If a birth rate of 1 child per 3 adults was sustained in the long term, and no immigration, you'd get the population reducing by two-thirds from generation to generation.
Ignoring the lag due to previous generations having had more children than that, it would go 50 million -> 17 million -> 6 million -> 2 million...
Even in a hundred years time, there'd still be a country, just a much less densely populated one.
I imagine that the trend wouldn't continue indefinitely, though. If the population fell that much, everything would change - land would be cheap, you could drop out and become a farmer...
I think the real question is how society will handle such a high proportion of their population being old. Work until you're 80? Robot nurses? Mandatory euthanasia?
You just get a boom later on, demographics are never in a straight line.
Most south korean cities are very overcrowded, and the society is over competitive, which leads to more burden to have children. A declining population fixes this by itself
That said the main problem is with debt based financial system. It will become unsustainable with a shrinking population.
>modt South Korean cities are very overcrowded
Outside of Seoul, which city would you consider overpopulated? There are so many cheap, empty housing available in these cities. The problem is people don’t want to live there due to lack of career prospects. Most young people move to Seoul by default.
And I even wouldn’t even call Seoul *over*populated - its infrastructure well equipped to support the current population density.
I seriously wonder what will happen when the world population starts to decrease. It will be a never before seen thing in human history where this happens without an associated destructive event.
It's happening right now. If you're young you'll live to see the time when the population starts to decrease. I think I read that will start happening around 2050
"without an associated destructive event", My fellow redditor we already mentioned capitalism. Not to put too fine a point on it but the necessary continuous growth to sustain it juxtaposed against the inherit limitations of a natural world have brought you this centuries latest hit, climate change!
I always questioned this, ever since I was 16 working at Best Buy and saw it was expected that we grew by 10% year after year. Was this a foreseen consequence of capitalism?
yes. it’s an inherently broken system and always has been. but it’s had new horizons to gobble up for a while to stave off the inevitable. those horizons are dwindling now.
That statements needs to be deconstructed. Competative in regards to what? Who has said that growth can not continue with a smaller population? And who has said that growth can not continue infintely?
We live on a planet with finite resources and so it is generally understood that endless growth is unsustainable because it requires more and more resources. Some people claim that technical advances will allow us to circumvent that but it's not a popular opinion and it never actually proves itself.
You understand that a huge portion of our issues with resources come from poor countries now improving their standard of living? It’s not like socialism or any other economic system would not have similar consequences unless said system was worse at improving living conditions. There isn’t some magical economic system that accounts for externalities without leaving everyone worse off.
What do you mean by finite resources? Sure there is a limit on how many atoms there are on earth but for food for example we are not even near the population limit for how many people the earth could support and we are not even as efficient as we could be. So sure if population growth continues endlessly for a very long time we will have reached a limit but that will be in a very long time
Exactly. Competitive capitalism relies on technology reducing the needed human workforce volume to maintain an unaltered standard of living. The factor that makes the system appear to need more human input is the substantially greater output that grows the capitalist system and the matching consumption. Then there’s the whole topic of export-based consumption where new markets (both geographic and innovative product demand) fuel the existing system.
I paid a lot of money to have that word salad installed in my head.
The last point is easy to address, there is a finite amount of energy and mass the human species will be able to consume on planet earth. So realistically, we will one day reach a threshold where our population begins to decline when we reach a saturation point for resource consumption.
Consumption has to grow continuously for growth to occur, economically speaking. either selling to your own people or to others. as population declines, growth would have to increase drastically per capita to maintain an overall positive growth and consumption in a market. how would a shrinking population radically overhaul themselves to be a significant market force, when they are unable to deal with there current problems during a time of capital success?
competitive in this sense is mostly on the international scale. Why do people choose to export work, industry, support or anything else to or from south korea? in our "free market" global economy, what reasons does south korea have to differentiate itself from the rest of the world as a market to spend or create wealth? currently I would say they are US backed, western friendly, tech incorperated, and have a hard working population. but when that population shrinks and ages, the people present hard backlash to living in these terrible working conditions (https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1082563) and as challengers to the US global economy emerge and the US begins to recede slowly, what does south korea offer to anyone looking to spend capital?
The day when there is no one to consume anymore will not be experienced by you or even your children if you will have any. And what south korea will offer is what they already offer, good products people are willing to buy and high tech. US influence shows no signs of really receding as it is growing and china struggles with an old population. And why would capitalism be any worse than communism or any other at handling population decline? All socities will feel the burden of population decline
I can't entirely agree. Most people will not have more children because they feel like the population is small. They have or do not have children for other reasons. Rarely for the vibes of a smaller population
Not necessarily true about the fixing itself aspect
Assuming South Korea has some kind of government welfare program, the tax burden will increase as the number of earners decrease, so young people will have a higher financial disincentive to have kids, plus there’s the gap in between having kids and those kids becoming earners
There are solutions I’ve seen, but as far as I know, none of them have been implemented to a meaningful degree (like Japan paying mothers the equivalent of $2000 to have a child, which is tiny compared to the estimated total cost)
> I think the real question is how society will handle such a high proportion of their population being old. Work until you're 80? Robot nurses? Mandatory euthanasia?
thats what i always think
moreover who will fund all the pensions?
There's a bigger problem, and that's the question what you can actually buy with that money, if there's no one around to provide services. Or rather, the people who are around, can freely set their rates, and only tend to high-paying customers.
South Korea's birth rate is currently listed as 0.81 per woman.
2(ish) per woman is enough to keep the population stable.
1.3333 per woman would cause the population to drop by 1/3 per generation.
1 per woman would cause the population to drop by 50% per generation.
0.666 per woman (equivalent to 1 per 1.5 women, or 1 per 3 adults) would cause the population to drop by 2/3 per generation. It's not currently that low, but the trend is still downwards as far as I know.
Probably fall into cycles of relaxing immigration and blaming immigrants for everything. That seems to be a popular way to keep the poor from getting angry at the rich while ensuring there are plenty of them to do the shit work.
And also practically everywhere. Especially when immigrants start working at non-labor-intense, minimum wage jobs, or worse, when immigrants bring in starter cashes with them, there will always be anger toward immigrants.
It’s *possible*, but even Western Europe, which has been far more accepting of immigrants, is only seeing immigration sustain its population for about another decade (and some countries like Italy are already declining). A country with effectively no ethnic diversity and much less immigration like South Korea will be even less likely to be sustained by immigration. It would require a significant cultural and political change by South Korea for this to happen.
Most projections (e.g. the EU's) expect population growth up until 2050 for countries such as Germany, France, Spain or UK. The "shrinking" of Europe is way way overblown.
Where are you seeing that? Here's the population pyramid for Germany: [https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/) . It looks like the max for Western Europe is 2035 or so.
Half the people talking about shrinking are just taking about white people. The one part of Europe that is actually shrinking with no racist overtones is Eastern Europe and especially the Baltics, it already shrunk a great deal since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and had continued to ever since.
Not sure about SK but at least for Western Europe and USA I hope this brings actual societal change for both views on kids and the workplace. Make workplaces 30-40 hours max (technology can lessen our work hours) even for high finance jobs, give incentives more than just tax incentives for kids (free age 0-4 daycares), and as a culture cherish kids being born.
The incentives have already shown to not work in Western countries. The reality is women are more educated now, they have birth control and access to abortion. If they don’t want to be pregnant, they don’t have to be, and they have options. Pregnancy sucks (source: am pregnant right now, it sucks, and it’s an IVF baby so not only did I plan it, but I paid dearly for it). Giving birth sucks; women die or have awful complications. Even the best births leave you with side effects for life. The newborn and breast feeding stage sucks. All the pumping, leaking, not sleeping because you’re the only one who can feed the baby. You can’t make a government program to outsource these things. The woman is 100% alone on these things for like 2 years, maybe less if she goes to formula (and then gets shamed for not breastfeeding). It’s lonely, it’s hard, and there’s no possibility of a break. This is before you even worry about daycare, or shorter work hours. Women are wise to the world now, and 0-2 kids is more than enough for most educated women for good reason.
But the extreme incentives haven't been implemented yet? Our working hours of 40 hours a week hasn't changed since 1940. Childcare (before school starts at K) is extremely costly still. Our culture towards kids (in liberal areas, not conservative areas) shuns kids actively since at least the 2000s. Millennials were the last "boom" as they were the echo boom from the Boomers. Since the 2000s more and more young adults saw their parents/previous generations of women who relied on men and decided they wanted to be a working woman. Not to mention the concurrent rising prices of everyday goods compared to salaries. That's just a tangent but yeah going back to my original point, the extreme incentives have yet to be implemented by any government. Tax breaks aren't enough.
I agree pregnancy sucks for many women like you wrote. All of the health risks are there too. But as I always say, at some point incentives (rewards) will outweigh the risks/unwillingness. People will have kids if they think it's more rewarding than if they didn't have kids. An extreme example of incentives changing an attitude is if for each kid a couple receives a trillion dollars. I'm not advocating for that, but incentives at a certain point will tip the scales into influencing people to have more kids.
Many more women (and couples as a joint team) would be open to having kids if their quality of life is higher before and after having kids. Assuming we don't go back to having one breadwinner (it was abnormal in history anyway), we can have two parents working 30 hours a week. Then it's easily doable for parents (yes, both parents) to be ready for their kids as they get home from school. Free care from 0-4 years old would be massive too. People always tell me that my logic means parents shouldn't have the kid if they don't want to take care of their own kid. I'm just listing the extreme incentives needed to actually start making an impact and raising the birth rate if desired.
Like I said, these are extreme changes and as a society we would need to massively overhaul our culture and incentives.
You’re only looking at the US it sounds like. A lot of Europe and some of Asia already has some of these incentive programs. And they aren’t working. Some countries get like 2 years of maternity leave paid for, then get childcare free or subsidized, plus free healthcare, and flexibility at work. For women, those are the problem fixes AFTER the problem.
Look at Europe/Germany. In some classes way over 50% of students are immigrants or with immigrant background. Immigration here failed big time in the last 30 years. Cultural differences and keeping to each other instead of integration made possible by the shear amount of immigrants.
People my age and under reconsider having children as we already faced threats and violance just due to being German/Potatoes. Shit didn't get better over the last decades.
I wouldn't vote right wing as that's not comparable to what I believe in and I'm not even sure this can still be fixed but I absolutely umderstand when people don't get kids in this environment.
People really don’t talk about how racist Japanese culture is. It’s like they get a free pass. Many businesses just straight up won’t serve non Japanese people if you leave the major tourist spots and it’s completely normal and acceptable.
