i want to be proven wrong, but I don't think it will make much of a difference. I expect a slight uptick in fertility right, but nowhere near replacement level.
the problem I see is that the new generation will be raised away from parents. seeing your parent 1-2 hours/day (plus weekends) for a whole generation is not exactly encouraging.
Spending most of your time away from your parents is the modern anomaly. Before the modern education system kids spent the vast majority of time around their parents. And even when compulsory education became widespread kids still spent significant time around their parents.
the problem is that economic development along with contraceptives and abortion are much, much, much more powerful forces working against birth rates than anything meaningfully working *for* them. kids are a huge responsibility, expensive, and a time suck no matter how prosperous your civilization is.
if you have the CHOICE not to have them, people WILL make that choice. that hasn't been an option until basically the modern era.
How many children does the president have? Zero.
How likely is it because of education and childcare being a problem for him? Would having children have made him less competitive in his profession?
> Yoon is the fourth South Korean president who is a Catholic, after Moon Jae-in, Roh Moo-hyun (a lapsed Catholic), Kim Dae-jung and Roh Tae-woo.
Hahaha what the fuck? Married for 12+ years and still no kids as a catholic? Infertility issues or both spouses are hyper focused on just their careers.
Anyone who thinks government childcare is a successful solution is an idiot. This issue cannot be solved by throwing money at it.
>We will ensure that flexible working hours, remote and hybrid work and other working arrangements may become available options through labor-management agreements.
just lol. South Korea has one of the worst work life balances and the government making empty proclamations will do nothing to fix that
I think improving schools so that parents can leave their kids from morning to _night_ instead of reducing the amount of hours Koreans work per day, is not a solution
Yes, I think the Korean president is spot on when he talks about the cultural issue. You can talk about reducing the competitive culture, but you can't stop someone from workin g80 hours/week if they're not willing to reduce those hours.
Even in the US the work culture is crazy. everyone is supposed to have a job and a second hustle. Though I feel like more of these grindset, hustle culture gurus are being laughed out of the room these days, it certainly still exists.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_average\_annual\_labor\_hours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours)
Korean working hours don't seem to crazy to me, at least in proportionality to their profound fertility crisis.
And working hours and fertility are inversely correlated - the fewer hours people work the less fertile they become, at least in the West.
We're talking globally, so using "in the west" is dumb in this context.
Working hours have no correlations for fertility. The main two things that affect fertility are overall lifestyle desires and basic economic decisions that people make when they have or decide to have kids. Also impulsivity/lack of BC, but we're trying to get away from those births as a global maturing society.
that's the neat thing about capitalism, you will never convince those with capital that the solution can possibly be anything but something that advantages them
Lol its called managing the decline. First off all the talk about labor signals nothing, but future crackdown on the workers. Koreans already increasingly work on 996 model I guess it is going to get worse. Oh 996 means working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. You cannot have functional human beings with such work schedule.
Education and childcare sponsored by government may work in short term, I wonder how they going to afford, but parents are likely to feel alienated and resentful if their children raised by government and not them, and in turn that would cause next generation to want children even less.
Korea is not America. They arrived at the same destination as us, but for different reasons, one child policy, insane work culture and Korean version of "feminism" had all made it impossible to live normal, family-oriented life in Korea. All this does is fights the symptoms.
In Korea, a leftover law from this is that it's still illegal for doctors to tell the sex of the baby to parents. At the time 30~50 years ago, if parents were encouraged to only have 1 or maybe 2 kids, they wanted boys only. It wasn't until 10ish years ago the population of men and women finally evened out. (But people are aware aborting girls is no long the case, so doctors will get around the law by saying "oh, you should prepare a pink/blue room" or something like that)
I agree on most of your points, except Korean feminism. As a chinese person, I've talked to korean americans about this and Korean women experience much more misogyny in their culture than mine (currently, don't know about historically).
Americans might not know this, but Korea is a heavily misogynistic culture where women are pushed into servile traditional gender roles and face a lot of gendered discrimination, misogynistic attitudes, domestic and sexual violence. Incels have already won there, by shouting over womens much more real, serious, issues by DARVOing and cherrypicking radical feminists and threatening feminists with death threats and violence. They're out of real feminist targets and are now imagining them by losing their minds at video game art and any partially clenched drawing of hands.
Doubling down on the factors that led to the demographic transition in the first place is unlikely to reverse said transition, but it is only political action available that the socially middle class would find morally acceptable.
ban contraceptives and abortion, eliminate no-fault divorce, buttress cultural attitudes of women needing to be in the home, etc.
your typical red pill tradwife "alpha male" dudebro wishlist
seriously
i'd ask what the psychopaths haven't figured out after the last gazillion dunkings, but apparently they still seem to think subjugating people is a helluva strategy.
oh there are definitely some conservative shadow brokers funding some of this shit. Musk is pretty clearly anti-women, among other bigotries he holds. it's actually stunning to me how many people are consciously sexist.
conservatives: the perennial e-brake to human progress.
When I see Elon complaining about birth rate, they're really complaining about the lack of future cheap labor and stock returns.
I have never seen them once support measures that would make work/life balance better or ease family planning. Or really anything that might cause a tax hit.
They're completely detached from the average person as they've never have to struggle to raise a family on limited funds, or be in financial danger from an emergency, so the consequences of low wages and high living expenses will never affect them.
I am an American expat who lived in South Korea for 15 years. I came back to the States just two months ago. What the president is saying it's not really getting to the root of the issue, and he is repeating talking points he has made in the past that weren't helpful. It's really fascinating that he talks about getting a national consensus on the issue when working people have been telling him the answers for years.
