" you're talking about.
In the US alone, we literally import seasonal workers to prop up our agriculture industry. We pay them just enough to survive, give them few rights and little stability, and generally tread them as an underclass.
People like this undergird the whole of the modern global economy.
Every child born is a "bare illiterate human". Are you also making an argument against having children?
If you want to be really draconian about it, immigration can select for people with skills where the home populate will always have the same average of innate abilities.
The real world is not some dystopian SF ruled by cool kids wearing shiny armor. The world's economy is still run by people consuming goods and services, creating demands - declining population is not an insurmountable problem but it does pose a huge challenge for any nation's economy.
Fewer people -> fewer sales for Ioniq and Galaxy S -> less money made by these companies -> less money available for industrial research -> worse technology for your servers, drones, military satellites, submarines, whatever -> lose the war.
One of the most nihilistic takes I’ve seen in a long while.
With “worth”, “value”, “liability” you are only talking about the narrow, economic definitions of those words.
The problem is not everything valuable is captured in economic expression, not everything is readily marketable, which doesn’t mean they are not valuable. And I am not being romantic here; for the longest time we suffered for not measuring the value of childbirth, mothering a newborn and general domestic labor for example. (Surrogacy being new aside, also doesn’t make a reliable proxy because it doesn’t measure mothering in situ, contractual asymmetries get priced into the transaction.)
Hyperindividualistic western fantasy assumes even attachment and emotional needs can be marketed (eg therapy), but suicide rates show that traditional close-knit societies fare much better. Just because you can’t measure the dollar amount of small talk and care from your neighborhood grocer, doesn’t mean it is worthlessness.
People are worthless only if you waste them. You risk wasting them when you instrumentalize and objectify them excessively, when you interject the market into relationships you shouldn’t.
The waste theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy of neoliberalism. And I agree that we might be getting there if we don’t awaken from the normativity of market thinking.
Automation isn't at the point where you can get economic and productivity growth with a declining population. Maybe in the future this will be true, but it's not true now. Even highly automated economies will see contraction and tax base decreases. The current solution, ala the Bank of Japan, is to run huge deficits, and they are on the cutting edge of what an aging population looks like.
This is delusional. We're extremely far away from automating the entirety of society.
As people have less kids, age out of the workforce, and live longer, who's going to pick the crops? People far away in 3rd world nations? Who's going to be working the jobs to pay them? Do we expect the small amount of working-age people to support themselves + their kids + retired parents + grandparents? Who's going to be the nurses and the firefighters?
Japan and Germany both have aging populaces and low birth rates. Germany is taking the immigration route, and Japan is taking the automation route (as it's much more xenophobic). From a macroeconomic perspective, Germany's strategy seems to be winning.
And I don't know about you, but when I'm old, I'll take a human nurse over a robot nurse any day of the week.
In 100 years, educated, intelligent people like us could easily be a "liability," as even budget AI far exceeds human intellect on every conceivable dimension. Through their robotic bodies, which they can produce themselves, they can exceed human physical limitations in every imaginable way.
It's going to happen. Ambitious, power-hungry humans are like moths to a flame.
So if you want to imply that you possess some level of intelligence, then take a small inductive step, and then, consider reevaluating your moral outlook on the value of human life.
> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years
I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor.
Yes, dependency ratios will mean re-jiggering the skewed benefits almost every country provides its old at the expense of the young. But that, too, isn’t a bad thing, particularly if it encourages labor force participation.
(There is another comment arguing demographic the dividend’s inverse is a myth. I don’t go that far. I just think it’s a manageable problem versus a catastrophe.)
> A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly
I'm sceptical of this claim. Young people and old people are biologically different, in the aggregate. Obvious differences in physical capabilities aside, arguably even more impactful for the future of a given nation are their psychological differences; i.e. innovation and risk-taking invariably comes more from the younger generations.
Perhaps if you're only considering dollars being circulated in a domestic economy, an abundance of wealthy old folks can potentially offset the lack of youthful societal members. But the developmental direction such a demographic structure pushes its society is unlikely to be good for sustaining itself in the long run.
One factor that needs to be considered is that in Korea, as in many Asian regions, people are expected to look after their parents when they get old. Society and social security have been build around this assumption.
I don't see that. Demand for what? Consumption? Increasing the flow of "stuff" from store/Amazon to the landfill? If we account for inflation, what's increasing?
Young people consume things that can be made at scale. The march of technology makes the things we buy cheaper, better, and more abundant. At the same time, it makes labor related to the production of that technology more valuable.
Old people consume 1:1 care. And as medical technology improves, elderly people survive increasingly complex conditions requiring increasingly labor-intensive management. At the same time, work with scalable impact is still getting more valuable, so 1:1 care positions have to pay more to win workers, so 1:1 care gets more expensive (cost disease).
IMO Science and technology is a max() operator on the peoples ideas. Also, division of labour should go down in a smaller population, so I think this is far from linear in reality and a population collapse can be actually devastating
it really is a great challenge, because for example america will have to rethink its habit of paying for today's excesses by harvesting the labor of future generations. it's a completely different inter-generational relation than we have now.
> SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world.
Its kind of amazing how often people make judgements based on extrapolating demographic trends over much longer terms than there is any reason to think that they will hold, and then as soon as they fail turn around and do the same thing based on the new demographic trend.
Encouraging births isn't hard if a government decides its important.
OTOH, most of the arguments I’ve seen for it actually being important (in the near term) are the kind where you scratch the surface and underneath is pure racism, so I’m not all that concerned.
It is actually quite hard to raise the birth rate, Japan has been trying for years (see https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%...). The real impediment is that it is now too costly to raise more than 1-2 children and also not enough time.
UN 2015 report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts:
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...
To summarize, they've started policies and measures since 1992-1994 but UN reports and I quote: "Despite these efforts, Japan’s family policy so far appears to
have been largely ineffective."
> OTOH, most of the arguments I’ve seen for it actually being important (in the near term) are the kind where you scratch the surface and underneath is pure racism, so I’m not all that concerned.
Can you go into more detail on that? In some respects "demographic suicide" solved with immigration has many (but not all) of the characteristics of colonization, and I think it's a reasonable speculation that colonized and diminished cultures would be unhappy with more than just the coercive aspects of their colonization, and that a non-racist person could have reasonable anxieties about their culture becoming diminished and dying out in the future. Though I suppose racists probably see an opportunity to exploit those anxieties to spread their racist ideology.
> Encouraging births isn't hard if a government decides its important.
Yes it is. The only first-world nation with replacement birth rates is Israel.
Caucescu famously tried to increase the birthrate and that backfired spectacularly.
Sweden tried to do a lot of stuff, still doesn't work. Japan also tried.
One core issue is housing. And the core issue with housing is that prices are an arms race where everyone always wants more. Most people would have two or three kids if they felt like they could afford it.
The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pair bonding happens at a lower rate and later in life.
I don't know about South Korea, but looking at some other asian countries, there are a couple of things, I think the housing part falls into number 3 but is only a small part of the whole:
1. Having children without being married has a bunch of problems, and in some countries like singapore gets punished for it in lack of certain social services
2. Most of these societies expect women to work or have their husband take care of them. Maternity leave is in some aspects as bad as or worse than in the US.
3. Having children is expensive and the education stress that follows for over a decade after giving birth is even more straining. The subsidies people get in Asia hardly even make up for the cost of a c-section. Sure the same might be true for the USA, but we know it's not a good place to compare things to. But birth and housing are also a fraction of the long term pain of raising a child in those societies.
Other people have mentioned dating. I think modern societies in general have had a break down in social structures, where people used to get their partners from.
I'm not sure that dating "not requiring commitment" is the issue.
It's difficult to commit to dating when you are time-poor and struggling to even get close to the financial trajectory that your parents were on.
It's too easy to blame the kids or whatever, without considering that the kids had and have it harder in many ways than the old people did. Being a millennial in the '00s was pretty good, being a millennial after '08 has not been good (unless you happened to get a sweet high-paying tech job in the '10s).
I think one of the biggest issues facing modern dating is the collapse of various socialization activities outside of work. Religion is on a decline so people don't meet at church. Hobby groups are all online now.
Neither of these apply to Japan, especially Japan decades ago when their birthrate fell to around the current rate. So that’s a pretty strong data point against these theories being key factors.
How does childcare look in SK? I believe that in much of the Western world, families living further apart is a problem for having children. Having grand parents nearby can make having children so much easier. In the US I think you either need family nearby or have a lot of money to avoid having children becoming totally overwhelming and very negatively impact all other aspects of your life.
> The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pair bonding happens at a lower rate and later in life.
One way to fix it is the government deciding to highly encourage 'old-fashioned' social norms.
For example, we could have single-sex spaces, which help the sexes develop unique cultures that they then have to rely on each other for.