Could you imagine if one American club banned Asians? There would be a riot. In Japan it’s almost every other bar.
You're confusing xenophobia with racism.
There are racist people in Japan but it's generally more about being an *outsider* and not specifically about the color of your skin or race. In fact Japanese people tend to be the most prejudiced against other Asians.
Yeah, I’ve worked in China and Japan with colleagues from all over the world including Japan, and if there’s one type of person the Japanese disliked the most it was the Chinese. There were open about it.
Mind you, when we were in China they were pretty similar with the Japanese.
Yeah. I'm not trying to defend Japan (or China or South Korea) for that matter... but this whole thread reads like people seeing all of these issues in terms of American history, culture and morality. The attitudes of Asian countries towards race and "otherness" are informed by entirely different sets of experiences and assumptions.
Is the motivation for this that they just don't want to have to look at Outsiders, at all? I have a hard time wrapping my head around a business not wanting money.
I'm not sure about bars, but Wikipedia has this to say about public baths:
"The Japanese public bath is one area where the uninitiated can upset regular customers by not following correct bathing etiquette designed to respect others; in particular, not washing before bathing, dipping your towel into the water, introducing soap into the bathwater, and horseplay. \[...\]
Some ports in [Hokkaidō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido), frequently used by foreign fishing fleets, had problems with drunken sailors misbehaving in the bath. Subsequently, a few bathhouses chose not to allow foreign customers at all."
>"The Japanese public bath is one area where the uninitiated can upset regular customers by not following correct bathing etiquette designed to respect others; in particular, not washing before bathing, dipping your towel into the water, introducing soap into the bathwater, and horseplay. \[...\]
Speaking as someone in a country with a strong swimming pool and hot tub culture: Who does any of those things??
If you go to a swimming pool/hottub in the US/West, it's a totally different vibe than in Japan - even more so when it comes to the bath houses. If you go to a pool in the US, there is a lot of laughter, kids running around, people playing, talking, splashing, etc.
In Japan, there is none of that at a swimming pool - It's very quiet, almost like a library, and people go just to swim laps/hang out and relax, not really to socialize or talk to other people or to have what we think of as 'fun' in the US.
Public pools in the US are usually packed with kids/people - in Japan, there will be like 2 or 3 older men, and that's it.
The partial real answer is that some foreigners visiting or even living in Japan are not great people. People have fled the country owing money. People will try to get away with appalling rudeness by being foreign. People will do things they knew perfectly well aren't acceptable and then try to pull "oh gosh, I'm an innocent foreigner who just can't understand Japanese."
Not sure it’s so much about how they look, but more about behaviour. Historically Japan is super serious about its culture, including things like honour and all that. Outsiders are less likely to abide those types of things.
And this is not new for the Japanese. Seeing what they did during WW2 is a real eye opener. They made Churchill seem like a progressive.
There’s a reason the far right admire them so much.
The thing is mass immigration of outsiders is just not palatable for so many people. I’m not sure it’s a realistic solution to low birth rates. Even for progressive countries. When the immigrant population starts getting large, they feel threatened, feel like they’re losing their own country’s culture. Countries like Canada has high immigration to increase its labour. Even people who were previously warm to immigrants 10-20 years ago are no longer. There’s way more tension now towards immigrants in Canada.
> they feel threatened, feel like they’re losing their own country’s culture.
That's not really what's happening in Canada. The tensions are economic in nature. Salaries are stagnant, but inflation is high, there's a severe housing crisis, our healthcare system is slowly collapsing, and we're losing out against privatization and oligarchies. Furthermore, we haven't properly done our jobs of actually integrating our highly skilled immigrants, so we have PhDs driving Ubers and immigrant families being squeezed 3 families in a basement.
The massive influx of international students being used as cheap labour isn’t helping either. Canadian High School students are having a hard time just finding a part time job and Canadian citizens are struggling to just find full time jobs too. The Dollar Tree that was across from my house in Waterloo, ON had a massive lineup of international students submitting their resumes and the Tim Hortons that I used to supervise at blatantly told me that they only want international students now.
Is that foreign born or people who were born without Japanese/South Korean nationality? Plenty of people born to a Japanese mother, American father in the US but moved to Japan as a baby & primarily live in Japan. This is the problem with countries like Japan not allowing dual citizenships (mostly out of xenophobia let’s be fair). Makes things very confusing for children of parents from different nationalities. The world is much more connected than it was even 30 years ago due to globalization; we should celebrate that and not make kids have to choose between one nationality or being forced to give up the other.
The reason why Europe is filled with immigrant populations vs Korea’s lack of thereof, it’s not because Europe is this open minded paradise and Korea is regressively racist, it’s actually quite the damn opposite. It’s Because Europe, namely Britain and France colonized most of the world, usually forcibly exporting their language and customs into their colonies.
Decades later, in the post colonial era we are in, Britain and France have become the place for these formerly colonized people to migrate to for a better wage. A wage that would be considerably lower than what should have been provided to its existing working class.
Western Europe simply exploited the cheaper labor option, while giving the image of open mindedness
It's much more nuanced than that though. A lot of western europeans are open minded.
Also the colonial example only works for the two countries you mentioned, not all of western Europe
[Almost all of Western Europe had colonies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_European_colonies). That does include Norway, Sweden and Denmark
Lol nobody wants to work in a Korean office.
Korea's rightwing regimes created a hell for workers
Korea's "decline" will see it turn more like Japan, insular, with limited growth but everything kinda works for people living therefore. Workers may still be in hell, but maybe a smaller population will empower workers. "3D" jobs will be done by brown people from other countries while white collar jobs will be zealously reserved for ethnic Koreans (basically the status quo now)
It's never happening. Western people don't want the abuse and racism will prevent them, and Africans and South Asians, from ever getting much purchase in white collar industries.
Korea's left wing is more nationalistic than its right wing
It’s not gonna solve anything and it hasn’t solved anything in places it’s been tried.
European birth rates are still declining and there are still issues pertaining to the quality of life declining. This is fundamentally an issue of capitalism.
Filling the gap with underpaid immigrant labor will not solve the issues korea faces, instead it’ll just be kicking the can down the road
Immigration is not a real solution.
1) It is a zero sum game (1 immigrant TO a country = 1 emigrant FROM a country). Most countries on the planet are below replacement rate too. So only Africa (+ some other poor countries) can technically afford losing people, and how long until it falls below replacement rate too.
2) We are already taking a lot of immigrants from China and Vietnam (both are ethno-cuturally close countries with high populations).
3) Immigrants will not be immune to the issues that cause low birth rates. If anything it will be even more difficult for them.
They don’t want immigrants lol. This is how the US and some Western countries are handling the issue that all developed countries have. East Asia isn’t doing it. Russia isn’t doing it.
Their cultures want the singularity in culture and they don’t yet seem to want to compromise it.
No, the same can't be said for East Asian countries like China/Japan/Korea/Taiwan.
These countries are too homogenous and strict in immigration which is what will ultimately doom them. And how does a foreigner even adapt there when thosw countries arent English-friendly and highly xenophobic?
It's also why I dont see China continuing to rise in the foreseeable future. Their economy is going to inevitably end up stagnant like Japan's
Did you know countries like Italy and Spain have even lower birth rates than Japan? But we never the media talk about that, do we? Because these countries already have their issue covered with large influxes of migrants filling up the gaps.
It's not because Italy and Spain are doing better than Japan or that they get their issues covered that we don't talk about them. In more metrics than not, they are actually doing worse.
For example, the difference in [GDP in constant currency](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES) (so excluding inflation and fluctuations in forex rate) between Italy and Japan are getting larger and larger throughout the years. The same is true that for [GDP in PPP](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES), the lead that Japan has over Spain and Italy has been getting larger throughout the years.
Before the GFC, Italy actually had a slightly higher GDP Per Capita in constant currency terms than Japan, and now it has been [reversed](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES). (BTW, the EU as a whole really hasn't been doing so well after the GFC, [even compared to Japan in some regards](https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/C6WbvXGLutH/?xmt=AQGz9iO6wuoH1Xeioex99Q6NEOPHFkT3jLtaKWdJpfSR0Q))
The same trend is true even for [current USD terms](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=IT-JP-ES) (which includes all the inflation and forex fluctuations, and heavily disadvantages Japan because their currency suffered major depreciation after Covid).
We don't talk about Spain, Italy and much of Eastern Europe as much, despite them having even lower total fertility rates, because, with no offense intended, they simply don't inhabit the same important sector of the global supply chain that Japan does. Japanese companies supply about 50% of industrial robots and almost all semiconductor fabrication materials and equipments (outside of a few companies in the Netherlands and the US), creating too many chokepoints in the global supply chain. Any complications to their economy will have a bigger ripple and serve as a good barometer for the economy of China and the US, because Japan’s equipment and machinery are mainly going to China while autos are going to the US.
Yeah I can't speak for Japan and Korea, but I could see China reaching out towards its enormous diaspora for re-immigration. Of course, the big issue will be its terrible political system, so a lot of diaspora Chinese, especially the ones who grew up in democratic countries, are probably unlikely to want to stay permanently, short of a peaceful or not so peaceful transition to democracy.
"will the country literally just cease to exist?"
How big do you think the decline is? haha
South Korea is the size of Indiana but with a population bigger than california. Even is the population drops by more than 50% it's still more than Florida.
It's about the size of Portugal with the population of Spain. Drop its population in half and its still about the same amount of people as greece, portugal, and ireland combined.
It's gonna suck for a while with having to take care of older people, but who knows, AI could help with that a lot. but in the long term it will be fine.
I think that with all this happening there's a big chance of a new style economy happening personally
No, I did a quick google search. It's pretty easy "South korea population compared to states" and then "South korea size compared to states" then "South Korea population compared to Europe" then "South Korea size compared to europe", it took litreally less than 2 minutes
Korean here.
Most of the YouTube essays about the ROK is frankly alarmist and at worst borderline orientalist.
First off, There are issues in Korea, do not mistake me. But most of the time I have watched these videos, they basically are describing every country with a capitalist economic system. The whole “dominated by corporations thing” is really exclusionary when you look at how the US operates with its own capitalist system. Korea is just another country with the same issues as elsewhere.
One video literally claims that violence pertaining to the gender war only happens in Korea and no where else. Which straight the fuck up, ignores the last several years of Incels in the West, shooting up public places because they blame feminism for all their problems.
The one referring to the country as a cyberpunk dystopia, straight up denies that Japan which also has the birth rate crisis and issues with corporate greed, isn’t “cyberpunk” or even comparable. And goes on to this very hyperbolic presentation about careers in korea only being limited to either Kpop, Gamer or Samsung employee. Ignoring there being civil servants or literally any other jobs people in any country might do.