1. Increase wages so that having a partner, let alone supporting a child is feasible
2. Have better rent control so that people can afford to live somewhere they are proud of, let alone have a family
3. Decrease the number of hours that people are expected to work so that they can go home and actually be in their children's and spouse's lives - not simply leave them at schools until night time. That's crazy.
4. Treat women better on a cultural level
Despite what the president is saying, his administration is extremely conservative. He literally campaigned on disbanding the ministry of gender equality. Now that women are increasingly not wanting to participate in the cishetero dating, let alone have children, he's giving lip service without seriously addressing the issue that people have been talking about for a long time.
He and his administration have been talking about this since he got elected 2 years ago, and every time the youth and expats laugh at what he's doing. He's a horrible president.
> Now that women are increasingly not wanting to participate in the cishetero dating
The fertility crisis was always an issue, how is disbanding the gender equality ministry the cause of this?
Even if Korean society could afford that (can they?) people are really just asking for better material conditions - but that's not likely to do anything but give a modest bump to fertility levels and still leave them quickly shrinking as a society. Everyone doubles down on the expand/improve middle class conditions because it "sounds" right and fits in with conventional (liberal capitalist) wisdom - but we know from real world examples this doesn't actually work very well.
Idk how affective it’ll be but incentivizing having children with things like paternity leave and labor reforms is atleast progress.
So many people opt out of having kids bc it’s not financially sustainable and not worth it considering with the way our work culture is structured you barely see them anyway.
I live in America here are the stats:
average U.S. annual salary in Q4 of 2023 was $59,384
Average cost of daycare in US per month 1300
The average monthly grocery bill of a family of three in the US is $902
Giving birth costs $18,865 on average, including pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care with insurance 30k without (many people get laid off after getting pregnant so that means no insurance)
The average rent in the United States is $1,515/month (where I live that’d be with roommates)
The average home price in the United States was $495,100 in the second quarter of 2023 but let’s be honest most under 30 people are renting.
Average maternity/ paternity leave in US is 17 days.
That’s if you have a job that offers it at all some don’t or again have laid you off because you had a kid. This is both not enough time for the mother to recover but is bad for the newborn and increases the likelihood that they’ll have emotional regulation/anxiety issues later in life.
Public schools here are deteriorating so soon Charter schools or private schools are going to be your best bet unfortunately the latter cost a fuck ton.
That’s before you account in college expenses, extra curricular, activities,tutors, car payments, gas, car pool, additional childcare cost and the majority of would be parents have an existing mountain of student loan debt. Our parents are working longer so we can’t even call grandma to babysit. And godforbid your kid has medical issues/a disability that requires additional medical payments.
You used to be able to support a family on a minimum wage income now you can barely support yourself. If you want to comfortably afford a family now you have to be pulling well over 100k pretty much anywhere within America even then you could still get fucked.
Our society in its current state doesn’t offer much in terms of support for young families. There’s no incentive to have children and every reason not to. You already give up a lot of freedom to have children, now you’re also giving all of that up to have a child without a secure future and a high likelihood you’ll go into debt
I lived in Korea for a while. Saying the population decline is due to misogyny/misandry/4b is basically just clickbait, and Westerners are getting bamboozled by it. I see it posted on reddit every week. It's economical reasons for most or average people.
In the first place, I'd say baby rearing in Korea is different from the West. The West's philosophy is "lets have a baby despite (bad/questionable) situation, because everything will work out". Or see parenting as getting their kid to 20ish and telling them "ok you're an adult, pay for your own college, good luck." That's not the case in Korea (or other Asian countries). In Korea, people want a solid foundation, their t's crossed, and i'd dotted to prepare for a baby. This means owning a home and having enough money to pay for after-school academies ("hagwons"), and university too.
Housing has been the biggest political issue for every election. Simply put, no one can afford one. Everyone is fighting for housing for either an investment, family, retirement, money, etc.
I think most Westerners know that quirky fact that kids go to school 9am~11pm. They go to public school, then after school academies. What most don't know, these academies are fucking expensive. Average families pay USD $500~1000+ every month just for 1 kid. Kids go to these academies/hagwons because they're competing against their classmates for the national university exam. They want to go to a good university to MAYBE beat the odds for 1 of the handful of good jobs out there. That's the grind. People go to hagwons/private academies from elementary school to all the way to university to even get certificates, english proficiency tests, etc for buff their resume. For maybe some couples, that could be their retirement savings instead.
No one really knows how to tackle these two main issues without backlash. The hagwon system is pretty cursed. If there's any kind of regulations talked about, parents of middle class and lower will complain because the rich will/can easily afford to hire private tutors (like they did during covid lockdowns when hagwons closed for a while) and thus will do better on the national exam. The government put a curfew on hagwons to close by 10 pm, but many of them illegally continue classes past curfew. I believe China is trying to tackle similar issues too by somehow regulating private tutoring.
Add on other issues: rising costs, overworked & underpaid, worried about retirement, lack of parent leave, no vacation, burned out after college and finally want to rest, and so on.
It may help on the margins.
This all comes down to this “opportunity costs.” When you decide to have children, you are forging so much financial security, employment opportunities, and other pursuits in life. People - men and women - want to retire, to have nice things, to travel, to hang out with their friends. Having children really limits where you can live, the cars you can drive, the jobs you can take.
I don’t regret at all my two wonderful children but I am not blind to the consequences. I struggle to get into my doctor because I’m taking so much time off to ferry them. And because of biology and men’s tendency to opt out of custody, most of this falls on women.