Or we could encourage single-income-earning, realizing more men are going to take advantage of this, and encourage more stay-at-home parenting, realizing that more women will take advantage of this (but by no means should the sex of either role be forced).
Or, we could change sex-ed curricula to focus more broadly on family formation and its importance.
Encourage church membership, since that used to constitute a large portion of the dating pool, and makes it easier for people to find others like them.
Idolize the roles of mothers and fathers and how it's a national duty.
There's lots of ways to fix it. The willpower simply isn't there. Of course, many people are in complete denial as to the root causes too. The truth is sexual attraction is fundamentally based on sexual difference. Save for a slim minority of the population, this is true across the board (yes, even in homosexual relationships). The reason why dating sucks and people can't find partners is because we've attempted to eradicate all sexual difference, but every once in a while human nature overpowers even this, and we see phenomena which our current culture cannot explain but is easily explainable in the larger context of the human condition (for example, the popularity of 50 shades of grey amongst women, or the popularity of 'seduction culture' and the manosphere amongst men).
It's going to be hard to convince couples living in 1 bedroom apartments to cram in 2 kids just so that the country can hit replacement level fertility rates. Large urban cities just don't seem built for families, especially with the way that larger spaces are priced.
Probably true. However, on the past or even in rural India people fit parents and a number of children in small abodes. So, it’s possible. People have done it and lived, people do it and live in some places. Some people just don’t want to and don’t have to either.
This is very true as a Korean living outside of the country, It's happening slowly but the cultural resistance and all kind of shitstorm related low-birthrate/immigration is about to happen.
It's pretty ugly situation inside right now it seems like. Koreans still have the idea that it is a homogenous country and majority of korean is pretty extremely conservative about this new policy obviously, you could easily imagine it's like ticking bomb.
My wife is from Busan and her parents don't speak English nor are they educated, and I would consider them extremely "Korea Conservative", nevertheless, they're aware of the issue and it is discussed openly, how to continue to emerge Korea, and I think it is this issue that primarily made them comfortable with their daughter marrying a foreigner, of the options, marry a foreigner or destroy the country, I suspect Koreans will take the latter. If I had to guess, your countrymen will fair a lot better than expected, likely through policy of controlled "acceptable foreigners", strong demand of cultural adoption of said "acceptable foreigners", and through Automation/Robotics/AI. I was very surprised to see a lot of conversation among the young people in Korea about the future of the society surrounding the themes of what a hybrid socialist/capitalist robotics AI utopia would look like, if I was to bet on anyone getting there, it would be SK.
As far as I can see the only problem is with how the pension systems are structured. A falling birth rate by itself doesn’t really mean that much. In fact there might be benefits for employment, like there was after the black death. But as it is our current economic system is based on growth and having more young people supporting the elderly. So it seems like if the trend continues we will have to restructure retirement benefits.
The solution is immigration but with high barrier to entry.
I live in Denmark, a country portrayed as anti-immigrant by American and British media.
However there is no opposition to educated professional immigrants from India, China, Iran and Eastern Europe.
Brain drain of these countries could be a problem but countries like India and Iran are probably producing many more highly educated individuals than they can domestically employ.
You cant just easily immigrate to CJK countries.You will not become a part of the society.That's just impossible.Not even those of us that married koreans,speak the language and know the customs are that accepted in the society.We are tolerated and easily live and work there but you will never become korean or japanese or chinese.
Studies mostly show that, in the long run, family-based immigration policies lead to more economic growth than the "best and brightest". Basically, forming immigrant communities is useful—they provide support to new entrants, and lead to better outcomes for everyone. Importing a few educated doctors, rather than families or broader populations, leads to less long-term benefit.
Isn't the Chinese solution just to convert these for-profit education companies to non-profit education companies? That only hurts these companies and their shareholders. Parents who want their children to be competitive will continue to enroll their children in these after-school classes; now that they are non-profit perhaps they will be cheaper and parents can afford more classes!
SK doesn't have a large amount of land to grow into which means real estate is expensive which in turn limits population growth (people have less kids when real estate is expensive). SK has one of the highest population densities in the world [1] Having a stable population with that kind of constraint on land seems like a good thing.
Why is immigration the answer? All you need is workers, not immigrants. SK will probably do what the gulf states do. They will bring in foreign labor but with a clear separation between expat workers and potential "immigrants". These people will work finite contracts and then be literally sent home once the contract is over, mooting any concept of naturalization. Gulf states have done this relatively successfully for decades.
Demographic decline is only a bad thing from a fairly singular, industrialist, globalist perspective.
While it definitely means some reduction and prestige and power, and in some areas scale does provide advantage - in most ways, it's not decline in anything but the 'major shareholders of the economy'.
It's a 'Investor Problem' for the most part.
Japan never needed 180M people to maintain their standard living, so from the average person's perspective it looks different.
Otherwise, it's a little bit of an economic Ponzi scheme.
Of course, 'permanently fewer children' to the point where population goes to 0 - well that's a problem, but hopefully they will mitigate that and find a happy equilibrium.
There’s no problem with low birth rates, this is a meme that is told by a few economists and yet a very slight depopulation is not only survivable but has upsides as well and so far both South Korea and Japan (for going on three decades) have maintained incredibly competitive across nearly all metrics, certainly far better off than the US in so many ways. I got in an extensive debate over this with statistics a few months back on HN and have yet to see convincing evidence: lots of news articles that are inconclusive, and charts that show them doing as well or better than any European country or most any country in the world.
There is no problem with low birth rates in the long term. There are, however, massive problems during the many decades when the population pyramid is inverted and there are 4 or 5 retirees for every child, a ratio which Japan is about to hit and where South Korea will be in a couple of decades as well.
As for why this is a problem, Japan's pension system is already insolvent and the country is starting to experience massive manpower shortages in sectors like nursing, agriculture and construction. Sometime last year Japan passed the point where the amount of money & effort needed to maintain existing infrastructure exceeded the country's capability to build it, and the depopulation and dilapidation of Japan's second/third tier cities and the countryside is already striking and poised to accelerate rapidly as villages, towns and cities can no longer fund their basic obligations.
Yes it is possible to manage ... when you have almost no government run retirement system.
In country where the workforce pay for the retired, like France and a lot of European country, having your workforce shrink is a huge issue.
This is correct. There is no logical reason or empirical evidence that opening country to mass immigration will help fixing native birth rates. Problems such as housing will just increase as there's more competition for a 5 square meter flat.
If shrinking populations are okay, what is the desired population level? Right now no country seems to be able to stop this decrease in the modern/developed world. We are just currently shrinking.
Very interesting. I would like to listen more to this side of the debate. Everywhere I read is "demographic bomb" or "chaos", which seems to be a bubble. Would you be able to point some references for different arguments?
> How does the developed world pull out of this type of tailspin?
Make childcare easier. Traditionally people lived in the same town as their parents and in-laws. Now days it is thousands of dollars a month in day care.
Want your kids to go to college? In 18 years that is expected to cost well over 100k for a state school.
Raising kids has gotten more stressful and more expensive, of course people aren't having kids! And those who do stop after one.
Not that I have any good idea for childcare. Real estate prices in cities are so high that opening a day care is not the wisest financial decision. Home day cares are a solution, but licensing and compliance issues abound that can also destroy their ability to stay in business.
Heck in America if I want a care that seats more than 4 (I'm ignoring the "5th" middle seat) I am stuck buying a bloody SUV or minivan. Can't even get a 3 row compact people mover because CAFE rules quite literally ban their existence. So 2 kids is basically has a "get a giant vehicle" tax attached to it. Live in a city? Have fun parking that SUV!
And how about schools? In my city, a house that is zoned to good schools has a 200-300k price premium! Want to move to an area with really good schools? That can become a 500k premium.
Japan has separate issues, if fathers are working 10-12 hours a day and are never home, and women are expected to just stop their careers after having kids, well of course women aren't jumping at the chance to start a family. Raise a kid with an absentee husband? No wonder that isn't going over well.
tl;dr life is too expensive. We've created a society that does not promote having children or having a family. Everything down to our underlying infrastructure is anti-family.
I live in SK, so I have a lot of things to talk about the birthrate.
The reason why the birth rate strangely low, is quite interwoven. TL;DR: People (think they) are not capable enough to raise a child.
First: Real estate prices is skyrocketing. This bizarre phenomenon began in the 2000s. The 17th administration completely reversed the situation, which became another problem, and the 18th administration made real estate prices to soar again. The 19th (present) administration tried to control real estate prices with complicated regulation, but it never worked so far.
Second: An educational craze. 386(1960s) and X(1970s) generations believe that children should go to the prestige university to survive in this harsh world. So they let their children go to 'hagwon'[1], something like cram school but really competitive. E.g. (a) Almost students in SK go to hagwon. (b) Some 6th~9th grade students study 10AM~10PM everyday in hagwon during the vacation, to pass an enterance exam specialized high school(10th~12th grade). (c) Some kindergartens promotes themselves as "English Kindergarten"; where every teacher and student speaks English.