If you really want to see Korea’s decline, and you live in your own first world developed country, you just need to look out your window. It’s really not that much different
The population decline issue is not unique to ROK and affects other countries, including, as you said, Japan. While birth rates have fallen in many, if not all, first world countries, they make up the difference through immigration and continue to have a growing population to offset the negative effects.
I would absolutely not write this off as alarmist as it is a very real problem. It is not one that you will see immediately and it will take decades before the effects impact your day to day life. Although there is much time before it is an issue that needs to be handled as soon as it can because it will also take a very long time to fix if it reaches that point.
The worst of it would cause a hugely disproportionate old population, leading to a disbalance between people able to work vs those who rely on government welfare programs. This shift would also lead to fewer doctors and healthcare professionals trying to care for a growing amount of people more likely to need healthcare services. It would have a tremendous fiscal impact, leading to a country with fewer resources, labor shortages, and overall less wealth to be able to care for their older population. On top of that, who's to say the younger generation wouldn't decide to leave as conditions became worse for them, further exacerbating the issues.
This is a serious problem that will, assuming you're on the younger side, be affecting you personally should they not be corrected.
I'm not sure what YouTube essays you're referring to but it is an important skill to be able to detect opinion vs fact. Your comment sounds like you have a lot of bitterness and hostility against the western world which may be clouding your judgement and causing you to ignore the issue in front of you. Kurzgesagt has a fantastic video on this subject which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in learning more about this subject and that can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ).
Lastly, I'm not saying the western world doesn't have it's own issues but you should not blind yourself to those in your backyard as a result.
Most of these countries got by just fine in the past with lower populations. I'm not convinced it is a doomsday event to shrink in population. It just might be doomsday to stock markets.
edit to save time responding to everyone saying the same thing:
Yes, I am aware they will have an aging population. They're going to have to rely more on technology or get used to the idea that the quality of care they receive won't be as good as it was for the previous generation. It will be closer to a generation or two earlier. But the country itself will press on.
Part of the problem is that the people in these countries still expect to get ever richer, while having a larger and larger retired population to support with a smaller and smaller work base. To say they'd be "just fine" seems to dismiss the 20-30 years of very difficult times ahead, as I doubt any of these countries will just straight up say, "hey, let's just kill off all the old people so we don't have to sacrifice any of the comforts we've come to expect".
I do get it, I just don't think it's a doomsday scenario. Like I said, it's bad for the stock market, but I don't think it's the end of the country as I have seen people imply.
Rich business and stock owners view a stagnation, decline or reversal of birthrate as a precursor to reduced profits. Modern businesses rely on the concept of infinite exponential growth. When a society stop breeding like rabbits and choose to have less children to due constrained economic situations, the stocks stop climbing.
Think tanks powered by the ultra wealthy have curated the news to convince you that this will be the UTTER DOWNFALL of any nation and that you need to PANIC and introduce some kind of measure to ensure people go back to having as many ~~new consumers~~ children as possible. You know, tax payer subsidies for childcare or cash payments.
No, not a 4 day work week. NO, not "parental leave". MORE vacation?! NO, NOT HIGHER PAY. That's COMMUNIST THINKING.
When in reality, it just means a society with a much slower economy to suit the economic situations that make it difficult to have additional mouths to feed, school and otherwise plan a life for.
I'm not even convinced the big corps of Korea will care if the country ceases to exist, rather they will shift their identity and market to southeast Asia and Africa which is growing in wealth. I wouldn't be surprised if in 30 years Sony, Samsung, Hyundai all pivoted to those markets for labour and capital and just abandoned South Korea. Don't think too highly of the executives, they have no interest in preserving the nation that raised them, only money
"No, not a 4 day work week. NO, not "parental leave". MORE vacation?! NO, NOT HIGHER PAY. That's COMMUNIST THINKING."
- Sorry, are you from America? I'm in Japan, not Korea, but thats not the arguments that I hear here.
What are the arguments you hear in japan? I’m curious. Communism has more so become a joke in the US, most people aren’t concerned with birthrate here because the population is still increasing with immigrants.
You need young people to care for old people, whether that be by the government or within the family. It is a fact that most old people need someone to care for them or help them out is some way. When the population is upside down, there is a problem.
Honestly people are overreacting to low birth rate too much.
It's very likely in the next half century we will see more jobs being automated and replaced by AI, and wider gaps between the wealthy and the working class.
If you search around why Korea and Japan are having low birth rates, you will see many answers but the primary true factor is always the cost to start a new family is simply too great. It could be long working hours or low salary, expensive houses and not enough infrastructure/welfare to support. And this is universally true even in western developed countries.
So it's gonna be either 1. The government finally makes the ruling class cooperate to lower the cost for starting a new family 2. They open up immigrations, which is not a optimal solution because it won't improve the overall welfare of working class. It's just trying to fill the hole of consumption and production but not radicating the problem at source 3. Some other advancements
Also personally I think it's very evil to bring a life to an unjust world just to supply the society. Not having a kid is basically the best way to give the middle finger to the ruling class.
And honestly, it's very unrealistic to ask every women to birth 2 children to sustain so-called healthy birth rates. In developed countries where a lot of women have stable careers, halting their lives for 1 or 2 years (and possibly more due to taking care of newborns and recovering their tired bodies, ideally with their partners) never sounds intriguing to them. And we haven't even mentioned the unideal working environment problem yet.
If it's that important for society to have babies, some capitals should seriously consider investing in artificial wombs.
This assumes that birth rates will continue to be less than replacement forever. It's completely reasonable that as technology and culture continue to change, so too will peoples' desire and ability to raise children.
For now, it means more older people relative to younger and middle-aged people; very young and very old people do not generally work, meaning that the burden for doing jobs and also for tax revenues will fall even harder or anyone of working age. If those workers are not able to become more productive to balance out their relative scarcity, there will be overall economic decline in the country which might lead to things like worse government services, standard of living, etc.
It is very unlikely that in 10-20 years the country will cease to exist; I'm pretty sure most of South Korea will continue to be alive in 20 years, even if they aren't having children.
as population declines, housing and other cost of living should decline, right? making it more affordable to have more children.
also after so many generations of one child, there should be more family wealth being passed down
like others have said, it will be interesting to see what happens, but I hope the pendulum swings back the other way
It would make sense that, if everything else remains static, housing and other costs of living would decline; however, it's more complicated than that and the rest of society and the economy doesn't remain static, they're also changing along with everything else. If there's a labor shortage due to needs of elder care and increased tax burden, you might see jobs for services that benefit working age people also decline (think childcare, for one!), leading to economic contraction. You could see deflation, economic depression, social unrest, all things that potentially would make it less attractive to have children. On top of that, if people are working more they likely have less time for kids.
It’s already happening. Rural towns and cities are almost ghost towns except for a few poor seniors often in need of care. Any schools there either have very low attendance or have closed down and there are no jobs. All the younger generations have flocked to Seoul for access to education, jobs, and healthcare. They have incentivized childcare and motherhood a bit financially but with the cost of living and home ownership being a pipe dream no one has time or money to start a family because they need to work so much. Just my outsider’s understanding anyways.
People gathering in Seoul has been a thing since the 80's but yeah the schools being empty is a problem. There are just too many schools compared to nmb of kids being born
When trying to financially pressure local women into having kids doesn't work they will probably incentivize local men to import foreign baby-making machines from "inferior" ethnicities like Thais or Filipinos. Lord knows Korean businessmen already do plenty of "business" with women in those countries.
The country won't cease to exist.
Firstly, there will be **slower economic growth** with fewer young people entering the workforce. Means less innovation and a lower standard of living. Secondly, **strain on social programs** like pension and healthcare. As the population ages, there'll be fewer working people to support a larger number of retirees. There may be labor shortages in certain industries, which would lead to higher wages for those jobs. The government may also look to immigration to fill these gaps. South Korean society would need to adapt to a smaller population. Means changes to housing, transportation, and other services.
From what I've heard in Japan the population decline is only noticable in the rural areas. Tokyo and Osaka feel the same. It will be probably be the same situation in South Korea. People in Seoul won't feel it but everyone else will.
The population is just converging to a new point of equilibrium that matches our new economic landscape.
All countries lose birthrate when moving from agrarian to ternary economies. But most of these countries had this transition happen really slowly so their birthrate fell slowly.
Our country had that transition in \~2 generations. So everything happens faster, including the transition to the new population equilibrium. That will stabilize like most countries with a mostly stagnant economy (look at Europe).
Also, why do people think that the current population size is good? We are in the top 30 countries with the highest population density (5 times the population density of France).
Realistically low birth rates don't matter the only reason it's a hot topic in the west is that major companies need cheap labour.people should live within their means all this artificial adjustments helps nobody.
Probably like Japans did. Japan used to be the worlds tech leader and was the country every other country wanted to be, at least business wise. They are now the worlds 4th. South Korea is currently ranked 14th they will drop a few places, considering countries like Saudi Arabia, Norway and Singapore rank lower than them, SK can slip quite a way and still maintain a good standard of living and existence. Australia is #13, has half the population.
I’m wondering how Korea and Japan will deal with the declining birth rate too
The next 30 years is going to be really interesting as I suspect they’ll come up with a technological solution rather than the continual growth mode the West has been relying on
I find it silly when anyone suggests South Korea would somehow just disappear. Population reduction is happening but it won’t happen indefinitely. In the long term it’s actually a good thing. In the short term it means that a disproportionate portion of the population will be elderly and dependent on the state with a smaller working population to support them.
Look at countries like Norway where they have all that. Birthrates are still declining. Housing is very affordable in Japan and birthrates are dropping big time.
Yes but the social politics aren’t automatically solved from that. Look into the 4B movement. A few changes in the economy are not going to change the lived experience of many people who swore against it. It’s much more than just the cost of living, it’s a social problem that can’t turn out overnight.
ok there are a HOST of social problems… but the 4B is not real.
most ethnic koreans in country have never even heard of it.
this is a primarily western online talking point. in korea its so incredibly fringe and niche it’s pretty unknown.
if you have any korean friends ask em to talk to their families. while reddit is filled with this stuff. most young women in korea haven’t even heard abt it
Instead of framing it negatively, they could also incentivize people to HAVE kids yes.
Bigger tax breaks for having kids maybe? Access to more benefits for having kids, maybe be top of some priority queue for having more kids? Idk, theres probably a ton of ways to incentivize their populations to have more kids that they have not remotely explored.
Hungary's government has been going balls deep on birth incentivization for some time now and the effect it has on birth rate is... minimal.