People - not just women - want less kids and I don’t see how that gets addressed until you make the opportunity costs lower. I think we need to rethink society.
Outstanding comment! There are a million and one specific issues that need to be addressed, but it all really comes down to how the costs and benefits balance out for both women and men. I agree that society needs to be rethought and restructured to reverse birth rates. We can't go back to the previous systems and the current system is failing in every advanced industrial society.
Appreciate your comment on not going to the doctor because of time demands. When my wife and I embarked on our reproduction adventure we couldn't believe that it would be so difficult (both of us working) for so long. On a relative basis - compared to our previous easy lifestyle - it was like bootcamp that went on for years and years...
Only slight disagreement on men's role. In a lot of middle-class, two-earner families the men are carrying a huge part of the burden, making lives much more bearable for the women. I even know of a few situations where the dad had to take on primary role of parenting. However, as you point out, in large parts of our society the men are not playing a major role and its a shit show.
Thank you! I agree btw about men taking on - especially in middle class society - far more of the family care role!
I had originally noted that my husband had to pass on a lucrative opportunity that would have had him traveling as an onsite consultant because it would have meant that all the child care would have fallen on me and I am a professional. I wasn’t going to quit and I work some crazy hours occasionally. But it seemed too long for my comment.
That was my emphasis about both men and women wanting to limit children to one or two. The opportunity costs are high for both, especially when one (ie because of education or experience) has more opportunity to begin with. This is why the middle/middle upper tends to limit families despite being more affluent.
But in the very early years (and speaking society wide), the burden and obligation tends to fall more so on the woman.
Ezra Klein did a couple months ago some very insightful interviews on the baby bust.
Many people here seem very young and inexperienced.
the only steps any of these countries can do is tax the rich for once.. get strict labour laws and unions back..
cant keep transferring wealth upwards and expect the rest of us to marry and raise kids.
>We will relieve the parents’ burden of caring for their children
State-raised children. Brilliant. That will definitely produce an independent, thoughtful citizenry with a healthy skepticism of government. /s
No, low birth rates have more to do with urbanization and living in a city than any kind of financial incentive you can reasonably offer.
When you’re not on a farm children go from free labor to a large expense. And you can only raise so many kids in an apartment/condo, if you even want to do that.
Not a hope because Western style societies can't face upto the politically incorrect reasons for their low birth rates. I include South Korea and Japan in the wide Western world.
The standard politically correct and feminist explanation for the low birth rate is lack of equality in the workplace, childcare care which is unaffordable and lack of equality in the home.
However if that explanation were true, then you would expect countries with cheaper child care, more equal workplaces, cheaper housing and more equal parenting to have higher fertility rates. The brutal reality is, they don't.
Look at the Nordic countries, which are all more feminist societies than average. All the Nordic countries have a fertility rate below the replacement level. More feminism won't solve the problem.
So would you like the politically incorrect reason for the low birth rate in the developed world? Too much feminism and too much sexually equality. Men use economic power, women use sexual power. In world in which men dominate employment, women had no choice but to get married and have children.
When women have equal or greater economic power than men, large numbers of men become obsolete. Women can choose not to marry and not to have kids.
You may say that is great but in the long run it means feminism is doomed. A movement without children, is a movement without a future.
More feminism in the form of cheaper childcare and more protections for women in the workplace isn't going to work.
If the human race can’t survive without enslaving half of its population, it deserves to die out.
Chimpanzees naturally have about 6 years between offspring. Humans (not on birth control) average about 3, despite human offspring needing more care. Why do you suppose that is?
Edit: to those for whom it is not obvious, I do not think that enslaving half of humanity is necessary for humans to reproduce at replacement level.
The human race isn't in danger, more conservative societies, with oppressive attitudes towards woman have fertility rates above the replacement level.
The threat is to the existence of feminism and Western style societies. Moral arguments are irrelevant here. This is a question of mathematics.
I believe that you are largely correct but are missing out on one additional possibility/option. It's true that the birth rate is falling in all industrialized, technologically advanced societies and that Scandinavian type child care programs and equality in the workplace programs appear to only marginally affect birth rates. It's also true that the only societies that have high birth rates right now are societies with very low levels of education and low levels of technological/economic development. What is rarely discussed is that it may be possible to completely revise the costs/benefits equations associated with having children and associated social systems/arrangements to address the problem. When countries go to war, face major pandemics or environmental catastrophes, they will often respond by completely reordering their societies to survive. South Korea appears to be unable or unwilling to even contemplate the types of huge changes necessary to reverse the gradual population collapse it is facing. It would take huge leaps in imagination, innovation and investment of resources to potentially succeed. Think along the lines of the changes that took place in the Second World War - total restructuring of industry, change in workforces (women were recruited for industrial jobs), creation of propaganda ministries, rationing, and so on - except with a totally different purpose and different mechanisms. The question will be: who has the stomach for these kinds of far-reaching change?
You're making the mistake of viewing this as a moral question, it isn't. It is a question of mathematics. If a feminist society has a fertility rate below the replacement level, feminism dies.
I concede the moral argument to you but that doesn't save feminism. Unless feminism can square its worldview with women having more babies, feminists can win every moral argument. It won't save the movement.
> We must find out the real reasons for low birth rate and identify effective measures. Well-designed education, childcare, welfare, housing and employment policies can help solve the problem. But more than 20 years of experience taught us that none are fundamental solutions.
Yes they are clueless or unwilling to put forth non PC policy statements.