The problem is -- because of these craze, a lot of childless family concern that they can't afford expenses for hagwon($300~400/mo in average. In the case of the above-mentioned entrance exam, It goes more than $1000/mo) so their child won't be happy because they'll fall behind when they grow up.
Third: Saving for retirement. Because of these problem, rearing child in Korea costs an arm and a leg. In the past, education was not overheated like this, and Korean-specific mindset forced family to give birth. However, starting with military administration's birth control policy, people changed their mindset, and now a significant number of people are more interested in saving for retirement than give birth.
Hungary and Poland also have incredibly interventionist governments who are happy to not only ecourage family formation through economic policy but also cultural policy. The former is fairly easy and many other developed countries are going down that road. The latter is the part that some countries in Western Europe and the USA do not want to touch with a ten foot pole, but it is the more important metric.
You want more families? You need to unashamedly celebrate your nation and culture.
These countries must invest in ectogenesis. I really don't understand why this is never talked about when the low fertility rate in the developed world is discussed.
South Korea has invested billions in trying to have its fertility rate increase by giving incentives to couples, it has only worsen.
We must get to the idea that it will be almost impossible in the developed world to get back to a fertility rate above 2.
You'd have to know the fundamental reason why people in SK (or anywhere) aren't having kids. Maybe it's women not wanting to be pregnant or give birth but maybe it's not - if it's for example, people aren't up for the investment that kids require then ectogenesis will get you nowhere.
> How does the developed world pull out of this type of tailspin?
1. Find a young woman
2. Make her happy, and confident in you
3. ?
4. Pull your family for the next 30-40 years
With all respects, I always seen a family as a man's responsibility, and a failure at creating/maintaining one to coming from man's deficiencies first.
In virtually every human culture in the world, even matriarchal societies, it is by default that a man needs to put more effort than a woman to score a marriage. It is very deeply ingrained into human culture.
A man can always always find another woman if one does not want a family with him up until mid-thirties. A lot of time.
And yes, I really want to have a family, and I really want to work hard to have one.
It really sucks for bachelors. Unmarried people in most of Asia effectively lost 2 years of their reproductive life, and probably will lose at least 1 more year.
It's completely incorrect to think that China had any much of normal life after quarantine succeeded. Last 12 months was a life in constant paranoia, extreme social unease, and daily life disruptions from periodic Covid breakthroughs.
You should not be downvoted. Historically, this was the view. A traditional 'family' was mainly seen as a man's responsibility. The word 'husband' itself literally means a man bound to a house (i.e., a family or a lineage).
Best of luck in your search for a wife. As a married man with kids, starting a family is the most wonderful thing. I feel terrible for young men and women during COVID, it's just a terrible human tragedy created by the government. IMO, dating should have been considered an essential activity. It would have been good for restaurants and the economy and young people. Tell the married people with kids to stay home while the young people can all go dance it up and get hitched. It's foundational to society.
I recently had this thought and I'm wondering if any experts in biology/genetics can chime in and help me. Yes it seems to me that this will be a problem faced by the developed world for the short-medium term future. But does evolution also play a role here as well? By creating a shrinking population, does that not sort of "select" for people with a natural inclination to have more children? How strongly is the desire to have more children tied to genetics?
I can imagine this problem solving itself on some timeline if that is the case e.g. people with a strong desire to have children have more kids, their genes are more prevalent while people inclined to have fewer kids sort of select themselves out of the gene pool by having 1 or 0 kids. This seems to me entirely possible, as I know genes can code for basically any arbitrary behavior, but I'm not an expert.
> This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country.
They'll have to unite with North Korea eventually. Make of that what you will.
> They'll have to unite with North Korea eventually. Make of that what you will.
I don't know. United Germany was still within living memory when reunification happened, and it cost a huge amount to integrate East Germany, even though they had a functional society and industry. For example, Zeiss Jena (East German) camera lenses were competitive with those from the west. That would be like North Korea making good phones in the modern day.
We have lots of people on earth, they just need to be able to move to where they want to go. Low birthrate issue is nonsense. Let a couple million people from the Philippines in to Korea problem solved.
> The core issue is that in most of the developed world, people do not have enough children
The carrying capacity of the planet earth would like to have a talk with you.
Continuing exponential population growth is obviously not a sustainable path forward. At some point, The world's economies are going to have to realign to a flat population and will have to adapt to the demographics there of. And if humanity does not choose not to do so, at some point in the future, the choice will be made for us.
Automation? You don't necessarily need infinite population growth, Japan and other nations with low immigration and population growth may be able to make things better than it seems. Look at corporate tax bases and number of employees in major companies. You could totally run a high income economy with fewer people and better outcomes.
Population growth is not a requirement for economic growth, it is just one of the laziest ways to move the dial up.
SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world.
Yes, by 2100, the population might be all the way down to where it was in 1980.
Also, at some point, South Korea and North Korea may settle up, much as West Germany and East Germany did, and for much the same reasons.
You’re assuming a lot here and utilizing an outdated view. Population growth is not necessary when you’re primarily an export-focused country such as South Korea. And more specifically when your biggest trading partner is none other than China.
I'm continually amazed how this isn't #1 topic on governments' agenda across the developed world. We're looking at South Korea losing 95% of its generational cohort size in 100-year timeframe. 80% for Japan or Italy, 70% for Germany, etc. Climate change is on everyone's mind - but what's the point of solving climate change if there's barely anyone left to inherit the planet?
Black Death, Mongols, world wars, not even intentional genocides managed to inflict this level of population loss. And it's met with yawns and shrugs, as if it's unavoidable like gravity.
And no - people's desire to have children hasn't dropped all that much:
Why is it a tailspin? People do not have children because of over-population, except instead of this being controlled by Malthus, it is now controlled by Adam Smith's invisible hand. The market is signaling resource constraints and desires fewer humans and more robots.
I think the solution lies not in more people but in more sustainability and shift away from competitive capitalism as an economic model. I genuinely think that it's inevitable. The great challenge of the next century will climate. We're on the fence right now between a climate-induced nightmare world and a post-scarcity economy where resource competition no longer drives global conflict.
There is no reason to believe that 'immigration' can fix the native birth rates of South Koreans. This is an implicit assumption dreamt by the utterly deranged.
Invent/make artificial womb. It's already feasible I think. Probably tons of money to be made. Why it's not a thing yet?
Women have many options/entertainment now and don't want to go through pregnancy especially multiple times. This coupled with fact that you have only 10 years for childbearing (before 40) and you drastically cut carrier advancement when it just started explains a lot IMO. Requiring two people to support family in XXI century feels like a scam and race to the bottom. It's mostly due to scarcity of land that you have to bid on housing (that owned by too rich people in many cases, so they literaly can manipulate market to extract rent) and all profitable activity moved to cities so you also want bw there.
Make housing cheaper => I think will happen with decentralisation of energy sources and cheaper transport (tesla). Also some family friendly social policies (china?).
I think remote work made a lot of people choose to live in houses instead and this might lead to some positive change in demography.
But the cheapest way IMO is to just make families trendy via Hollywood (instead of this homo propaganda on Netflix)
Who benefits from the artificial womb? The bearing of the child is much less of a disincentive than other factors like money, space and the ultra competitive school system we have in many Asian regions.
My wife is South Korean so I'm biased. But I've been to Japan and South Korea and if you're looking for one of the most modern nations in the world, I strongly recommend you go to Korea. The only comparable country I've been to is the Netherlands or maybe Denmark.
In contrast, the US and Japan seem to be somewhat falling apart with a peak in infrastructure and buildings a few decades ago. It's not that bad of course but relative to countries like South Korea and the Netherlands I think you'll agree.
Also, in my experience Korea was way more ready to handle English speakers than Japan was. I was surprised how I felt so lost in Japan not being able to read or speak Japanese. (Of course I don't expect to go to another country and be catered to. It's just that I was spoiled by Korea. And I wanted to address any reasonable concern that Japan might be friendlier for tourists than Korea.) In contrast in Korea there was a lot already in English and all the service workers I met spoke English well.
I'm sorta surprised by your statement. I've lived in Seoul, Tokyo, and NYC for various periods of my life and I'd definitely say Tokyo feels the most "modern" when you scratch beneath the surface.
For example, I'd say the basic subway system between Seoul and Tokyo are pretty similar but you also have the advantage of a vastly superior rail network that serves Greater Tokyo and the rest of Japan. KTX and SRT in Korea are improving every year but don't really compare yet. Additionally, the new subway stations in Seoul are quite nice (Line #9) but you also have really old lines (Line #1) where many of the stations are so badly maintained they feel inferior to their counterparts in Tokyo (Ginza, Hibiya).