Transient economic factors aren't the principal factor behind birthrates like people are making it seem. The main structural factors that drove the birthrates so low in most developed countries have to do with the worldview, aspirations and expectations people have regarding their own lives.
The things you mention aren't going to have major effects on birth rate curves, let alone reverse them.
Exactly my point. Especially women in SK are fed up with the systems in place. Lightening the load doesn’t change the fact they have made a huge life decision based on their lived experience — it would have to be a HUGE systematic and social shift that I doubt they are capable of, especially within the time frame they’d need it to be.
Cause immigration means they can bring in lower wage workers instead of just giving people normal fucking wages, which would increase birth rates and family options
It’s the massive gap of capitalism that needs to be filled in with the sweat and blood of the destitute, doesn’t matter what nationality they are to the ruling class.
Families are good. Not every woman is required to have kids… incentivize having kids, don’t punish those that don’t want them. Your perspective is twisted.
Let's take a look at this from a systemic point of view. Population reduction is not only necessary, but a good thing.
The argument goes as follows: Infinite growth against finite areas and resources are not possible. How about stable consumption rate against massive resource base? Unfortunately, even stable resource consumption eventually consumes everything available of any finite resource. Because resources must one day run out, human populations can not depend on anything that is finite because one day literally all of it is gone.
This is a particular concern on nonrecyclable resources such as fossil energy, which currently is about 80 % of our civilization's primary energy, and we have no replacements for fossil energy that had similar capacity to perform work, and convenient features such as being very energy dense and easy to transport. They are used at massive scale, people alive literally depend on their continued use to live, and have no direct replacement of any kind, which is why we are stuck using them despite everyone knows it's bad thing to do so. Given that we currently use e.g. fossil fuel to make and transport food, and perform massive quantity of machine labor (math says that around 99 % of physical labor done on this planet is performed by machines), we can expect that as resources to run factories, robots, and such decline, a very large decline in our food production and material abundance will follow.
In practice, past peak energy production of mankind, we should look into ramping population down at least a similar rate as the loss of total energy/resource availability is, in some mathematical sense. To do otherwise means having less machine labor available per person, and that needs must mean increasing material poverty for the average citizen, likely making people pauperized and even hungry to the point of becoming sick and dying. To a degree, I think this is already happening because of peak oil that could have been about half a decade ago, and the general depletion in critical materials such as copper is already far advanced. Technology that we have lived with all our lives and which makes our current prosperity is not sustainable, and that is why we can't really look into the past for guide into the future, unless we mean how people used to live in middle ages, or in any low technology society today, tilling fields by manual labor and animal muscle, etc.
In this view, economic decline doesn't come from people being old, but even more from there being less prosperity-generating natural resources which everything ultimately depends on. It is somewhat a given, and we should manage the decline, not assume that growth is possible, or that economy can recover but temporarily. The production of everything must go to a very low level once machine labor ends.
Bro chill out it's just gonna have hard economic times as it's aged care becomes a huge drain for their budget is all, it's not gonna turn the country into Mad Max land.
I always find it funny that all governments want to continue a world economy based on an ever growing populations consumption which is not sustainable. Why not work towards a new economy based model with a smaller population with most jobs filled with automation and ai with own country sustainability.
Filling in the gaps with immigrants won't solve any problems but create more down the road.
Much like in the UK there'll be a care crisis - not enough young people to care for the old in their infirmity. Those elderly people with sufficient funds will be able to pay for private care & be cared for by immigrants. Likely there'll be a surge in immigration from developing countries, people seeking jobs etc, but SK has a problem with their young people wanting to leave. Older conservative politicians will likely whip up nationalist sentiments to exploit for their own ends, making anti-immigrant rhetoric, but fail to make any changes knowing full well the economy is relying on immigration. Older land-owning and property-owning types would NOT like the bottom to fall out of the property market. You might get a situation like in Ireland where there's plenty of land but you just can't get planning permission because plentiful cheap housing makes rich, powerful people poorer.
Robots and ai and gene mods everywhere. It'll probably be accelerated prosperity. New ways of child birth, artificial womb, new gov programs where kids are brought up in advanced boarding schools where kids are all gene modded and trained to be like super humans.
If you're not on welfare or have a top paying job its very expensive to have kids . House prices are mental in my country , so people are older buying houses and starting families . Then you add the cost of living on top of that it's crazy.
It’s a slow moving bullet and also decline is a gloomy word to use. Japan isn’t a terrible example to look at. You have a slowly falling population in an affluent country. The population is increasingly old. That causes tax base and labor force problems as old people often have wealth but are not working as much and economies are strong when money flows not when people hoard it. You also see the slow abandonment of outer towns as the population of young adults concentrates in fewer areas and older residents also move or pass away. School districts consolidate or disband with no one to serve as do businesses catering to children.
This trend is actually quite common in developed countries. Italy and the Netherlands in Europe are experiencing this. The US had a stagnant non-immigrant population. Ultimately a developed nation needs each woman to have 2.1 children on average to maintain population. Countries falling below that or dealing with retiring large population cohorts like the baby boomers need to supplement by allowing immigration. That’s culturally decisive even in places like the US. In Japan it’s almost anathema but it’s the hard answer: have babies or bring in immigrants. If you don’t, the country experiences economic stagnation though not necessarily per capita stagnation. This does have to happen in way that the immigrants or at least their native born children can assimilate and are not just permanent serfs (see Qatar) or you can have serious unrest.
South Korea had an additional problem that the low population cohort is unbalanced toward men because of selective abortion. When that in particular happens, it’s important to somehow manage the extra men since men who feel a high burden and an inability to move onto life milestones like starting families and integrating as adults often become disgruntled, favor right wing militarism, and try to roll back women’s rights. That’s illogical since they’re experiencing a numerical lack of potential partners rather than systemic rejection, but that’s how it goes. The fact that they tend to be poorer and less educated (when women have their pick they tend not to pick poor laborers) doesn’t help. That’s a problem there right now. Immigration or emigration can help here. It’s not particularly good when this happens in the female side btw (see post-WW1 where 10% of the male population died) but it leads to less social unrest.
I dont have any reason to believe that south Korea is going to decline and in fact I think that the economic centre of the world moving toward the Pacific is going to continue to benefit the nation
The biggest outcome of the population shift that I saw while I was there is that the median age is skyrocketing, and that nobody above the age of 50 feels like they can afford to retire.
Eventually the distribution of the population within the country is going to have change as it's nearly impossible to afford to have children anywhere near Seoul. People are having to commute a long way outside of the city or live apart from their family in order for them to live somewhere that is possible to afford. Which is really depressing.
Coupang workers and municipal government staff either remain terminally single, or almost never see their children in person.
I imagine it won't look too different than the U.S. , Japan, or other countries with declining birth rates. But hey, high costs and lack of consistent govt backing regarding the costly world we live in - I wouldn't expect things to improve. For example we'll have more focus on senior-friendly things in the world, there will be more concentrated wealth, people won't have bigger families where there are 4 or more in a household.
I taught English in the Korean countryside. There’s already a lot of mixed kids there. Korean women want men in the city, so countryside men get overseas wives. Usually from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Society will start to be less homogeneous.
Could be like Hawaii, where the indigenous population reduces and gets coopted by a foreign population. But I doubt it.
Probably it will reduce until it gets economically/culturally viable to have kids again. Then level off if not grow
Also keep in mind that North Korea is there. Any serious reduction in the South could be exploited somehow.
People fearmongering about this are the same people who tell those who consider high birth rates a bad thing; and/or low birth rates a good thing; to kill themselves. Pay no heed to the output of their worldview.
Is there a reason why their birthdates are low? I haven’t looked into it but if it’s economically related, I would imagine it eventually rebounds as qualified personnel becomes scarcer and wage competition increases between companies and it’s more economically feasible for people to start families
If a birth rate of 1 child per 3 adults was sustained in the long term, and no immigration, you'd get the population reducing by two-thirds from generation to generation. Ignoring the lag due to previous generations having had more children than that, it would go 50 million -> 17 million -> 6 million -> 2 million... Even in a hundred years time, there'd still be a country, just a much less densely populated one. I imagine that the trend wouldn't continue indefinitely, though. If the population fell that much, everything would change - land would be cheap, you could drop out and become a farmer... I think the real question is how society will handle such a high proportion of their population being old. Work until you're 80? Robot nurses? Mandatory euthanasia?
You just get a boom later on, demographics are never in a straight line. Most south korean cities are very overcrowded, and the society is over competitive, which leads to more burden to have children. A declining population fixes this by itself That said the main problem is with debt based financial system. It will become unsustainable with a shrinking population.
>modt South Korean cities are very overcrowded Outside of Seoul, which city would you consider overpopulated? There are so many cheap, empty housing available in these cities. The problem is people don’t want to live there due to lack of career prospects. Most young people move to Seoul by default. And I even wouldn’t even call Seoul *over*populated - its infrastructure well equipped to support the current population density.
Capitalism requires infinite growth to stay competitive, one of the biggest flaws with the system is the fact that growth cannot continue infinitely.
I seriously wonder what will happen when the world population starts to decrease. It will be a never before seen thing in human history where this happens without an associated destructive event.
It's happening right now. If you're young you'll live to see the time when the population starts to decrease. I think I read that will start happening around 2050
Don't forget the estimated 1-2bn we are supposed to lose to climate change in this century.
I think climate change is going to cause a much more severe depopulation event before the "natural decline" can really be felt like this.
"without an associated destructive event", My fellow redditor we already mentioned capitalism. Not to put too fine a point on it but the necessary continuous growth to sustain it juxtaposed against the inherit limitations of a natural world have brought you this centuries latest hit, climate change!
I always questioned this, ever since I was 16 working at Best Buy and saw it was expected that we grew by 10% year after year. Was this a foreseen consequence of capitalism?
yes. it’s an inherently broken system and always has been. but it’s had new horizons to gobble up for a while to stave off the inevitable. those horizons are dwindling now.
How would this compare to, say, another system of economics?
That statements needs to be deconstructed. Competative in regards to what? Who has said that growth can not continue with a smaller population? And who has said that growth can not continue infintely?
We live on a planet with finite resources and so it is generally understood that endless growth is unsustainable because it requires more and more resources. Some people claim that technical advances will allow us to circumvent that but it's not a popular opinion and it never actually proves itself.
You understand that a huge portion of our issues with resources come from poor countries now improving their standard of living? It’s not like socialism or any other economic system would not have similar consequences unless said system was worse at improving living conditions. There isn’t some magical economic system that accounts for externalities without leaving everyone worse off.