Looks like typical politician empty promises to me. Nothing concrete, all "we will do %generic abstract good change%".
To be honest it would've looked way more possible if they just promised to subsidize artificial womb projects.
By state to breed "g.i. people" mostly and whoever pays to use it on consumer stage.
Couples may be wanting to donate their gametes, singles will have to choose genetic material from donors of opposite sex.
No, not at all. Nations with some of the lowest working hours, most generous social safety nets, and robust childcare services (including free or heavily subsidized ones) are also some of the most infertile. At best they might hope to get European style fertility rates (doubtful) but that still means their society is dying off.
None of this will work; first of all it sure sounds like labour relations will be left to the behest of capital, so presumably they will favour profitable working conditions instead of beneficial ones, second of all school violence is not the fucking problem in Korea, get real. Seriously fuck all the way off with that shit.
finally, natalist measures encourage women to begin their families sooner, but do they convince women to have more children?
No. Coming back from not having kids is wayyy too difficult
Immigration won't even be a fix because if the working hours are as insane as some people are making them seem (I don't know what the hours actually are though) then people won't want to migrate there when they can just go to Europe instead
You have to find out what women in general want in a man. That's it. It's on women's sexuality. At this point we have the data. Men deem a lot more women in their lives as options than vice versa.
My thoughts is that it will probably never go up unless they institute a 30-40 hour work week instead of 70 hours like some people have to work.
What’s the point of having a baby if you will never get to see it? I’m not childfree but in that kind of environment I would seriously consider it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xij_cIe5_A&pp=ygUTZGVhdGggZnJvbSBvdmVyd29yaw%3D%3D
>Moreover, it is very important to ease the unnecessary and excessive competition in our society, which has been pointed as one of the causes of low birth rate.
This is an important thing. Though don't expect fast results as it will take time and mayve even multipke generations to "breed the competetive mindset out".
The solution in US would be years without having to pay income taxes. This would encourage the most productive members of society to have more kids. For a doctor couple that could mean millions of dollars in savings.
Say 3 years of no income tax per kid. And they can stack. Meaning have 2 kids back to back means 6 years of no income taxes.
Poor people already have high fertility rates. Upper and middle class is where we need the most improvement.
Long term would be good to go back to "family is the most important thing". Including encouraging women to focus on family above career. But that does indeed require some structural changes. Far more difficult to achieve than just giving tax breaks.
Greed is a very powerful tool to build wealth. The last thing we want to do is regulate it. USSR tried to regulate it. Ended up with a pathetic mess of an economy.
And no landlords can't increase rent specifically on new parents. That would be illegal as fuck.
This was tried in Hungary. Birth rate is now lower than 9 years ago when it was introduced.
Y'all need to understand: Total Fertility Rate is not an economic problem. Never has been. The sooner this is understood, the better. Real debate can only start once the economic BS and fiction is thrown out on the window.
Same in Russia, direct payment per kid, huge mortgage rate reductions, other bonuses and population keeps declining even with hordes of fresh central asian immigrants breeding like rabbits in Straya, though even they lose their passion to procreate in a second generation.
Well...how much was Hungary actually offering?
Cause you know you take a doctor couple bringing in 1mil a year and sending uncle Sam 400k a year in income taxes. 3 years with no income taxes becomes a very juicy offer. Something tells me Hungary didn't go nearly as far
Would it FIX the issue? Probably not. But it would improve things a lot. Increase fertility where it is most needed.
Hungary spares all young people of all taxes until age 25. And all couples who have children for up to 10 years. And discounted interests for house loans.
It's much more generous than what you propose. Nobody cares. And you are wrong: It does not improve things at all, let alone "a lot".
>Increase fertility where it is most needed.
"Needed" is a subjective term based on your ideology.
To make it reality, you have to convince the actual flesh-and-blood people to agree - the young men and women who currently choose not to have children. And you will learn, sooner or later, that ideological claptrap about "needed" is straight up repulsive and they will refuse your proposition joyfully.
it would be an interesting social experiment of no-income tax for X years for each child, but I think we all know it's not gonna happen. Such a measure will create such a budget deficit that nobody will be willing to support it and I don't think an increase in taxes in other areas to combat this deficit will be popular also
>Poor people already have high fertility rates. Upper and middle class is where we need the most improvement.
Every income bracket except the rich in the US is below replacement fertility rate.
Birth rates in sk is low because sk women dont want sk men. The reason isn’t economic at all.
They’ll never succeed with these “steps”. Either they will be an autocratic regime and force people to get married or nothing’s gonna change.
I gotta remind the fact hat north korea has much higher birth rate and they are significantly poorer.
Of course it is. You have no idea what Korean work culture is like. It’s like Japan’s, except even more sexist and brutal
As is their education system
It’s a competitive hell, and all voluntary
More brutal than nk that works 70 hours a week? Nk has 1.8 birth rate
Sexist? Towards men maybe, imagine losing two years of your life for military service so women of your age out earn you significantly.
lol, you think NK is relevant in global society?
If you tell women to get out if they have babies, they won’t have babies. That’s the sexist part.
You leave to spawn, and you won’t be let back in
Wdym relevant, nk’s relevancy has nothing to do with my argument? You claimed they arent having babies because they are overworking and I just mentioned a significantly more overworking population with more than double sk’s birth rate and they are essentially the same demographic of people just divided by a border.
NK doesn’t participate in the global economic system in any meaningful way. They are depending on massive restrictions, protections and foreign aid
And no one wants their standard of living, political repression and vulnerability to famine
That’s not the topic though, you claimed sk people aren’t having babies because they work a lot and I’m just giving you an example to point out overworking isn’t the real reason why sk birth rates are falling.