I can't really speak to the english speaking issues in South Korea, but in Tokyo I never really had any issues even though I don't speak Japanese. Most places in Tokyo will have english menus because it's a tourist centric city. Neighborhood family owned dives probably don't speak english very well but they wouldn't in Seoul either.
The thing that makes Seoul fall short for me is the standard of building maintenance. Although things are changing, it was generally the case that for several generations of building maintenance they just expected to tear them down and rebuild. Tokyo has a similar problem, necessitated by constant building damage and updated building codes from earthquakes, but the biggest difference is that a lot of these buildings in Seoul are 10+ stories tall. Most of Tokyo's building stock is <10 stories. It's become cost prohibitive in Seoul to actually tear these buildings down and rebuild them.
One of the worst things for me is how car centric Seoul is. It's rare in Tokyo to have 3+ lane roads that aren't toll road/expressways. They're all over Seoul and the side roads are packed full of "valet" parking for restaurants that don't actually have parking lots. The entire car culture feels way more chaotic there than Tokyo. In Tokyo, you can't buy a car unless you prove you have a registered parking spot. In Seoul, you just double park your neighbor and put your phone number in case you need to move your car.
Lastly the air quality in Seoul is way worse than Tokyo. Feels like you constantly have to stay indoors for weeks during the bad "yellow dust" season.
I have taken KTX but I have not taken (non-subway) rail in Japan. The KTX train I took was similar in quality to German inter-city rail or American regional rail lines. That is to say, it wasn't that special.
I think there are pros/cons of car culture and systems in both countries.
Japan's car-ownership experience is rather hostile. Expensive tolls, Shaken inspection, and higher price tags than SK. In a way, this benefits tourists because streets are cleaner, cars are newer, and people tend to drive less.
In Korea, it's flipped. It's great place for car ownership. But from tourists POV, it's chaos.
As much as I love Japan, I'd prefer to live in Korea while visit Japan as tourist. Seoul isn't so bad once you go outside from central Seoul to new cities. Everything is more spread out, cleaner, and very modern.
South Korea, Taiwan, and China all developed their infrastructure relatively recently, so it makes sense that their skyscrapers and subway systems are gleaming.
Fast forward 50 years (once the demographic collapse has fully hit Asia and Europe), and we'll see if their infrastructure continues to be so modern.
> Also, in my experience Korea was way more ready to handle English speakers than Japan was.
One of the key problems is that Japan has a huge domestic market and does not 'need' English to survive. Korea, on the other hand, is a lot more dependent on its external connections and a push for better English proficiency makes a lot of sense.
Having visited all the countries mentioned within the last few years - definitely agree. Seoul is an incredible, modern city, unlike any other. Tokyo largely feels like it was frozen in time.
Parts of Amsterdam have that sort of feel, but it’s definitely more mixed. Not crumbling, but old and making do since it’s fine.
I don't think Amsterdam is what is meant by the Netherlands.
Amsterdam is basically a super old village built in a swamp that it interesting for its history, architecture, culture, and so on. Or for the red light district and weed shops, if you prefer that. It's not a display of infrastructure.
The Netherlands has some of the best developed infrastructure nation-wide: roads, railways, and most famously its massive water management systems, as half the country is below sea level.
It is also very well developed economically (punching far above its tiny weight), technically, and socially (hybrid welfare system).
By comparison, many parts of the US feel like a 3rd world country.
> Also, in my experience Korea was way more ready to handle English speakers than Japan was.
In Seoul yes, but not necessarily other places, in my experience. I had really confusing experience trying to sleep over in a spa in Busan. The only English phrase we got out of them was "Robot steal your phone". Admittedly this is not a place tourists would generally go though. We got recommended doing it by Korean friends and our hostel host in Seoul helped us find the place.
In Japan I experienced a few times that a Japanese person that could speak english would come over to help me if I was staring at something (map, ATM machine) in confusion for a while. Didn't experience that in South Korea even though I stayed there longer.
I agree that South Korea feels extremely modern.. but not much less than Japan. I wonder if it has something to do with how recently the infrastructure was built. Maybe South Korea is just at that perfect stage now where nothing is too old, and yet they've managed to improve/refurbish almost everything. I've noticed Taiwan is a mixed bag. Some places feels insanely modern, while there's still big areas with a lot of old construction. But then those areas tends to be the ones with the most charm and the best night markets.
China and Taiwan had been compared a lot. China's cities look much newer than Taiwan cities. But people's general way of carrying themselves differs a lot. Technological advances also varies.
If your "modern country" means "modern buildings", then I can agree. But if you're saying people, culture, art, technology of South Korea is more "modern" than other countries, I would disagree.
> My wife is South Korean so I'm biased. But I've been to Japan and South Korea and if you're looking for one of the most modern nations in the world, I strongly recommend you go to Korea. The only comparable country I've been to is the Netherlands or maybe Denmark.
I felt the same way about Japan when I first visited it in the late 1990s. Japan has stagnated badly since then, and due to the demographic crunch, it's essentially certain that Seoul in 2040 will look like Tokyo in 2020. (Unless North Korea transforms it into a smoking crater in the ground, that is, since the entire city is within artillery range of the border.)
Also, in my experience, Koreans speak even less English than the Japanese do. Seoul is still OK, maybe Busan, but out in the sticks there's zero signage and very few speakers.
Not to discount your experience at all, but I have been outside of Seoul too and I still didn't feel too overwhelmed. Specifically I spent a bit of time in Bundang (a suburb of Seoul), Busan and Jeju.
One more massive advantage Korean has over Japanese is that Korean has a fairly simple alphabet so you can read and pronounce words after only a little practice.
In contrast, it takes quite a while to be able to read Japanese with their three writing systems and Kanji in particular.
Is everything just recently built or actually designed with modern principles in mind that will still feel relevant a decade down the road?
I’m no researcher of any thing but the casual impression I’ve gotten from reading here and there over the years is that South Korea has plenty of problems, social and otherwise, and some of them pretty archaic and morbid (like idols collapsing on stage but nobody helping them)
The trains running in the subways are much newer, cleaner, and wider than the ones in NYC or Tokyo or Paris or London (based on my own observation).
They also continually build out entirely new rapid lines like the Bundang express line which takes you from a suburb of Seoul to the center of Gangnam (a major district) in 15 minutes.
Their buildings are also mostly new. It seems like every decade or two Koreans demolish older buildings and replace them with new ones. Whereas the US and Japan seem more often to keep old buildings around for much longer (and don't clean them).
The cars on the street in Seoul were also newer than the ones I saw in Japan (although similar in age to NYC). For example the taxis in Japan look like 80s BMWs. They look very cool for that reason but also seem pretty old.
Finally in Japan there's a lot still done by cash and weird single-purpose ticket machines. It would be a hardware hackers dream because of the variety and number of ticketing machines everywhere.
But in contrast Korea has gone almost totally cashless everywhere or so it seems. You just "tap" with your phone. The US is getting there, and maybe Japan is now too since it's been a few years since I was last there.
"South Korea has plenty of problems, social and otherwise"
So does the US, and Japan, and ... basically every country. Each country is going to have pros and cons. Talking with my Korean friends, their perspective is that the US also has plenty of problems, social and otherwise. Are they wrong? And we've had discussions around e.g. why US cops are going around killing US citizens, etc.
The pros for Korea for me include hospitable people, great food, universal healthcare, and fantastic public transportation (you can get around basically the entire country via bus/metro/trains with a unified T-Money card). I also felt a sense of unity that I don't often feel in the US.
Some cons would include a work culture around working insane hours and compulsory drinking. Those are changing with the current generation though. Schooling is extremely competitive since everyone is trying to get into a handful of colleges in order to have career prospects with the large conglomerations. And having to worry about the air quality index is annoying from my US perspective.
"Indeed, South Korea is the only country that successfully made its transition from a former colony to an advanced economy."
This is not right. Each of the following meet the same criteria, including the author's caveats - Taiwan (also Japan), Greece (Ottoman), Finland (Swedes), Ireland (British), numerous Central European nations (Soviet Union). Some others that are debatable - Cyprus, Malta, Israel, Singapore, Chile. At the time of their handovers, Hong Kong and Macau would each have met the definition.
> One could say that Australia or Canada, along with the United States, used to be a colony. Nonetheless, what is distinct about South Korea is the fact that it was colonized by former imperial Japan by coercion
They say this and then move on. The distinct thing is that it was Imperial Japan rather than Imperial England? I’m not saying those empires were similar, but it seems to me that they made the distinction just so they could ignore the aforementioned countries.