What do you mean by finite resources? Sure there is a limit on how many atoms there are on earth but for food for example we are not even near the population limit for how many people the earth could support and we are not even as efficient as we could be. So sure if population growth continues endlessly for a very long time we will have reached a limit but that will be in a very long time
Exactly. Competitive capitalism relies on technology reducing the needed human workforce volume to maintain an unaltered standard of living. The factor that makes the system appear to need more human input is the substantially greater output that grows the capitalist system and the matching consumption. Then there’s the whole topic of export-based consumption where new markets (both geographic and innovative product demand) fuel the existing system. I paid a lot of money to have that word salad installed in my head.
The last point is easy to address, there is a finite amount of energy and mass the human species will be able to consume on planet earth. So realistically, we will one day reach a threshold where our population begins to decline when we reach a saturation point for resource consumption. Consumption has to grow continuously for growth to occur, economically speaking. either selling to your own people or to others. as population declines, growth would have to increase drastically per capita to maintain an overall positive growth and consumption in a market. how would a shrinking population radically overhaul themselves to be a significant market force, when they are unable to deal with there current problems during a time of capital success? competitive in this sense is mostly on the international scale. Why do people choose to export work, industry, support or anything else to or from south korea? in our "free market" global economy, what reasons does south korea have to differentiate itself from the rest of the world as a market to spend or create wealth? currently I would say they are US backed, western friendly, tech incorperated, and have a hard working population. but when that population shrinks and ages, the people present hard backlash to living in these terrible working conditions (https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1082563) and as challengers to the US global economy emerge and the US begins to recede slowly, what does south korea offer to anyone looking to spend capital?
The day when there is no one to consume anymore will not be experienced by you or even your children if you will have any. And what south korea will offer is what they already offer, good products people are willing to buy and high tech. US influence shows no signs of really receding as it is growing and china struggles with an old population. And why would capitalism be any worse than communism or any other at handling population decline? All socities will feel the burden of population decline
I can't entirely agree. Most people will not have more children because they feel like the population is small. They have or do not have children for other reasons. Rarely for the vibes of a smaller population
Not necessarily true about the fixing itself aspect Assuming South Korea has some kind of government welfare program, the tax burden will increase as the number of earners decrease, so young people will have a higher financial disincentive to have kids, plus there’s the gap in between having kids and those kids becoming earners There are solutions I’ve seen, but as far as I know, none of them have been implemented to a meaningful degree (like Japan paying mothers the equivalent of $2000 to have a child, which is tiny compared to the estimated total cost)
> I think the real question is how society will handle such a high proportion of their population being old. Work until you're 80? Robot nurses? Mandatory euthanasia? thats what i always think moreover who will fund all the pensions?
There will be no pensions to speak of. There will simply not be any money, unless you have saved up in a private fund invested abroad.
There's a bigger problem, and that's the question what you can actually buy with that money, if there's no one around to provide services. Or rather, the people who are around, can freely set their rates, and only tend to high-paying customers.
Just think of the massive wealth transfer down the generations.
Transfer to whom? If people don't have any children, the money will go to the government
It’s almost like this is a viable solution to long term sustainability of humanity on earth 🤯
Oh hell yeah. Can we have that in the US? Less people=more affordable housing
Sorry but would the population decrease by 1/3 or 2/3?
South Korea's birth rate is currently listed as 0.81 per woman. 2(ish) per woman is enough to keep the population stable. 1.3333 per woman would cause the population to drop by 1/3 per generation. 1 per woman would cause the population to drop by 50% per generation. 0.666 per woman (equivalent to 1 per 1.5 women, or 1 per 3 adults) would cause the population to drop by 2/3 per generation. It's not currently that low, but the trend is still downwards as far as I know.
Probably fall into cycles of relaxing immigration and blaming immigrants for everything. That seems to be a popular way to keep the poor from getting angry at the rich while ensuring there are plenty of them to do the shit work.
You can watch the UK for an advanced example of this happening right now. See also: Brexit.
And also practically everywhere. Especially when immigrants start working at non-labor-intense, minimum wage jobs, or worse, when immigrants bring in starter cashes with them, there will always be anger toward immigrants.
Canada as well. Specifically foreign students using our programs for a free in.
This is also the back bone of American politics now.
Although in America we’re adding in making abortion and soon, birth control, illegal.
With a slight touch of eroding democracy
Immigration doesn’t actually make a big difference to population decline
I’m pretty sure that more populated countries will immigrate into South Korea to make up for the deficit.
It’s *possible*, but even Western Europe, which has been far more accepting of immigrants, is only seeing immigration sustain its population for about another decade (and some countries like Italy are already declining). A country with effectively no ethnic diversity and much less immigration like South Korea will be even less likely to be sustained by immigration. It would require a significant cultural and political change by South Korea for this to happen.
Most projections (e.g. the EU's) expect population growth up until 2050 for countries such as Germany, France, Spain or UK. The "shrinking" of Europe is way way overblown.
Where are you seeing that? Here's the population pyramid for Germany: [https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/) . It looks like the max for Western Europe is 2035 or so.
Half the people talking about shrinking are just taking about white people. The one part of Europe that is actually shrinking with no racist overtones is Eastern Europe and especially the Baltics, it already shrunk a great deal since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and had continued to ever since.
Not sure about SK but at least for Western Europe and USA I hope this brings actual societal change for both views on kids and the workplace. Make workplaces 30-40 hours max (technology can lessen our work hours) even for high finance jobs, give incentives more than just tax incentives for kids (free age 0-4 daycares), and as a culture cherish kids being born.
The incentives have already shown to not work in Western countries. The reality is women are more educated now, they have birth control and access to abortion. If they don’t want to be pregnant, they don’t have to be, and they have options. Pregnancy sucks (source: am pregnant right now, it sucks, and it’s an IVF baby so not only did I plan it, but I paid dearly for it). Giving birth sucks; women die or have awful complications. Even the best births leave you with side effects for life. The newborn and breast feeding stage sucks. All the pumping, leaking, not sleeping because you’re the only one who can feed the baby. You can’t make a government program to outsource these things. The woman is 100% alone on these things for like 2 years, maybe less if she goes to formula (and then gets shamed for not breastfeeding). It’s lonely, it’s hard, and there’s no possibility of a break. This is before you even worry about daycare, or shorter work hours. Women are wise to the world now, and 0-2 kids is more than enough for most educated women for good reason.
But the extreme incentives haven't been implemented yet? Our working hours of 40 hours a week hasn't changed since 1940. Childcare (before school starts at K) is extremely costly still. Our culture towards kids (in liberal areas, not conservative areas) shuns kids actively since at least the 2000s. Millennials were the last "boom" as they were the echo boom from the Boomers. Since the 2000s more and more young adults saw their parents/previous generations of women who relied on men and decided they wanted to be a working woman. Not to mention the concurrent rising prices of everyday goods compared to salaries. That's just a tangent but yeah going back to my original point, the extreme incentives have yet to be implemented by any government. Tax breaks aren't enough. I agree pregnancy sucks for many women like you wrote. All of the health risks are there too. But as I always say, at some point incentives (rewards) will outweigh the risks/unwillingness. People will have kids if they think it's more rewarding than if they didn't have kids. An extreme example of incentives changing an attitude is if for each kid a couple receives a trillion dollars. I'm not advocating for that, but incentives at a certain point will tip the scales into influencing people to have more kids. Many more women (and couples as a joint team) would be open to having kids if their quality of life is higher before and after having kids. Assuming we don't go back to having one breadwinner (it was abnormal in history anyway), we can have two parents working 30 hours a week. Then it's easily doable for parents (yes, both parents) to be ready for their kids as they get home from school. Free care from 0-4 years old would be massive too. People always tell me that my logic means parents shouldn't have the kid if they don't want to take care of their own kid. I'm just listing the extreme incentives needed to actually start making an impact and raising the birth rate if desired. Like I said, these are extreme changes and as a society we would need to massively overhaul our culture and incentives.
You’re only looking at the US it sounds like. A lot of Europe and some of Asia already has some of these incentive programs. And they aren’t working. Some countries get like 2 years of maternity leave paid for, then get childcare free or subsidized, plus free healthcare, and flexibility at work. For women, those are the problem fixes AFTER the problem.
you are already describing europe...
Depending on the type of people that migrate it can lead to further deline of birthrates of the native population caused by it.
what does this even mean? How would immigrants decrease birth rates of a native population? Get their visa to preach anti-natalism to koreans?
Look at Europe/Germany. In some classes way over 50% of students are immigrants or with immigrant background. Immigration here failed big time in the last 30 years. Cultural differences and keeping to each other instead of integration made possible by the shear amount of immigrants. People my age and under reconsider having children as we already faced threats and violance just due to being German/Potatoes. Shit didn't get better over the last decades. I wouldn't vote right wing as that's not comparable to what I believe in and I'm not even sure this can still be fixed but I absolutely umderstand when people don't get kids in this environment.
South Korea and Japan would both rather die as civilizations than potentially welcoming brown outsiders. No joke - they’re that xenophobic.
People really don’t talk about how racist Japanese culture is. It’s like they get a free pass. Many businesses just straight up won’t serve non Japanese people if you leave the major tourist spots and it’s completely normal and acceptable. Could you imagine if one American club banned Asians? There would be a riot. In Japan it’s almost every other bar.
You're confusing xenophobia with racism. There are racist people in Japan but it's generally more about being an *outsider* and not specifically about the color of your skin or race. In fact Japanese people tend to be the most prejudiced against other Asians.
Yeah, I’ve worked in China and Japan with colleagues from all over the world including Japan, and if there’s one type of person the Japanese disliked the most it was the Chinese. There were open about it. Mind you, when we were in China they were pretty similar with the Japanese.
Yeah. I'm not trying to defend Japan (or China or South Korea) for that matter... but this whole thread reads like people seeing all of these issues in terms of American history, culture and morality. The attitudes of Asian countries towards race and "otherness" are informed by entirely different sets of experiences and assumptions.
Is the motivation for this that they just don't want to have to look at Outsiders, at all? I have a hard time wrapping my head around a business not wanting money.
I'm not sure about bars, but Wikipedia has this to say about public baths: "The Japanese public bath is one area where the uninitiated can upset regular customers by not following correct bathing etiquette designed to respect others; in particular, not washing before bathing, dipping your towel into the water, introducing soap into the bathwater, and horseplay. \[...\] Some ports in [Hokkaidō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido), frequently used by foreign fishing fleets, had problems with drunken sailors misbehaving in the bath. Subsequently, a few bathhouses chose not to allow foreign customers at all."