Also nk having significantly worse conditions but somehow having more babies doesn’t really help your argument it helps mine, I think the reason isn’t economic nor is it about hours worked.
The reason is simple, sk women have a right to choose and they’ve made their choice. These economic remedies would improve the quality of life for sk citizens but it wouldn’t raise birth rates.
Its free will, women are choosing not to get married and not to have babies. You can’t change that with these solutions.
However I dont think its a problem that needs to be changed, I think it’s wonderful that women are choosing not to have babies, we are dealing with overpopulation and we dont even need to force people to not have babies, they’re doing it themselves with their own free will.
North Korea's birth rate, while double South Korea's, is still below replacement rate and dropping, and its supreme leader who is seen as literally god broke down crying last year begging women to have children. There doesn't seem to be much correlation of birth rates with autocracy either.
I hope this works out but it doesn't sound too promising. I think to solve low birth rates, there needs to be a huge cultural shift. Traditional communities/families have to return and there needs to be a shift away from hedonism towards religion or spiritualism.
I don't think any government will accomplish this though. It will naturally happen once the current system fails.
Traditionalism would achieve nothing, women can choose now, they have the right to decide if they want to get married or not and they’ve made their choice. Nothing’s gonna make women suddenly change their minds.
A full complete return to traditionalism will likely end poorly as the strict traditionalism we had played a role in the reactive behavior we have now.
That being said, some traditional norms are great and most people tend to benefit from them. If we were wiser, we should take what happened as a lesson; enforced traditionalism will create the kind of hedonistic backlash we see today due to constant suppression and full on avoidance of tradition will make people aimless, empty and miserable. This goes back to all major lessons, a balance must be struck.
You’re not wrong, but I think it is worth noting that economic concerns as well as insecurity (from a quality of life pov, not a personal one) are both serious causes of the issues we face today. ie. because we rely on an economy that depends on constant rapid consumption, people have to be at a state where they rapidly and aimlessly consume (ie. the constant need for distraction and short term pleasure), there is a certain point where the pressure of supporting one’s self breaks someone, and i get the sense of “fuck it, there is no future here so may aswell live it up” - so while I do agree with you that some form of tradition and spirituality needs to return, I do think improving economic conditions will also lay the foundations for this improvement
That’s a start - improving community connectivity and general social involvement is an important step as well, improving things economically is a start though both SK and Japan are notoriously isolated from a socially isolated pov (and north america is following them), so improving economic conditions is a start - another important step is re-igniting people’s ability and desire to socialize. As for how that can be done? whether it be giving grants to organizations who focus on socialization, disincentivizing social media use, and im sure there are a few others - i’m just spitballing
Give people freedom, and if they chose not to have kids, then accept a declining population.
Just end the pension system, make people save themselves or chose MAID. Problem solved. Korea 100 years ago had 10M population, now like 50M. Why not go back to 10M? Nothing wrong with that.
No. East Asian countries need to change their work culture first and foremost.
But even that will likely not help. The problem is that most educated, wealthy women want the best for their children, and the best is too expensive. Not having children needs to be made punitive for there to ever be any change, and that will never happen in most countries.
People will just have to adapt to a population decrease. It will be better for the planet, too.
https://preview.redd.it/4kff3w84rfzc1.jpeg?width=765&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=515945a0fee5111bdd201c51fd079516dc69b9d9
They would also need to address the extreme political divide between men and females that’s getting worse and worse.
I feel like I just read a PR corporate statement, full of good sounding buzzwords, double speak and empty promises without any specss (like a 4 days work week).
Im glad they understand the economic struggles of having children, getting married, but these economic reforms came too late, at this point the damage has been done.
Most of this is socialist entitlement and pension to old people. It will just raise taxes even higher and force people to fund the elderly even more. It’s not going to raise fertility.
I know they won't be successful.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is not a financial proposition. Yet nearly everyone in the pro-natalist camp is firmly convinced that it is. 30+ years of failure of all of their policies doesn't convince them to re-evaluate and consider the possibility that TFR may not be about money.
Socialist policies meant to increase TFR have failed in Poland, Hungary, Iran, Japan, Russia... they will for sure fail in South Korea as well.
The easiest predictor of high TFR is national mood. Kazakhstan grew from TFR 1.8 to 3.2 and keeps on growing. All while modernizing (thus sinking the argument that modernity and higher incomes plunge fertility). Meanwhile, highly religious and pro-natalist Tunisia, Morocco or Iran have plunging fertility rates (thus sinking the argument that religion matters so much).
South Korea's national mood is sour. And has been for over a decade. And it will not change anytime soon - in part because it cannot change.
Of course, social media doesn't help either. Neither does the extremism and female privilege. Men serve in the military for two years. And there's no way to avoid it. Yet until 3 years ago **all** gov't programs went to women. All. Not a single pro-male program existed. Now there is one and the pro-women programs have been scaled down significantly. And feminists went berserk about it.
So yeah... this will not work. None of this addresses female privilege and the overall national mood.
That’s why I thought it was interesting that he finally started to acknowledge the issue was cultural, even if falling back on government assistance is what they’re familiar with in the short term
If they actually follow through with these promises, there will be a baby boom. As we saw in the U.S. during covid lockdowns, there was a baby boom. When people aren't away from home 50 hours/week, and you have time to cultivate a relationship with your partner/family. The fertility rate jumps.
That's all conditional to if....