> South Korea’s rise to a middle power status comes without much historical baggage
The kingdom of Joseon was annexed entirely by Japan in 1905. Modern Korea (nevermind the North/South prefix) would not exist had the US not enter WWII. The 35-years under Japan is a major flashpoint in Japan-Korea relation, it's a joke that the thing that unites North and South is their common hatred of Japan. I'm surprised there's not a more nationalistic jingoistic attitude from South Korea, given their economic state today. Historians agree that the costly outcome of the Russo-Japanese war led to the rise of militaristic Japan and their entry into WWII.
The article seems to be saying that since Korea never conquered and/or colonized other states, there's less EMOTIONAL baggage, allowing Korean culture to spread more easily.
I’m sure the US military presence and support plays a big part in keeping the lid on major conflict between South Korea and Japan. There is significant historical baggage from Japan colonizing Korea.
America defeated Japan in WW2, leading to the liberation of Korea, but it was immediately followed by the US and the Soviet dividing the country in half. To make matters more complicated, the US backed a right-wing former independence fighter, who turned out to be a corrupt asshole who rolled in the same bed with national traitors (those who had worked for Japan under occupation). Because America now needed a strong military presence to fight the cold war, it also pushed Korea to be more friendly with Japan.
The end result is that, in Korea, the "right wing" is friendlier toward the US and Japan, while the "left wing" tends to be more nationalistic (i.e., wanting a unified Korea) and hostile toward Japan. (Of course, even this is a gross simplification ...)
The thing is super complicated! The US under SecDef William Howard Taft backed the Japanese annexation of Korea (tacitly, as it didn't do anything in protest) in return for Japan not raising a row over the US acquiring The Phillipines, during the Spanish-American war. Everybody is retconning history. Anyhow, the point is, it's a reach to say Korea's history has little historical baggage. Why is it not a poor, angry, belligerent nation state whose chief export is "freedom fighters" with massive chip on shoulder, as opposed to the technical, democratic state it is right now.
We (my wife is a korean) live in Europe and the same things that stressed my wife (and our korean friends) exist whenever you have to work with other koreans and their companies.It's not as bad as in Korea but it's still something that I can easily notice.
It seems like the similar thing here - literally everyone sees how agonizing, exhausting, detrimental, and counterproductive the current system is. No one likes it. But yet, despite that, there's some gradient it goes against that prevents clearly better alternatives from emerging. I wonder what that case is in Korea, the subject OP, Japan, Taiwan, and other countries.
It's very simple actually.Koreans hate the working culture and long working hours but at the same time require convenience that can only be achieved by maintaining this hellish working culture.
Funny how the article doesn’t mention that Korea is a divided country technically still at war.
Besides the development of modern South Korea out of a brutal military dictatorship is largely parallel to that of other Asian countries: Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and China.
OP was explicitly referring to South Korea too. If you are not aware of their extremely brutal past, here are few links to get you started (these articles just skim the surface, much deeper study is needed if you really want to get into the details).
There are no territorial disputes in Europe that involve nuclear powers threatening total annihilation on neighbors. Seoul is within easy artillery range of the North, and the badly misnamed DMZ (or, rather, both sides outside the zone itself) is among the most militarized places on the planet.
I don't see anyone mentioning this so I'll take a gander with my "modern jackass" [1] solution based on my own personal observations of the reasons why I don't want kids:
I have so much I still want to do with my life and I want to sink what time free from work into dinners and trips with my wife. Given the extant threat modern nations face, why aren't they offering to care for and raise our children? They'd be raised by professional caregivers with educations in pedagogy, surely an in-aggregate higher quality of childcare than that given by stressed out, first-time parents. Mine did a terrible job of raising me. I think if Denmark or South Korea wants a higher birthrate they should offer to step in.
I've been around my friends' kids, it's not pleasant. There's a very "big ego thing" going on and sudden tantrums that threaten to topple the softest evening.
Just my 2 cents but I have a hard time understanding why none of these governments have proposed such a system. I'm sure there'd be a big uptake. Open to being schooled here but please be nice.
Many countries already invest substantial resources towards caring for children in the form of subsidized daycares, public schooling, subsidized food, etc. I expect demographics will force many countries to become even more generous in this regard.
If you're referring to the government or other entity taking primary guardianship of children that does already occur in the foster/adoption system, but I don't understand why you think that would boost the birth rate. Would it motivate you to have children if the government offered to take them off your hands after they're born?
I suppose the closest example I can think of to something like that would be joining a commune or kibbutz and avoiding the childcare chores, but I understand that most of those groups have a whole other set of demographic/retention issues.
> Would it motivate you to have children if the government offered to take them off your hands after they're born?
Yes, I'd give them all the babies int the world if they offered to take them off my hands after they were born. "Kibbutz" was the word that sprang to my mind when I wrote my first comment.
I'm curious, too, if the state could professionalize birthing: a woman would be paid a hefty sum to bear a child to term and the child's care would be taken over by an intimately sized kibbutz. My understanding of the failure of orphanages is that it is both the origin of trauma that haunts its orphans and the poverty of resources and caregivers allocated to them.
> why aren't they offering to care for and raise our children?
But they do. You'd be surprised how many crucial skills are taught in kindergarten.
But there's also the question of scale - for certain things infants and children need their caregivers' undivided attention. Otherwise you end up with something akin to an orphanage, and there are plenty of data points suggesting that going in this direction is a very bad idea.
Overall some things are already being done, other don't scale, so it's up to the parents to do that and the government's role to make it as easy as possible.
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This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea
How does the developed world pull out of this type of tailspin? Japan and other nations are also facing this exact same issue and we seem to be not paying attention to it.
The core issue is that in most of the developed world, people do not have enough children. And even immigrants in their second generation and beyond also do not have enough children, as such it appears to be a cultural/way of life/society norms problem. It is as if the developed modern world is currently designed as a population sink.
This is going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years.
1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies.
Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times have changed. In a near future where wars will be fought with robots and drones, you need less manpower (and their wives/kids); and thus you need much less of your general population; and much more of a few specialized people to achieve your goals.
We are getting there, whether we are self-aware of it or not.
And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce.
At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.
In the US alone, we literally import seasonal workers to prop up our agriculture industry. We pay them just enough to survive, give them few rights and little stability, and generally tread them as an underclass.
People like this undergird the whole of the modern global economy.
If you want to be really draconian about it, immigration can select for people with skills where the home populate will always have the same average of innate abilities.
Fewer people -> fewer sales for Ioniq and Galaxy S -> less money made by these companies -> less money available for industrial research -> worse technology for your servers, drones, military satellites, submarines, whatever -> lose the war.
With “worth”, “value”, “liability” you are only talking about the narrow, economic definitions of those words.
The problem is not everything valuable is captured in economic expression, not everything is readily marketable, which doesn’t mean they are not valuable. And I am not being romantic here; for the longest time we suffered for not measuring the value of childbirth, mothering a newborn and general domestic labor for example. (Surrogacy being new aside, also doesn’t make a reliable proxy because it doesn’t measure mothering in situ, contractual asymmetries get priced into the transaction.)
Hyperindividualistic western fantasy assumes even attachment and emotional needs can be marketed (eg therapy), but suicide rates show that traditional close-knit societies fare much better. Just because you can’t measure the dollar amount of small talk and care from your neighborhood grocer, doesn’t mean it is worthlessness.
People are worthless only if you waste them. You risk wasting them when you instrumentalize and objectify them excessively, when you interject the market into relationships you shouldn’t.
The waste theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy of neoliberalism. And I agree that we might be getting there if we don’t awaken from the normativity of market thinking.
As people have less kids, age out of the workforce, and live longer, who's going to pick the crops? People far away in 3rd world nations? Who's going to be working the jobs to pay them? Do we expect the small amount of working-age people to support themselves + their kids + retired parents + grandparents? Who's going to be the nurses and the firefighters?
Japan and Germany both have aging populaces and low birth rates. Germany is taking the immigration route, and Japan is taking the automation route (as it's much more xenophobic). From a macroeconomic perspective, Germany's strategy seems to be winning.
And I don't know about you, but when I'm old, I'll take a human nurse over a robot nurse any day of the week.
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It's going to happen. Ambitious, power-hungry humans are like moths to a flame.
So if you want to imply that you possess some level of intelligence, then take a small inductive step, and then, consider reevaluating your moral outlook on the value of human life.
I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor.
Yes, dependency ratios will mean re-jiggering the skewed benefits almost every country provides its old at the expense of the young. But that, too, isn’t a bad thing, particularly if it encourages labor force participation.
(There is another comment arguing demographic the dividend’s inverse is a myth. I don’t go that far. I just think it’s a manageable problem versus a catastrophe.)
I'm sceptical of this claim. Young people and old people are biologically different, in the aggregate. Obvious differences in physical capabilities aside, arguably even more impactful for the future of a given nation are their psychological differences; i.e. innovation and risk-taking invariably comes more from the younger generations.