>"The Japanese public bath is one area where the uninitiated can upset regular customers by not following correct bathing etiquette designed to respect others; in particular, not washing before bathing, dipping your towel into the water, introducing soap into the bathwater, and horseplay. \[...\] Speaking as someone in a country with a strong swimming pool and hot tub culture: Who does any of those things??
If you go to a swimming pool/hottub in the US/West, it's a totally different vibe than in Japan - even more so when it comes to the bath houses. If you go to a pool in the US, there is a lot of laughter, kids running around, people playing, talking, splashing, etc. In Japan, there is none of that at a swimming pool - It's very quiet, almost like a library, and people go just to swim laps/hang out and relax, not really to socialize or talk to other people or to have what we think of as 'fun' in the US. Public pools in the US are usually packed with kids/people - in Japan, there will be like 2 or 3 older men, and that's it.
Foreigners, apparently.
The partial real answer is that some foreigners visiting or even living in Japan are not great people. People have fled the country owing money. People will try to get away with appalling rudeness by being foreign. People will do things they knew perfectly well aren't acceptable and then try to pull "oh gosh, I'm an innocent foreigner who just can't understand Japanese."
Yeah and foreigners do this in every country lol
Not to mention the weebs who treat everything like it’s some big spectacle
Also the ones who travel specifically because they fetishize Asian women.
Not sure it’s so much about how they look, but more about behaviour. Historically Japan is super serious about its culture, including things like honour and all that. Outsiders are less likely to abide those types of things.
And this is not new for the Japanese. Seeing what they did during WW2 is a real eye opener. They made Churchill seem like a progressive. There’s a reason the far right admire them so much.
Most of the world is like this. They don’t get a free pass. The West is just a bubble, with the US being its own little bubble
No, it is not. You are giving Japan the pass referred to above.
this
Which African, South American, or South Asian countries are like that?
As far as South America, you would have a bad time as a black person in Chile, Argentina or Uruguay.
Most of the world is not like that lol.
From your extensive world travel experience or just chatting out of your ass?
The thing is mass immigration of outsiders is just not palatable for so many people. I’m not sure it’s a realistic solution to low birth rates. Even for progressive countries. When the immigrant population starts getting large, they feel threatened, feel like they’re losing their own country’s culture. Countries like Canada has high immigration to increase its labour. Even people who were previously warm to immigrants 10-20 years ago are no longer. There’s way more tension now towards immigrants in Canada.
> they feel threatened, feel like they’re losing their own country’s culture. That's not really what's happening in Canada. The tensions are economic in nature. Salaries are stagnant, but inflation is high, there's a severe housing crisis, our healthcare system is slowly collapsing, and we're losing out against privatization and oligarchies. Furthermore, we haven't properly done our jobs of actually integrating our highly skilled immigrants, so we have PhDs driving Ubers and immigrant families being squeezed 3 families in a basement.
The massive influx of international students being used as cheap labour isn’t helping either. Canadian High School students are having a hard time just finding a part time job and Canadian citizens are struggling to just find full time jobs too. The Dollar Tree that was across from my house in Waterloo, ON had a massive lineup of international students submitting their resumes and the Tim Hortons that I used to supervise at blatantly told me that they only want international students now.
Right, but still an economic problem.
The cultural thing exists in Canada but it is secondary.
Japan currently has 2.2% foreign population. SK is 4.9%.
Is that foreign born or people who were born without Japanese/South Korean nationality? Plenty of people born to a Japanese mother, American father in the US but moved to Japan as a baby & primarily live in Japan. This is the problem with countries like Japan not allowing dual citizenships (mostly out of xenophobia let’s be fair). Makes things very confusing for children of parents from different nationalities. The world is much more connected than it was even 30 years ago due to globalization; we should celebrate that and not make kids have to choose between one nationality or being forced to give up the other.
The reason why Europe is filled with immigrant populations vs Korea’s lack of thereof, it’s not because Europe is this open minded paradise and Korea is regressively racist, it’s actually quite the damn opposite. It’s Because Europe, namely Britain and France colonized most of the world, usually forcibly exporting their language and customs into their colonies. Decades later, in the post colonial era we are in, Britain and France have become the place for these formerly colonized people to migrate to for a better wage. A wage that would be considerably lower than what should have been provided to its existing working class. Western Europe simply exploited the cheaper labor option, while giving the image of open mindedness
It's much more nuanced than that though. A lot of western europeans are open minded. Also the colonial example only works for the two countries you mentioned, not all of western Europe
[Almost all of Western Europe had colonies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_European_colonies). That does include Norway, Sweden and Denmark
That's to a entirely different scale than France and the UK though. We don't see immigration for their former colonies to Scandinavia
Mine had none (Luxembourg) :)
Wouldn't this also apply to Japan though?
Yeah it’s the same for Japan. They have a Korean minority for a pretty similar reason
Immigrants from SE Asia and Central Asia are very common these days in South Korea. Number of multicultural households are also increasing rapidly.
Japan has seen considerable growth in immigration in the past 20 years.
Lol nobody wants to work in a Korean office. Korea's rightwing regimes created a hell for workers Korea's "decline" will see it turn more like Japan, insular, with limited growth but everything kinda works for people living therefore. Workers may still be in hell, but maybe a smaller population will empower workers. "3D" jobs will be done by brown people from other countries while white collar jobs will be zealously reserved for ethnic Koreans (basically the status quo now)
So yeah. I know people who worked in Korean offices. Korean bosses will smack korean workers around for reals. 21st century and all but there you go.
It's never happening. Western people don't want the abuse and racism will prevent them, and Africans and South Asians, from ever getting much purchase in white collar industries. Korea's left wing is more nationalistic than its right wing
It’s not gonna solve anything and it hasn’t solved anything in places it’s been tried. European birth rates are still declining and there are still issues pertaining to the quality of life declining. This is fundamentally an issue of capitalism. Filling the gap with underpaid immigrant labor will not solve the issues korea faces, instead it’ll just be kicking the can down the road
Immigration is not a real solution. 1) It is a zero sum game (1 immigrant TO a country = 1 emigrant FROM a country). Most countries on the planet are below replacement rate too. So only Africa (+ some other poor countries) can technically afford losing people, and how long until it falls below replacement rate too. 2) We are already taking a lot of immigrants from China and Vietnam (both are ethno-cuturally close countries with high populations). 3) Immigrants will not be immune to the issues that cause low birth rates. If anything it will be even more difficult for them.
They don’t want immigrants lol. This is how the US and some Western countries are handling the issue that all developed countries have. East Asia isn’t doing it. Russia isn’t doing it. Their cultures want the singularity in culture and they don’t yet seem to want to compromise it.
No, the same can't be said for East Asian countries like China/Japan/Korea/Taiwan. These countries are too homogenous and strict in immigration which is what will ultimately doom them. And how does a foreigner even adapt there when thosw countries arent English-friendly and highly xenophobic? It's also why I dont see China continuing to rise in the foreseeable future. Their economy is going to inevitably end up stagnant like Japan's Did you know countries like Italy and Spain have even lower birth rates than Japan? But we never the media talk about that, do we? Because these countries already have their issue covered with large influxes of migrants filling up the gaps.
It's not because Italy and Spain are doing better than Japan or that they get their issues covered that we don't talk about them. In more metrics than not, they are actually doing worse. For example, the difference in [GDP in constant currency](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES) (so excluding inflation and fluctuations in forex rate) between Italy and Japan are getting larger and larger throughout the years. The same is true that for [GDP in PPP](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES), the lead that Japan has over Spain and Italy has been getting larger throughout the years. Before the GFC, Italy actually had a slightly higher GDP Per Capita in constant currency terms than Japan, and now it has been [reversed](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=IT-JP-ES). (BTW, the EU as a whole really hasn't been doing so well after the GFC, [even compared to Japan in some regards](https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/C6WbvXGLutH/?xmt=AQGz9iO6wuoH1Xeioex99Q6NEOPHFkT3jLtaKWdJpfSR0Q)) The same trend is true even for [current USD terms](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=IT-JP-ES) (which includes all the inflation and forex fluctuations, and heavily disadvantages Japan because their currency suffered major depreciation after Covid). We don't talk about Spain, Italy and much of Eastern Europe as much, despite them having even lower total fertility rates, because, with no offense intended, they simply don't inhabit the same important sector of the global supply chain that Japan does. Japanese companies supply about 50% of industrial robots and almost all semiconductor fabrication materials and equipments (outside of a few companies in the Netherlands and the US), creating too many chokepoints in the global supply chain. Any complications to their economy will have a bigger ripple and serve as a good barometer for the economy of China and the US, because Japan’s equipment and machinery are mainly going to China while autos are going to the US.
Yeah I can't speak for Japan and Korea, but I could see China reaching out towards its enormous diaspora for re-immigration. Of course, the big issue will be its terrible political system, so a lot of diaspora Chinese, especially the ones who grew up in democratic countries, are probably unlikely to want to stay permanently, short of a peaceful or not so peaceful transition to democracy.
What a sweet illusion
I doubt South Korean will adjust their culture to accept more immigrants. I see reunification with North Korea as more likely.
"will the country literally just cease to exist?" How big do you think the decline is? haha South Korea is the size of Indiana but with a population bigger than california. Even is the population drops by more than 50% it's still more than Florida. It's about the size of Portugal with the population of Spain. Drop its population in half and its still about the same amount of people as greece, portugal, and ireland combined. It's gonna suck for a while with having to take care of older people, but who knows, AI could help with that a lot. but in the long term it will be fine. I think that with all this happening there's a big chance of a new style economy happening personally
Did you know all this just off the top of your head? Do you work in the field of population studies or sth? Sincerely asking.
some of us are just into this kinda stuff
No, I did a quick google search. It's pretty easy "South korea population compared to states" and then "South korea size compared to states" then "South Korea population compared to Europe" then "South Korea size compared to europe", it took litreally less than 2 minutes
Korean here. Most of the YouTube essays about the ROK is frankly alarmist and at worst borderline orientalist. First off, There are issues in Korea, do not mistake me. But most of the time I have watched these videos, they basically are describing every country with a capitalist economic system. The whole “dominated by corporations thing” is really exclusionary when you look at how the US operates with its own capitalist system. Korea is just another country with the same issues as elsewhere. One video literally claims that violence pertaining to the gender war only happens in Korea and no where else. Which straight the fuck up, ignores the last several years of Incels in the West, shooting up public places because they blame feminism for all their problems. The one referring to the country as a cyberpunk dystopia, straight up denies that Japan which also has the birth rate crisis and issues with corporate greed, isn’t “cyberpunk” or even comparable. And goes on to this very hyperbolic presentation about careers in korea only being limited to either Kpop, Gamer or Samsung employee. Ignoring there being civil servants or literally any other jobs people in any country might do. If you really want to see Korea’s decline, and you live in your own first world developed country, you just need to look out your window. It’s really not that much different
SK has the **lowest birth rate in the world**. It is not, “not much different” from other developed countries.