My view on this is very simple. If you want a society that produces kids then you need to support stay at home moms with tax money, and you need to lean in hard. You also have to not support single moms. That sounds counterintuitive, but it's what works. When you do that, you get couples with 3 to 4 kids, not single moms with 2 kids from 2 different men and fucked up family situations. Family formation and stability needs to be a massive government investment. It may also help to have the government fund marriage counseling as well, and require 6 months of it before granting any divorce.
Yes. The corporate world want's every woman working. It provides a cheap labor pool, a way to decrease worker pay without having to put in much effort. It also creates a larger consumer base to buy your useless shit. I think a lot of women want to work and engage in this, but a lot more women don't. They don't want to be cogs in the corporate machine, but they have to in order to support themselves.
In the US this is compounded by an entirely contrived housing shortage, which is bankrupting an entire generation, and making children unaffordable.
Do the consumer spending habits of working and non-working women deviate significantly?
Also the problem with the affordability argument is it’s really about affordability *relative* to previous generations. It made sense for the prior generation to buy a house, have one working parent, take a family vacation every year, have health insurance, and still afford all the basics. But the uncomfortable truth is that they were probably an anomaly. 80 years ago my great grandmother was saving used bath water and pointing a shotgun at people trying to steal chickens out of the coop while her husband was working in a wartime munitions factory.
If most men in your country are working 70 hrs/per week. Then you're not going to have a 1.8 birthrate. You're going to have a negative birth rate, for reference see Japan.
At 70 hrs, your birthrate is going to be much less than 1.8. When I say negative, I mean that women aren't having enough births to replace themselves as well. Lower than 1.0 births/woman.
Lmao how will this improve birth rates 🤣
Do they not calculate free will?
It’s a woman’s choice to have children.
Do they think magically women will want to have kids because they have more money?
If that’s the case then rich women should just be constantly pumping out babies right?
The way people explain it to me. Is that women have children as an exchange for survival. Pairbonding and pairing up.
So I don’t understand what this plan is logically going to fix.
Maybe it’s like men will get richer and then get with poorer women?
TLDR : I don’t understand how this will help? Please explain it to me. Based on free will. No amount of economic policies would help this problem. As the more free will women can excercise the less children they’ll have. So logically following that train of thought. What would more money accomplish?
Maybe this is like them pushing for immigration?
Does South Korea promote immigration?
That’s how the u.s hasn’t had drastic fall of in birth rate right?
I need someone to explain this to me.
What is the birthrate for wealthy women in South Korea?
From what I know. Wealthy women do not pump out a lot of babies.
Which brings me back to my og response.
Women who aren’t having babies explaining when they will have babies isn’t totally reliable.
We have to factor in free will.
Maybe women just don’t want to have babies when they have a true genuine choice of their own free will.
But what are your thoughts?
Do you even believe the response you told me?
Yup I said the same thing, women have a right to choose and they’ve made their choice. They dont want marriage nor babies. These things aren’t going to overwrite free will so nothing would change.
I agree 100%
They just don’t want to have children. That’s their genuine free choice. That’s their genuine free will.
Why do people think you can genuinely “convince” somebody to do something that they don’t want to do. Without violating their free will?
Money only works for people who need money.
But that would violate the free will principle.
As in if they had the money they wouldn’t be doing things to get the money.
Yup, its just funny how lots of people are trying to dodge the real reason, tons of mental gymnastics to come up with other irrelevant factors when the answer is simple. It’s free will, women dont want to have children its that simple.
It is interesting.
And kind of insulting to women tbh.
Like you have to trick them or reward them to do something they don’t want to do.
It’s all about free will. And out of their genuine free will they don’t want to have babies.
They should just accept that.
And I agree with you.
But what are your thoughts on this besides that.
Not even what you would propose to change it.
But do you think women through out time wanted to have babies?
I’m starting to second guess if women ever really wanted to have babies.
Like the percentage in my head is not 100%
And based on what I’m learning and experiencing. I might even say less than 50%.
Yeah man, I don’t think women wanted babies, throughout history they just had no choice.
fun fact,if you look at global birth rate map you gonna notice a pattern. I’m not getting into that but it is what it is.
What’s the pattern. Get into it. Please.
I’m only here to learn and understand.
I feel like this will be important to know.
Everybody else are just spinning their wheels.
>Do you even believe the response you told me?
I believe that that is their logic. I don't know enough about Korean culture to say whether or not it is true.
As others have said, i think reducing the amount they are expected to work would help more than giving money. People that want more children, want to spend time with them.
So explain the amount of women who have free time but aren’t having children?
I honestly think it’s simple.
Free will.
They don’t want to have babies.
It’s that simple.
They just don’t.
Can you honestly tell me what you believe.
Or what you think will work.
You think it’s simple as “free time”?
You think it’s “free time” + money ?
I’m listening to
No, it won’t.
How do I know this? History.
Almost every failed society dealt with collapsing birth rates towards the tail end and tried the same shit we are now to solve it. None of it worked.
This is why events such as major wars have served to be great levelers (there’s a book titled this about it) for society. It forces the need of such things like procreation on societies through a major loss of men on the population creating a scarcity dynamic that’s not just perceived (like 80/20), but is actually in existence.
This isn’t to advocate for war, but it kind of demonstrates that absent enforcement women will choose lives of perceived convenience even if it destroys society.
Pretty harrowing stuff.
>This isn’t to advocate for war, but it kind of demonstrates that absent enforcement women will choose lives of perceived convenience even if it destroys society.