Perhaps if you're only considering dollars being circulated in a domestic economy, an abundance of wealthy old folks can potentially offset the lack of youthful societal members. But the developmental direction such a demographic structure pushes its society is unlikely to be good for sustaining itself in the long run.
The problem is in the short/medium term, figuring out how to pay for all these checks that politicians have been writing over the last 50 years.
The problem isn't that "the young" have to support "the old", it's that a lot of promises were made on the assumption of indefinite growth.
I don't see that. Demand for what? Consumption? Increasing the flow of "stuff" from store/Amazon to the landfill? If we account for inflation, what's increasing?
Old people consume 1:1 care. And as medical technology improves, elderly people survive increasingly complex conditions requiring increasingly labor-intensive management. At the same time, work with scalable impact is still getting more valuable, so 1:1 care positions have to pay more to win workers, so 1:1 care gets more expensive (cost disease).
If you're wrong, the consequences are dire.
If you're right, there's not much upside compared to being prepared for being wrong.
That's not a reasonable calculation.
Wait a sec - a population being economically forced to retire later (or not at all) is not one "living well". People are being squeezed.
Its kind of amazing how often people make judgements based on extrapolating demographic trends over much longer terms than there is any reason to think that they will hold, and then as soon as they fail turn around and do the same thing based on the new demographic trend.
Encouraging births isn't hard if a government decides its important.
OTOH, most of the arguments I’ve seen for it actually being important (in the near term) are the kind where you scratch the surface and underneath is pure racism, so I’m not all that concerned.
UN 2015 report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf... To summarize, they've started policies and measures since 1992-1994 but UN reports and I quote: "Despite these efforts, Japan’s family policy so far appears to have been largely ineffective."
There are other news opinion articles from Japan: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/06/04/editorials/u...
Can you go into more detail on that? In some respects "demographic suicide" solved with immigration has many (but not all) of the characteristics of colonization, and I think it's a reasonable speculation that colonized and diminished cultures would be unhappy with more than just the coercive aspects of their colonization, and that a non-racist person could have reasonable anxieties about their culture becoming diminished and dying out in the future. Though I suppose racists probably see an opportunity to exploit those anxieties to spread their racist ideology.
Yes it is. The only first-world nation with replacement birth rates is Israel.
Caucescu famously tried to increase the birthrate and that backfired spectacularly. Sweden tried to do a lot of stuff, still doesn't work. Japan also tried.
Got an example of a successful encouragement of more births? Plenty of countries have tried.
The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pair bonding happens at a lower rate and later in life.
1. Having children without being married has a bunch of problems, and in some countries like singapore gets punished for it in lack of certain social services
2. Most of these societies expect women to work or have their husband take care of them. Maternity leave is in some aspects as bad as or worse than in the US.
3. Having children is expensive and the education stress that follows for over a decade after giving birth is even more straining. The subsidies people get in Asia hardly even make up for the cost of a c-section. Sure the same might be true for the USA, but we know it's not a good place to compare things to. But birth and housing are also a fraction of the long term pain of raising a child in those societies.
Other people have mentioned dating. I think modern societies in general have had a break down in social structures, where people used to get their partners from.
It's difficult to commit to dating when you are time-poor and struggling to even get close to the financial trajectory that your parents were on.
It's too easy to blame the kids or whatever, without considering that the kids had and have it harder in many ways than the old people did. Being a millennial in the '00s was pretty good, being a millennial after '08 has not been good (unless you happened to get a sweet high-paying tech job in the '10s).
One way to fix it is the government deciding to highly encourage 'old-fashioned' social norms.
For example, we could have single-sex spaces, which help the sexes develop unique cultures that they then have to rely on each other for.
Or we could encourage single-income-earning, realizing more men are going to take advantage of this, and encourage more stay-at-home parenting, realizing that more women will take advantage of this (but by no means should the sex of either role be forced).
Or, we could change sex-ed curricula to focus more broadly on family formation and its importance.
Encourage church membership, since that used to constitute a large portion of the dating pool, and makes it easier for people to find others like them.
Idolize the roles of mothers and fathers and how it's a national duty.
There's lots of ways to fix it. The willpower simply isn't there. Of course, many people are in complete denial as to the root causes too. The truth is sexual attraction is fundamentally based on sexual difference. Save for a slim minority of the population, this is true across the board (yes, even in homosexual relationships). The reason why dating sucks and people can't find partners is because we've attempted to eradicate all sexual difference, but every once in a while human nature overpowers even this, and we see phenomena which our current culture cannot explain but is easily explainable in the larger context of the human condition (for example, the popularity of 50 shades of grey amongst women, or the popularity of 'seduction culture' and the manosphere amongst men).
Does low fertility correlate with dense urban dwelling and sky high real-estate prices? I suspect it probably does, but I haven't seen any proof.
Maybe this shift to remote-first work that happened over the last 18 months will help....
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It's pretty ugly situation inside right now it seems like. Koreans still have the idea that it is a homogenous country and majority of korean is pretty extremely conservative about this new policy obviously, you could easily imagine it's like ticking bomb.
I live in Denmark, a country portrayed as anti-immigrant by American and British media.
However there is no opposition to educated professional immigrants from India, China, Iran and Eastern Europe.
Brain drain of these countries could be a problem but countries like India and Iran are probably producing many more highly educated individuals than they can domestically employ.
You will always be the "foreigner".
To butcher an unrelated saying: "We can't all get immigrants from each other".
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/south-korea-popu...
While it definitely means some reduction and prestige and power, and in some areas scale does provide advantage - in most ways, it's not decline in anything but the 'major shareholders of the economy'.
It's a 'Investor Problem' for the most part.
Japan never needed 180M people to maintain their standard living, so from the average person's perspective it looks different.
Otherwise, it's a little bit of an economic Ponzi scheme.
Of course, 'permanently fewer children' to the point where population goes to 0 - well that's a problem, but hopefully they will mitigate that and find a happy equilibrium.
As for why this is a problem, Japan's pension system is already insolvent and the country is starting to experience massive manpower shortages in sectors like nursing, agriculture and construction. Sometime last year Japan passed the point where the amount of money & effort needed to maintain existing infrastructure exceeded the country's capability to build it, and the depopulation and dilapidation of Japan's second/third tier cities and the countryside is already striking and poised to accelerate rapidly as villages, towns and cities can no longer fund their basic obligations.
If shrinking populations are okay, what is the desired population level? Right now no country seems to be able to stop this decrease in the modern/developed world. We are just currently shrinking.
I’m just curious if you considered military concerns since war is a young man’s game as they say.
Make childcare easier. Traditionally people lived in the same town as their parents and in-laws. Now days it is thousands of dollars a month in day care.
Want your kids to go to college? In 18 years that is expected to cost well over 100k for a state school.
Raising kids has gotten more stressful and more expensive, of course people aren't having kids! And those who do stop after one.
Not that I have any good idea for childcare. Real estate prices in cities are so high that opening a day care is not the wisest financial decision. Home day cares are a solution, but licensing and compliance issues abound that can also destroy their ability to stay in business.
Heck in America if I want a care that seats more than 4 (I'm ignoring the "5th" middle seat) I am stuck buying a bloody SUV or minivan. Can't even get a 3 row compact people mover because CAFE rules quite literally ban their existence. So 2 kids is basically has a "get a giant vehicle" tax attached to it. Live in a city? Have fun parking that SUV!
And how about schools? In my city, a house that is zoned to good schools has a 200-300k price premium! Want to move to an area with really good schools? That can become a 500k premium.
Japan has separate issues, if fathers are working 10-12 hours a day and are never home, and women are expected to just stop their careers after having kids, well of course women aren't jumping at the chance to start a family. Raise a kid with an absentee husband? No wonder that isn't going over well.
tl;dr life is too expensive. We've created a society that does not promote having children or having a family. Everything down to our underlying infrastructure is anti-family.
The reason why the birth rate strangely low, is quite interwoven. TL;DR: People (think they) are not capable enough to raise a child.
First: Real estate prices is skyrocketing. This bizarre phenomenon began in the 2000s. The 17th administration completely reversed the situation, which became another problem, and the 18th administration made real estate prices to soar again. The 19th (present) administration tried to control real estate prices with complicated regulation, but it never worked so far.
Second: An educational craze. 386(1960s) and X(1970s) generations believe that children should go to the prestige university to survive in this harsh world. So they let their children go to 'hagwon'[1], something like cram school but really competitive. E.g. (a) Almost students in SK go to hagwon. (b) Some 6th~9th grade students study 10AM~10PM everyday in hagwon during the vacation, to pass an enterance exam specialized high school(10th~12th grade). (c) Some kindergartens promotes themselves as "English Kindergarten"; where every teacher and student speaks English. The problem is -- because of these craze, a lot of childless family concern that they can't afford expenses for hagwon($300~400/mo in average. In the case of the above-mentioned entrance exam, It goes more than $1000/mo) so their child won't be happy because they'll fall behind when they grow up.