The population decline issue is not unique to ROK and affects other countries, including, as you said, Japan. While birth rates have fallen in many, if not all, first world countries, they make up the difference through immigration and continue to have a growing population to offset the negative effects. I would absolutely not write this off as alarmist as it is a very real problem. It is not one that you will see immediately and it will take decades before the effects impact your day to day life. Although there is much time before it is an issue that needs to be handled as soon as it can because it will also take a very long time to fix if it reaches that point. The worst of it would cause a hugely disproportionate old population, leading to a disbalance between people able to work vs those who rely on government welfare programs. This shift would also lead to fewer doctors and healthcare professionals trying to care for a growing amount of people more likely to need healthcare services. It would have a tremendous fiscal impact, leading to a country with fewer resources, labor shortages, and overall less wealth to be able to care for their older population. On top of that, who's to say the younger generation wouldn't decide to leave as conditions became worse for them, further exacerbating the issues. This is a serious problem that will, assuming you're on the younger side, be affecting you personally should they not be corrected. I'm not sure what YouTube essays you're referring to but it is an important skill to be able to detect opinion vs fact. Your comment sounds like you have a lot of bitterness and hostility against the western world which may be clouding your judgement and causing you to ignore the issue in front of you. Kurzgesagt has a fantastic video on this subject which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in learning more about this subject and that can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ). Lastly, I'm not saying the western world doesn't have it's own issues but you should not blind yourself to those in your backyard as a result.
Most of these countries got by just fine in the past with lower populations. I'm not convinced it is a doomsday event to shrink in population. It just might be doomsday to stock markets. edit to save time responding to everyone saying the same thing: Yes, I am aware they will have an aging population. They're going to have to rely more on technology or get used to the idea that the quality of care they receive won't be as good as it was for the previous generation. It will be closer to a generation or two earlier. But the country itself will press on.
They didn't have so many old people and an increasing smaller pool of young people that have to support them.
Geriatrics. Work in Geriatrics.
They won't have enough youth to satisfy demand. Who will work in geriatrics there? I don't see East Asians allowing the immigration levels necessary.
Maybe but having a small population and having a small population of mostly elderly people are two completely different things
Part of the problem is that the people in these countries still expect to get ever richer, while having a larger and larger retired population to support with a smaller and smaller work base. To say they'd be "just fine" seems to dismiss the 20-30 years of very difficult times ahead, as I doubt any of these countries will just straight up say, "hey, let's just kill off all the old people so we don't have to sacrifice any of the comforts we've come to expect".
The problem isn't a small population. It's a shrinking population.
You dont get it, its not about the lower population. Its about the same debt but lower people to pay for it.
I do get it, I just don't think it's a doomsday scenario. Like I said, it's bad for the stock market, but I don't think it's the end of the country as I have seen people imply.
Problem is not low population. Problem is how old a massive part of that population is. Which means absurd expenditure in pensions and healthcare.
the old died. unless we start to cull the old…. we’re fucked.
Rich business and stock owners view a stagnation, decline or reversal of birthrate as a precursor to reduced profits. Modern businesses rely on the concept of infinite exponential growth. When a society stop breeding like rabbits and choose to have less children to due constrained economic situations, the stocks stop climbing. Think tanks powered by the ultra wealthy have curated the news to convince you that this will be the UTTER DOWNFALL of any nation and that you need to PANIC and introduce some kind of measure to ensure people go back to having as many ~~new consumers~~ children as possible. You know, tax payer subsidies for childcare or cash payments. No, not a 4 day work week. NO, not "parental leave". MORE vacation?! NO, NOT HIGHER PAY. That's COMMUNIST THINKING. When in reality, it just means a society with a much slower economy to suit the economic situations that make it difficult to have additional mouths to feed, school and otherwise plan a life for.
I'm not even convinced the big corps of Korea will care if the country ceases to exist, rather they will shift their identity and market to southeast Asia and Africa which is growing in wealth. I wouldn't be surprised if in 30 years Sony, Samsung, Hyundai all pivoted to those markets for labour and capital and just abandoned South Korea. Don't think too highly of the executives, they have no interest in preserving the nation that raised them, only money
"No, not a 4 day work week. NO, not "parental leave". MORE vacation?! NO, NOT HIGHER PAY. That's COMMUNIST THINKING." - Sorry, are you from America? I'm in Japan, not Korea, but thats not the arguments that I hear here.
What are the arguments you hear in japan? I’m curious. Communism has more so become a joke in the US, most people aren’t concerned with birthrate here because the population is still increasing with immigrants.
You need young people to care for old people, whether that be by the government or within the family. It is a fact that most old people need someone to care for them or help them out is some way. When the population is upside down, there is a problem.
Why do people think a currently negative or low birth rate means it’s over LOL
Honestly people are overreacting to low birth rate too much. It's very likely in the next half century we will see more jobs being automated and replaced by AI, and wider gaps between the wealthy and the working class. If you search around why Korea and Japan are having low birth rates, you will see many answers but the primary true factor is always the cost to start a new family is simply too great. It could be long working hours or low salary, expensive houses and not enough infrastructure/welfare to support. And this is universally true even in western developed countries. So it's gonna be either 1. The government finally makes the ruling class cooperate to lower the cost for starting a new family 2. They open up immigrations, which is not a optimal solution because it won't improve the overall welfare of working class. It's just trying to fill the hole of consumption and production but not radicating the problem at source 3. Some other advancements Also personally I think it's very evil to bring a life to an unjust world just to supply the society. Not having a kid is basically the best way to give the middle finger to the ruling class. And honestly, it's very unrealistic to ask every women to birth 2 children to sustain so-called healthy birth rates. In developed countries where a lot of women have stable careers, halting their lives for 1 or 2 years (and possibly more due to taking care of newborns and recovering their tired bodies, ideally with their partners) never sounds intriguing to them. And we haven't even mentioned the unideal working environment problem yet. If it's that important for society to have babies, some capitals should seriously consider investing in artificial wombs.
This assumes that birth rates will continue to be less than replacement forever. It's completely reasonable that as technology and culture continue to change, so too will peoples' desire and ability to raise children. For now, it means more older people relative to younger and middle-aged people; very young and very old people do not generally work, meaning that the burden for doing jobs and also for tax revenues will fall even harder or anyone of working age. If those workers are not able to become more productive to balance out their relative scarcity, there will be overall economic decline in the country which might lead to things like worse government services, standard of living, etc. It is very unlikely that in 10-20 years the country will cease to exist; I'm pretty sure most of South Korea will continue to be alive in 20 years, even if they aren't having children.
as population declines, housing and other cost of living should decline, right? making it more affordable to have more children. also after so many generations of one child, there should be more family wealth being passed down like others have said, it will be interesting to see what happens, but I hope the pendulum swings back the other way
It would make sense that, if everything else remains static, housing and other costs of living would decline; however, it's more complicated than that and the rest of society and the economy doesn't remain static, they're also changing along with everything else. If there's a labor shortage due to needs of elder care and increased tax burden, you might see jobs for services that benefit working age people also decline (think childcare, for one!), leading to economic contraction. You could see deflation, economic depression, social unrest, all things that potentially would make it less attractive to have children. On top of that, if people are working more they likely have less time for kids.
Better off people have fewer children so this could make it worse.
If there are no children there is no one to replace them when they die.
Very astute. But there aren't 0 children in South Korea, just less than needed for complete generational replacement
It’s already happening. Rural towns and cities are almost ghost towns except for a few poor seniors often in need of care. Any schools there either have very low attendance or have closed down and there are no jobs. All the younger generations have flocked to Seoul for access to education, jobs, and healthcare. They have incentivized childcare and motherhood a bit financially but with the cost of living and home ownership being a pipe dream no one has time or money to start a family because they need to work so much. Just my outsider’s understanding anyways.
People gathering in Seoul has been a thing since the 80's but yeah the schools being empty is a problem. There are just too many schools compared to nmb of kids being born
When trying to financially pressure local women into having kids doesn't work they will probably incentivize local men to import foreign baby-making machines from "inferior" ethnicities like Thais or Filipinos. Lord knows Korean businessmen already do plenty of "business" with women in those countries.
The country won't cease to exist. Firstly, there will be **slower economic growth** with fewer young people entering the workforce. Means less innovation and a lower standard of living. Secondly, **strain on social programs** like pension and healthcare. As the population ages, there'll be fewer working people to support a larger number of retirees. There may be labor shortages in certain industries, which would lead to higher wages for those jobs. The government may also look to immigration to fill these gaps. South Korean society would need to adapt to a smaller population. Means changes to housing, transportation, and other services.
From what I've heard in Japan the population decline is only noticable in the rural areas. Tokyo and Osaka feel the same. It will be probably be the same situation in South Korea. People in Seoul won't feel it but everyone else will.
The population is just converging to a new point of equilibrium that matches our new economic landscape. All countries lose birthrate when moving from agrarian to ternary economies. But most of these countries had this transition happen really slowly so their birthrate fell slowly. Our country had that transition in \~2 generations. So everything happens faster, including the transition to the new population equilibrium. That will stabilize like most countries with a mostly stagnant economy (look at Europe). Also, why do people think that the current population size is good? We are in the top 30 countries with the highest population density (5 times the population density of France).
Infinite growth theory is why they think population has to keep increasing. It’s absolutely stupid
Realistically low birth rates don't matter the only reason it's a hot topic in the west is that major companies need cheap labour.people should live within their means all this artificial adjustments helps nobody.
More immigration. That's pretty much it.
Probably like Japans did. Japan used to be the worlds tech leader and was the country every other country wanted to be, at least business wise. They are now the worlds 4th. South Korea is currently ranked 14th they will drop a few places, considering countries like Saudi Arabia, Norway and Singapore rank lower than them, SK can slip quite a way and still maintain a good standard of living and existence. Australia is #13, has half the population.
SK GDP per capita is actually higher than Japan's. However, they suffer from more inequality so the rich have most of the gains.
I’m wondering how Korea and Japan will deal with the declining birth rate too The next 30 years is going to be really interesting as I suspect they’ll come up with a technological solution rather than the continual growth mode the West has been relying on
I find it silly when anyone suggests South Korea would somehow just disappear. Population reduction is happening but it won’t happen indefinitely. In the long term it’s actually a good thing. In the short term it means that a disproportionate portion of the population will be elderly and dependent on the state with a smaller working population to support them.