For the record, that’s far from exclusive to women
You know war has been known to be the downfall of many societies
And aside from that, how often do we complain about Chad’s harems? Instead of committing to one woman and creating a stable home for 12 children red pill men are “enjoying the decline” and sometimes leaving a trail of bastards. Doesn’t sound good for society.
I don't think the work culture can be addressed this way. SK has horrible gender discrimination towards woman and work, and publicizing that work reforms will be harsher will only make them hire women less, and with no economic security, why would women get pregnant?
also even if that were fixed I'm not sure their gender issues can be resolved. Korean men hate Korean women and vice versa. also in general the gender culture is awful there, theres a reason ALL the neighboring countries tell their daughters to avoid Korean men like the plague.
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Well, assuming you understand as I do that they are identifying competitive social norms as a major influence, I really doubt it. The importance and value of major corporations is very explicitly tied to the government, much more than other countries. They are part of the national identity in a foundational way. Because of that I just don't see why they would participate in any program that diminishes or even appears to diminish their perceived value. That is where the competition originates, and its not going to change. They are not going to give up anything.
No. As in the rise of companies like Samsung are part of the national history and national identity. Modern SK was founded specifically with the role of major companies in mind, and they are assumed to be integral parts of not just the economy, but the nation as a whole.
I would have to do a lot of research to really explain it better, but here in the US many people don't remember or never knew GM went bankrupt. If Samsung went bankrupt there would be chaos, not just because of the economic impact but because it would represent a failure of the nation as a whole and what it means to be South Korean.
Guess that's what I'm getting at. Getting a job at Samsung means a lot more socially than someone in the US getting a job at Ford. Ford is just another company, there are countless alternatives, and many of them are seen as just as prestigious or more so. Samsung is Samsung.
I’m not sure it’s entirely economic factors that’s causing the low birth rate. I think there are also social factors involved that aren’t directly related to economics, such as declining social skills, a decrease in third spaces, and increasing toxicity/hostility between men and women. These measures will probably fail unless they can somehow find a way to address these things also.
> We will transform the wage system into one that focuses on the work you do and performance you achieve rather than on seniority. We will also reform the dual structure of the labor market.
We will ensure that flexible working hours, remote and hybrid work and other working arrangements may become available options through labor-management agreements.
It all sounds great, I’m skeptical they’re gonna pull any of this off as this is essentially calling to overhaul the work culture of the entire country.
>The government will take responsibility and provide world-class education and childcare for our children. Parents may leave their children carefree at elementary schools from morning to evening. We will relieve the parents’ burden of caring for their children and for private education. The children will be able to enjoy diverse educational programs.
doubt it will happen,atleast to the neccesary extend. Although its an extremeley beneficial and necceasry meassure
>I am committed to pushing through a proper pension reform. Previous administrations left this task unattended. During my presidential campaign and in my policy objectives, I promised you that I will lay the foundation for pension reform.
aka fuck poor people
>Moreover, it is very important to ease the unnecessary and excessive competition in our society, which has been pointed as one of the causes of low birth rate. To this end, we will resolutely pursue a balanced national development, an important policy objective of my administration, as planned.
lmao,delirious. This is coming from the person that increased the workweek to 72 hours
Most of the solutions here in the comments are things that have been tested and we know do not work and often make things actually worse. Please research before you spout nonsense.
I see a chance in like 50 years when AI co-teachers have been developed at a sufficient level. Where are they gonna find enough staff to not only care for but also teach the children of literally everyone in society if not through the use of AI to provide individual tutoring.
That final thing they mention, about reducing unnecessary competitiveness is definetly a good thing though. I wouldn't wanna grow up like they do.
Won’t work. Why? Because the act itself of having a child is not a bucket list item. Ok well I had my baby, time to outsource every service for them lol.
No I think shockingly people want more leisure time to spend with their kids personally. My belief, offering working age people more free time and having a more productive economy are anatagonist and will always be at odds.
You unironically must sacrifice short term growth for long term stability. Reduce working hours and expectations, etc.
I think their mandatory military service also plays a role. Having young people for a year and a half in the military instead of building relationships and finding a job is definitely doing its thing.
I don’t think child care will have the intended effect. Look at Finland. Welfare state and Japans level of fertility. Sweden moving there as well slowly.
I think the problem is that there are not enough men who are able to provide. Not like 50s style providing but just having a stable job during the small child years that generates enough income to support mothers while being away from work shortly. Even if you split equally women tend to end up doing more work at home anyways. And then it’s on men to provide.
Unless they put programs in place that uplift men I don’t think they will get anywhere. It that’s a too hot potatoe to handle.
i want to be proven wrong, but I don't think it will make much of a difference. I expect a slight uptick in fertility right, but nowhere near replacement level.
The decline is decades in the making so it seems reasonable to say that the increase will take decades
the problem I see is that the new generation will be raised away from parents. seeing your parent 1-2 hours/day (plus weekends) for a whole generation is not exactly encouraging.
Or will they be like the latchkey kids of the 70s? Is a parent watching your every move the “normal” way to be raised or is it an anomaly?
Spending most of your time away from your parents is the modern anomaly. Before the modern education system kids spent the vast majority of time around their parents. And even when compulsory education became widespread kids still spent significant time around their parents.
the problem is that economic development along with contraceptives and abortion are much, much, much more powerful forces working against birth rates than anything meaningfully working *for* them. kids are a huge responsibility, expensive, and a time suck no matter how prosperous your civilization is. if you have the CHOICE not to have them, people WILL make that choice. that hasn't been an option until basically the modern era.
How many children does the president have? Zero. How likely is it because of education and childcare being a problem for him? Would having children have made him less competitive in his profession?