Third: Saving for retirement. Because of these problem, rearing child in Korea costs an arm and a leg. In the past, education was not overheated like this, and Korean-specific mindset forced family to give birth. However, starting with military administration's birth control policy, people changed their mindset, and now a significant number of people are more interested in saving for retirement than give birth.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon
Hungary gives life time tax exemption to mothers of 4 children, and may lower that to 3.
It's too early to tell if it's working.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/04/baby-bonuses-f...
You want more families? You need to unashamedly celebrate your nation and culture.
South Korea has invested billions in trying to have its fertility rate increase by giving incentives to couples, it has only worsen.
We must get to the idea that it will be almost impossible in the developed world to get back to a fertility rate above 2.
Ectogenesis can be one of the solution.
1. Find a young woman
2. Make her happy, and confident in you
3. ?
4. Pull your family for the next 30-40 years
With all respects, I always seen a family as a man's responsibility, and a failure at creating/maintaining one to coming from man's deficiencies first.
In virtually every human culture in the world, even matriarchal societies, it is by default that a man needs to put more effort than a woman to score a marriage. It is very deeply ingrained into human culture.
A man can always always find another woman if one does not want a family with him up until mid-thirties. A lot of time.
And yes, I really want to have a family, and I really want to work hard to have one.
It really sucks for bachelors. Unmarried people in most of Asia effectively lost 2 years of their reproductive life, and probably will lose at least 1 more year.
It's completely incorrect to think that China had any much of normal life after quarantine succeeded. Last 12 months was a life in constant paranoia, extreme social unease, and daily life disruptions from periodic Covid breakthroughs.
Best of luck in your search for a wife. As a married man with kids, starting a family is the most wonderful thing. I feel terrible for young men and women during COVID, it's just a terrible human tragedy created by the government. IMO, dating should have been considered an essential activity. It would have been good for restaurants and the economy and young people. Tell the married people with kids to stay home while the young people can all go dance it up and get hitched. It's foundational to society.
If you filter out the overweight, tattoo-covered ones, having kids by another man etc. you are left with just a few percent though.
I can imagine this problem solving itself on some timeline if that is the case e.g. people with a strong desire to have children have more kids, their genes are more prevalent while people inclined to have fewer kids sort of select themselves out of the gene pool by having 1 or 0 kids. This seems to me entirely possible, as I know genes can code for basically any arbitrary behavior, but I'm not an expert.
If there is any genetic contributions, then this will be under intense selection pressure.
Maybe this is why religion has survived so long? It tends to our reproduce the non-religious?
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They'll have to unite with North Korea eventually. Make of that what you will.
I don't know. United Germany was still within living memory when reunification happened, and it cost a huge amount to integrate East Germany, even though they had a functional society and industry. For example, Zeiss Jena (East German) camera lenses were competitive with those from the west. That would be like North Korea making good phones in the modern day.
The carrying capacity of the planet earth would like to have a talk with you.
Continuing exponential population growth is obviously not a sustainable path forward. At some point, The world's economies are going to have to realign to a flat population and will have to adapt to the demographics there of. And if humanity does not choose not to do so, at some point in the future, the choice will be made for us.
Population growth is not a requirement for economic growth, it is just one of the laziest ways to move the dial up.
Yes, by 2100, the population might be all the way down to where it was in 1980.
Also, at some point, South Korea and North Korea may settle up, much as West Germany and East Germany did, and for much the same reasons.
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Black Death, Mongols, world wars, not even intentional genocides managed to inflict this level of population loss. And it's met with yawns and shrugs, as if it's unavoidable like gravity.
And no - people's desire to have children hasn't dropped all that much:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility...
https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_2_2-Ideal-actual-number-c...
https://qz.com/africa/1881468/how-fast-is-africas-population...
But current trends never continue forever. In large part because we like to avoid disasters.
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Women have many options/entertainment now and don't want to go through pregnancy especially multiple times. This coupled with fact that you have only 10 years for childbearing (before 40) and you drastically cut carrier advancement when it just started explains a lot IMO. Requiring two people to support family in XXI century feels like a scam and race to the bottom. It's mostly due to scarcity of land that you have to bid on housing (that owned by too rich people in many cases, so they literaly can manipulate market to extract rent) and all profitable activity moved to cities so you also want bw there.
Make housing cheaper => I think will happen with decentralisation of energy sources and cheaper transport (tesla). Also some family friendly social policies (china?).
I think remote work made a lot of people choose to live in houses instead and this might lead to some positive change in demography.
But the cheapest way IMO is to just make families trendy via Hollywood (instead of this homo propaganda on Netflix)
In contrast, the US and Japan seem to be somewhat falling apart with a peak in infrastructure and buildings a few decades ago. It's not that bad of course but relative to countries like South Korea and the Netherlands I think you'll agree.
Also, in my experience Korea was way more ready to handle English speakers than Japan was. I was surprised how I felt so lost in Japan not being able to read or speak Japanese. (Of course I don't expect to go to another country and be catered to. It's just that I was spoiled by Korea. And I wanted to address any reasonable concern that Japan might be friendlier for tourists than Korea.) In contrast in Korea there was a lot already in English and all the service workers I met spoke English well.
For example, I'd say the basic subway system between Seoul and Tokyo are pretty similar but you also have the advantage of a vastly superior rail network that serves Greater Tokyo and the rest of Japan. KTX and SRT in Korea are improving every year but don't really compare yet. Additionally, the new subway stations in Seoul are quite nice (Line #9) but you also have really old lines (Line #1) where many of the stations are so badly maintained they feel inferior to their counterparts in Tokyo (Ginza, Hibiya).
I can't really speak to the english speaking issues in South Korea, but in Tokyo I never really had any issues even though I don't speak Japanese. Most places in Tokyo will have english menus because it's a tourist centric city. Neighborhood family owned dives probably don't speak english very well but they wouldn't in Seoul either.
The thing that makes Seoul fall short for me is the standard of building maintenance. Although things are changing, it was generally the case that for several generations of building maintenance they just expected to tear them down and rebuild. Tokyo has a similar problem, necessitated by constant building damage and updated building codes from earthquakes, but the biggest difference is that a lot of these buildings in Seoul are 10+ stories tall. Most of Tokyo's building stock is <10 stories. It's become cost prohibitive in Seoul to actually tear these buildings down and rebuild them.
One of the worst things for me is how car centric Seoul is. It's rare in Tokyo to have 3+ lane roads that aren't toll road/expressways. They're all over Seoul and the side roads are packed full of "valet" parking for restaurants that don't actually have parking lots. The entire car culture feels way more chaotic there than Tokyo. In Tokyo, you can't buy a car unless you prove you have a registered parking spot. In Seoul, you just double park your neighbor and put your phone number in case you need to move your car.
Lastly the air quality in Seoul is way worse than Tokyo. Feels like you constantly have to stay indoors for weeks during the bad "yellow dust" season.
I have taken KTX but I have not taken (non-subway) rail in Japan. The KTX train I took was similar in quality to German inter-city rail or American regional rail lines. That is to say, it wasn't that special.
The air quality issues are a huge pain for sure.
Japan's car-ownership experience is rather hostile. Expensive tolls, Shaken inspection, and higher price tags than SK. In a way, this benefits tourists because streets are cleaner, cars are newer, and people tend to drive less.
In Korea, it's flipped. It's great place for car ownership. But from tourists POV, it's chaos.
As much as I love Japan, I'd prefer to live in Korea while visit Japan as tourist. Seoul isn't so bad once you go outside from central Seoul to new cities. Everything is more spread out, cleaner, and very modern.
Fast forward 50 years (once the demographic collapse has fully hit Asia and Europe), and we'll see if their infrastructure continues to be so modern.
But Tokyo infrastructure felt basically as old as NYC infrastructure to me (a totally qualitative impression).
That said, Tokyo is massively cleaner and nicer than NYC even if some of the infrastructure seems old. There is no question it is nicer than NYC.
One of the key problems is that Japan has a huge domestic market and does not 'need' English to survive. Korea, on the other hand, is a lot more dependent on its external connections and a push for better English proficiency makes a lot of sense.
Parts of Amsterdam have that sort of feel, but it’s definitely more mixed. Not crumbling, but old and making do since it’s fine.
Economically, Japan has been in stagnation since the late 80s.
Amsterdam is basically a super old village built in a swamp that it interesting for its history, architecture, culture, and so on. Or for the red light district and weed shops, if you prefer that. It's not a display of infrastructure.
The Netherlands has some of the best developed infrastructure nation-wide: roads, railways, and most famously its massive water management systems, as half the country is below sea level.