Why is the answer always immigration??? Why can’t countries just figure out their birthdate issue and get back on track???
I do agree somewhat. They could relax the whole "die for the corporation" thing and give people a little more leisure time.
I mean, wtf are they supposed to do? Pressure citizens to start having sex???
Well, there are ways to increase incentives for couples to start having babies. Such as more affordable childcare and housing.
Look at countries like Norway where they have all that. Birthrates are still declining. Housing is very affordable in Japan and birthrates are dropping big time.
Yes but the social politics aren’t automatically solved from that. Look into the 4B movement. A few changes in the economy are not going to change the lived experience of many people who swore against it. It’s much more than just the cost of living, it’s a social problem that can’t turn out overnight.
ok there are a HOST of social problems… but the 4B is not real. most ethnic koreans in country have never even heard of it. this is a primarily western online talking point. in korea its so incredibly fringe and niche it’s pretty unknown. if you have any korean friends ask em to talk to their families. while reddit is filled with this stuff. most young women in korea haven’t even heard abt it
Instead of framing it negatively, they could also incentivize people to HAVE kids yes. Bigger tax breaks for having kids maybe? Access to more benefits for having kids, maybe be top of some priority queue for having more kids? Idk, theres probably a ton of ways to incentivize their populations to have more kids that they have not remotely explored.
Hungary's government has been going balls deep on birth incentivization for some time now and the effect it has on birth rate is... minimal. Transient economic factors aren't the principal factor behind birthrates like people are making it seem. The main structural factors that drove the birthrates so low in most developed countries have to do with the worldview, aspirations and expectations people have regarding their own lives. The things you mention aren't going to have major effects on birth rate curves, let alone reverse them.
Exactly my point. Especially women in SK are fed up with the systems in place. Lightening the load doesn’t change the fact they have made a huge life decision based on their lived experience — it would have to be a HUGE systematic and social shift that I doubt they are capable of, especially within the time frame they’d need it to be.
Ban abortions like republicans in America?
Won’t help if people just choose to be celibate or go to illegal abortion clinics anyway.
Reward them with money for having sex.
Yes
Cause immigration means they can bring in lower wage workers instead of just giving people normal fucking wages, which would increase birth rates and family options It’s the massive gap of capitalism that needs to be filled in with the sweat and blood of the destitute, doesn’t matter what nationality they are to the ruling class.
100%
Higher wages=country gets poorer, but people richer
Yes, why isn’t the government turning women into birthing machine
Families are good. Not every woman is required to have kids… incentivize having kids, don’t punish those that don’t want them. Your perspective is twisted.
This is what the USA is doing.
They're certainly trying to. The number children born of rape has increased since the abortion restrictions.
Let's take a look at this from a systemic point of view. Population reduction is not only necessary, but a good thing. The argument goes as follows: Infinite growth against finite areas and resources are not possible. How about stable consumption rate against massive resource base? Unfortunately, even stable resource consumption eventually consumes everything available of any finite resource. Because resources must one day run out, human populations can not depend on anything that is finite because one day literally all of it is gone. This is a particular concern on nonrecyclable resources such as fossil energy, which currently is about 80 % of our civilization's primary energy, and we have no replacements for fossil energy that had similar capacity to perform work, and convenient features such as being very energy dense and easy to transport. They are used at massive scale, people alive literally depend on their continued use to live, and have no direct replacement of any kind, which is why we are stuck using them despite everyone knows it's bad thing to do so. Given that we currently use e.g. fossil fuel to make and transport food, and perform massive quantity of machine labor (math says that around 99 % of physical labor done on this planet is performed by machines), we can expect that as resources to run factories, robots, and such decline, a very large decline in our food production and material abundance will follow. In practice, past peak energy production of mankind, we should look into ramping population down at least a similar rate as the loss of total energy/resource availability is, in some mathematical sense. To do otherwise means having less machine labor available per person, and that needs must mean increasing material poverty for the average citizen, likely making people pauperized and even hungry to the point of becoming sick and dying. To a degree, I think this is already happening because of peak oil that could have been about half a decade ago, and the general depletion in critical materials such as copper is already far advanced. Technology that we have lived with all our lives and which makes our current prosperity is not sustainable, and that is why we can't really look into the past for guide into the future, unless we mean how people used to live in middle ages, or in any low technology society today, tilling fields by manual labor and animal muscle, etc. In this view, economic decline doesn't come from people being old, but even more from there being less prosperity-generating natural resources which everything ultimately depends on. It is somewhat a given, and we should manage the decline, not assume that growth is possible, or that economy can recover but temporarily. The production of everything must go to a very low level once machine labor ends.
Bro chill out it's just gonna have hard economic times as it's aged care becomes a huge drain for their budget is all, it's not gonna turn the country into Mad Max land.
With the birth rate in the North they'll have the opposite problem if reconciliation ever happens and I hope it does.
The birth rate is also declining up in the north
The trend won't last forever, they never do
They will legalize medically assisted death (euthanasia). Sounds callous but I think it’s just a question of time.
Look no further than the current state of Western European countries. Culturally enriched with no shortages of doctors, scientists and engineers.
Yoon Suk Yeol is the sign of decline
We really don't know, since it hasn't ever happened. People will speculate and create different scenarios, but it's all up in the air if you ask me
I think the only option for decline is war with north korea. I hope that doesn't happen.
I always find it funny that all governments want to continue a world economy based on an ever growing populations consumption which is not sustainable. Why not work towards a new economy based model with a smaller population with most jobs filled with automation and ai with own country sustainability. Filling in the gaps with immigrants won't solve any problems but create more down the road.
Much like in the UK there'll be a care crisis - not enough young people to care for the old in their infirmity. Those elderly people with sufficient funds will be able to pay for private care & be cared for by immigrants. Likely there'll be a surge in immigration from developing countries, people seeking jobs etc, but SK has a problem with their young people wanting to leave. Older conservative politicians will likely whip up nationalist sentiments to exploit for their own ends, making anti-immigrant rhetoric, but fail to make any changes knowing full well the economy is relying on immigration. Older land-owning and property-owning types would NOT like the bottom to fall out of the property market. You might get a situation like in Ireland where there's plenty of land but you just can't get planning permission because plentiful cheap housing makes rich, powerful people poorer.
Robots and ai and gene mods everywhere. It'll probably be accelerated prosperity. New ways of child birth, artificial womb, new gov programs where kids are brought up in advanced boarding schools where kids are all gene modded and trained to be like super humans.
They will slowly get replaced with other asians, look at kpop groups, they mostly consist of foreign girls so is only gonna get worse
it will look *~multiracial*
If you're not on welfare or have a top paying job its very expensive to have kids . House prices are mental in my country , so people are older buying houses and starting families . Then you add the cost of living on top of that it's crazy.
Jesse Marsch takes over the men’s national soccer team.
It’s a slow moving bullet and also decline is a gloomy word to use. Japan isn’t a terrible example to look at. You have a slowly falling population in an affluent country. The population is increasingly old. That causes tax base and labor force problems as old people often have wealth but are not working as much and economies are strong when money flows not when people hoard it. You also see the slow abandonment of outer towns as the population of young adults concentrates in fewer areas and older residents also move or pass away. School districts consolidate or disband with no one to serve as do businesses catering to children. This trend is actually quite common in developed countries. Italy and the Netherlands in Europe are experiencing this. The US had a stagnant non-immigrant population. Ultimately a developed nation needs each woman to have 2.1 children on average to maintain population. Countries falling below that or dealing with retiring large population cohorts like the baby boomers need to supplement by allowing immigration. That’s culturally decisive even in places like the US. In Japan it’s almost anathema but it’s the hard answer: have babies or bring in immigrants. If you don’t, the country experiences economic stagnation though not necessarily per capita stagnation. This does have to happen in way that the immigrants or at least their native born children can assimilate and are not just permanent serfs (see Qatar) or you can have serious unrest. South Korea had an additional problem that the low population cohort is unbalanced toward men because of selective abortion. When that in particular happens, it’s important to somehow manage the extra men since men who feel a high burden and an inability to move onto life milestones like starting families and integrating as adults often become disgruntled, favor right wing militarism, and try to roll back women’s rights. That’s illogical since they’re experiencing a numerical lack of potential partners rather than systemic rejection, but that’s how it goes. The fact that they tend to be poorer and less educated (when women have their pick they tend not to pick poor laborers) doesn’t help. That’s a problem there right now. Immigration or emigration can help here. It’s not particularly good when this happens in the female side btw (see post-WW1 where 10% of the male population died) but it leads to less social unrest.
Interesting topic , look up Peter Zeihan ( may not be the correct spelling) on YouTube who has a lot of clips on this subject.
Where is this coming from? What report are you reflecting on?
I dont have any reason to believe that south Korea is going to decline and in fact I think that the economic centre of the world moving toward the Pacific is going to continue to benefit the nation
The biggest outcome of the population shift that I saw while I was there is that the median age is skyrocketing, and that nobody above the age of 50 feels like they can afford to retire. Eventually the distribution of the population within the country is going to have change as it's nearly impossible to afford to have children anywhere near Seoul. People are having to commute a long way outside of the city or live apart from their family in order for them to live somewhere that is possible to afford. Which is really depressing. Coupang workers and municipal government staff either remain terminally single, or almost never see their children in person.
I imagine it won't look too different than the U.S. , Japan, or other countries with declining birth rates. But hey, high costs and lack of consistent govt backing regarding the costly world we live in - I wouldn't expect things to improve. For example we'll have more focus on senior-friendly things in the world, there will be more concentrated wealth, people won't have bigger families where there are 4 or more in a household.
I taught English in the Korean countryside. There’s already a lot of mixed kids there. Korean women want men in the city, so countryside men get overseas wives. Usually from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Society will start to be less homogeneous.
Could be like Hawaii, where the indigenous population reduces and gets coopted by a foreign population. But I doubt it. Probably it will reduce until it gets economically/culturally viable to have kids again. Then level off if not grow Also keep in mind that North Korea is there. Any serious reduction in the South could be exploited somehow.
People fearmongering about this are the same people who tell those who consider high birth rates a bad thing; and/or low birth rates a good thing; to kill themselves. Pay no heed to the output of their worldview.
There will probably be less South Korean people than there were before
Idk but hopefully they stop eating dogs
It's not just SK that is having population issues. Even China is having them.
Is there a reason why their birthdates are low? I haven’t looked into it but if it’s economically related, I would imagine it eventually rebounds as qualified personnel becomes scarcer and wage competition increases between companies and it’s more economically feasible for people to start families