It is also very well developed economically (punching far above its tiny weight), technically, and socially (hybrid welfare system).
By comparison, many parts of the US feel like a 3rd world country.
In Seoul yes, but not necessarily other places, in my experience. I had really confusing experience trying to sleep over in a spa in Busan. The only English phrase we got out of them was "Robot steal your phone". Admittedly this is not a place tourists would generally go though. We got recommended doing it by Korean friends and our hostel host in Seoul helped us find the place.
In Japan I experienced a few times that a Japanese person that could speak english would come over to help me if I was staring at something (map, ATM machine) in confusion for a while. Didn't experience that in South Korea even though I stayed there longer.
I agree that South Korea feels extremely modern.. but not much less than Japan. I wonder if it has something to do with how recently the infrastructure was built. Maybe South Korea is just at that perfect stage now where nothing is too old, and yet they've managed to improve/refurbish almost everything. I've noticed Taiwan is a mixed bag. Some places feels insanely modern, while there's still big areas with a lot of old construction. But then those areas tends to be the ones with the most charm and the best night markets.
If your "modern country" means "modern buildings", then I can agree. But if you're saying people, culture, art, technology of South Korea is more "modern" than other countries, I would disagree.
Have you been to Singapore?
Singapore has less than 1% of South Korea's land mass, which is 25% of Japan.
It's not a fair comparison on the scale of the infrastructure.
Also, in my experience, Koreans speak even less English than the Japanese do. Seoul is still OK, maybe Busan, but out in the sticks there's zero signage and very few speakers.
One more massive advantage Korean has over Japanese is that Korean has a fairly simple alphabet so you can read and pronounce words after only a little practice.
In contrast, it takes quite a while to be able to read Japanese with their three writing systems and Kanji in particular.
I guess you've never been to China?
Is everything just recently built or actually designed with modern principles in mind that will still feel relevant a decade down the road?
I’m no researcher of any thing but the casual impression I’ve gotten from reading here and there over the years is that South Korea has plenty of problems, social and otherwise, and some of them pretty archaic and morbid (like idols collapsing on stage but nobody helping them)
They also continually build out entirely new rapid lines like the Bundang express line which takes you from a suburb of Seoul to the center of Gangnam (a major district) in 15 minutes.
Their buildings are also mostly new. It seems like every decade or two Koreans demolish older buildings and replace them with new ones. Whereas the US and Japan seem more often to keep old buildings around for much longer (and don't clean them).
The cars on the street in Seoul were also newer than the ones I saw in Japan (although similar in age to NYC). For example the taxis in Japan look like 80s BMWs. They look very cool for that reason but also seem pretty old.
Finally in Japan there's a lot still done by cash and weird single-purpose ticket machines. It would be a hardware hackers dream because of the variety and number of ticketing machines everywhere.
But in contrast Korea has gone almost totally cashless everywhere or so it seems. You just "tap" with your phone. The US is getting there, and maybe Japan is now too since it's been a few years since I was last there.
I wrote a bit more about this a while ago (and included pics) here: https://notes.eatonphil.com/on-nyc-tokyo-and-seoul.html.
So does the US, and Japan, and ... basically every country. Each country is going to have pros and cons. Talking with my Korean friends, their perspective is that the US also has plenty of problems, social and otherwise. Are they wrong? And we've had discussions around e.g. why US cops are going around killing US citizens, etc.
The pros for Korea for me include hospitable people, great food, universal healthcare, and fantastic public transportation (you can get around basically the entire country via bus/metro/trains with a unified T-Money card). I also felt a sense of unity that I don't often feel in the US.
Some cons would include a work culture around working insane hours and compulsory drinking. Those are changing with the current generation though. Schooling is extremely competitive since everyone is trying to get into a handful of colleges in order to have career prospects with the large conglomerations. And having to worry about the air quality index is annoying from my US perspective.
Social problems to what cultural viewpoint?
This is not right. Each of the following meet the same criteria, including the author's caveats - Taiwan (also Japan), Greece (Ottoman), Finland (Swedes), Ireland (British), numerous Central European nations (Soviet Union). Some others that are debatable - Cyprus, Malta, Israel, Singapore, Chile. At the time of their handovers, Hong Kong and Macau would each have met the definition.
They say this and then move on. The distinct thing is that it was Imperial Japan rather than Imperial England? I’m not saying those empires were similar, but it seems to me that they made the distinction just so they could ignore the aforementioned countries.
The kingdom of Joseon was annexed entirely by Japan in 1905. Modern Korea (nevermind the North/South prefix) would not exist had the US not enter WWII. The 35-years under Japan is a major flashpoint in Japan-Korea relation, it's a joke that the thing that unites North and South is their common hatred of Japan. I'm surprised there's not a more nationalistic jingoistic attitude from South Korea, given their economic state today. Historians agree that the costly outcome of the Russo-Japanese war led to the rise of militaristic Japan and their entry into WWII.
There was an awful lot going on in Japan during the Taishou era tho.
Their "screening" performing is unscientific (use air dosimeter for food, completely nonsense) so they are blamed because it seems to racism.
America defeated Japan in WW2, leading to the liberation of Korea, but it was immediately followed by the US and the Soviet dividing the country in half. To make matters more complicated, the US backed a right-wing former independence fighter, who turned out to be a corrupt asshole who rolled in the same bed with national traitors (those who had worked for Japan under occupation). Because America now needed a strong military presence to fight the cold war, it also pushed Korea to be more friendly with Japan.
The end result is that, in Korea, the "right wing" is friendlier toward the US and Japan, while the "left wing" tends to be more nationalistic (i.e., wanting a unified Korea) and hostile toward Japan. (Of course, even this is a gross simplification ...)
We (my wife is a korean) live in Europe and the same things that stressed my wife (and our korean friends) exist whenever you have to work with other koreans and their companies.It's not as bad as in Korea but it's still something that I can easily notice.
It seems like the similar thing here - literally everyone sees how agonizing, exhausting, detrimental, and counterproductive the current system is. No one likes it. But yet, despite that, there's some gradient it goes against that prevents clearly better alternatives from emerging. I wonder what that case is in Korea, the subject OP, Japan, Taiwan, and other countries.
Besides the development of modern South Korea out of a brutal military dictatorship is largely parallel to that of other Asian countries: Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and China.
The country is also recognized as sovereign nation by more than 188 countries, having a seat in the United Nations as well.
Territorial disputes are common even in Europe, as well as developments out of brutal dictatorship. I honestly do not get your point :)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/south-korea-park-chung-he...
https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-korea-owns-up-to-brutal-p...
https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/the-forgotten-history-of-sou...
https://archive.is/fBa5L
I wrote a post about it here https://www.jacobjacquet.com/blog/building-a-global-startup-...
Anything related to Korea's startup ecosystem, feel free to ask
I have so much I still want to do with my life and I want to sink what time free from work into dinners and trips with my wife. Given the extant threat modern nations face, why aren't they offering to care for and raise our children? They'd be raised by professional caregivers with educations in pedagogy, surely an in-aggregate higher quality of childcare than that given by stressed out, first-time parents. Mine did a terrible job of raising me. I think if Denmark or South Korea wants a higher birthrate they should offer to step in.
I've been around my friends' kids, it's not pleasant. There's a very "big ego thing" going on and sudden tantrums that threaten to topple the softest evening.
Just my 2 cents but I have a hard time understanding why none of these governments have proposed such a system. I'm sure there'd be a big uptake. Open to being schooled here but please be nice.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/293/a-little-bit-of-knowled...
If you're referring to the government or other entity taking primary guardianship of children that does already occur in the foster/adoption system, but I don't understand why you think that would boost the birth rate. Would it motivate you to have children if the government offered to take them off your hands after they're born?
I suppose the closest example I can think of to something like that would be joining a commune or kibbutz and avoiding the childcare chores, but I understand that most of those groups have a whole other set of demographic/retention issues.
> Would it motivate you to have children if the government offered to take them off your hands after they're born?
Yes, I'd give them all the babies int the world if they offered to take them off my hands after they were born. "Kibbutz" was the word that sprang to my mind when I wrote my first comment.
I'm curious, too, if the state could professionalize birthing: a woman would be paid a hefty sum to bear a child to term and the child's care would be taken over by an intimately sized kibbutz. My understanding of the failure of orphanages is that it is both the origin of trauma that haunts its orphans and the poverty of resources and caregivers allocated to them.
But they do. You'd be surprised how many crucial skills are taught in kindergarten.
But there's also the question of scale - for certain things infants and children need their caregivers' undivided attention. Otherwise you end up with something akin to an orphanage, and there are plenty of data points suggesting that going in this direction is a very bad idea.
Overall some things are already being done, other don't scale, so it's up to the parents to do that and the government's role to make it as easy as possible.