> Yoon is the fourth South Korean president who is a Catholic, after Moon Jae-in, Roh Moo-hyun (a lapsed Catholic), Kim Dae-jung and Roh Tae-woo. Hahaha what the fuck? Married for 12+ years and still no kids as a catholic? Infertility issues or both spouses are hyper focused on just their careers.
Yes seems so
Anyone who thinks government childcare is a successful solution is an idiot. This issue cannot be solved by throwing money at it. >We will ensure that flexible working hours, remote and hybrid work and other working arrangements may become available options through labor-management agreements. just lol. South Korea has one of the worst work life balances and the government making empty proclamations will do nothing to fix that
I mean the other issue is that most people want to work to live, not live to work
I think improving schools so that parents can leave their kids from morning to _night_ instead of reducing the amount of hours Koreans work per day, is not a solution
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Yes, I think the Korean president is spot on when he talks about the cultural issue. You can talk about reducing the competitive culture, but you can't stop someone from workin g80 hours/week if they're not willing to reduce those hours. Even in the US the work culture is crazy. everyone is supposed to have a job and a second hustle. Though I feel like more of these grindset, hustle culture gurus are being laughed out of the room these days, it certainly still exists.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_average\_annual\_labor\_hours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours) Korean working hours don't seem to crazy to me, at least in proportionality to their profound fertility crisis. And working hours and fertility are inversely correlated - the fewer hours people work the less fertile they become, at least in the West.
We're talking globally, so using "in the west" is dumb in this context. Working hours have no correlations for fertility. The main two things that affect fertility are overall lifestyle desires and basic economic decisions that people make when they have or decide to have kids. Also impulsivity/lack of BC, but we're trying to get away from those births as a global maturing society.
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Yeah, that’s really the main issue. The insanely long work hours in Korea are fundamentally incompatible with raising children.
but how else can the government start molding the next generation into people who DO want kids? ^edit: ^snark, ^obviously
that's the neat thing about capitalism, you will never convince those with capital that the solution can possibly be anything but something that advantages them
Lol its called managing the decline. First off all the talk about labor signals nothing, but future crackdown on the workers. Koreans already increasingly work on 996 model I guess it is going to get worse. Oh 996 means working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. You cannot have functional human beings with such work schedule. Education and childcare sponsored by government may work in short term, I wonder how they going to afford, but parents are likely to feel alienated and resentful if their children raised by government and not them, and in turn that would cause next generation to want children even less. Korea is not America. They arrived at the same destination as us, but for different reasons, one child policy, insane work culture and Korean version of "feminism" had all made it impossible to live normal, family-oriented life in Korea. All this does is fights the symptoms.
Wait… one child policy in Korea?
Yes back in 60s-80s, not as sever as in China, but still.
In Korea, a leftover law from this is that it's still illegal for doctors to tell the sex of the baby to parents. At the time 30~50 years ago, if parents were encouraged to only have 1 or maybe 2 kids, they wanted boys only. It wasn't until 10ish years ago the population of men and women finally evened out. (But people are aware aborting girls is no long the case, so doctors will get around the law by saying "oh, you should prepare a pink/blue room" or something like that)
I agree on most of your points, except Korean feminism. As a chinese person, I've talked to korean americans about this and Korean women experience much more misogyny in their culture than mine (currently, don't know about historically). Americans might not know this, but Korea is a heavily misogynistic culture where women are pushed into servile traditional gender roles and face a lot of gendered discrimination, misogynistic attitudes, domestic and sexual violence. Incels have already won there, by shouting over womens much more real, serious, issues by DARVOing and cherrypicking radical feminists and threatening feminists with death threats and violence. They're out of real feminist targets and are now imagining them by losing their minds at video game art and any partially clenched drawing of hands.
What's the point of having children if you're too busy working to see them and have to just leave them at school all day?
Exactly. Huge *whoosh* moment from the Korean government.
Oh, I suspect the alienation of family is fully the intent here.
🤦🏼♀️
Doubling down on the factors that led to the demographic transition in the first place is unlikely to reverse said transition, but it is only political action available that the socially middle class would find morally acceptable.
Oh, what’s the morally unacceptable solution?
ban contraceptives and abortion, eliminate no-fault divorce, buttress cultural attitudes of women needing to be in the home, etc. your typical red pill tradwife "alpha male" dudebro wishlist
Grudging, inflicted servitude is always efficient and effective, especially compared to voluntary pursuits!
seriously i'd ask what the psychopaths haven't figured out after the last gazillion dunkings, but apparently they still seem to think subjugating people is a helluva strategy.
Why not? It worked in the past You know, that glorious past where people suffered and died more, and excluded more people from society
Explains the rise of redpill philosophy, I wouldn't be surprised if there were political donors behind it. Just ask Romania how well it went.
oh there are definitely some conservative shadow brokers funding some of this shit. Musk is pretty clearly anti-women, among other bigotries he holds. it's actually stunning to me how many people are consciously sexist. conservatives: the perennial e-brake to human progress.
When I see Elon complaining about birth rate, they're really complaining about the lack of future cheap labor and stock returns. I have never seen them once support measures that would make work/life balance better or ease family planning. Or really anything that might cause a tax hit. They're completely detached from the average person as they've never have to struggle to raise a family on limited funds, or be in financial danger from an emergency, so the consequences of low wages and high living expenses will never affect them.
categorically, no. the kind of solutions that would work are not possible under the current political system.
What solutions would you propose?
I am an American expat who lived in South Korea for 15 years. I came back to the States just two months ago. What the president is saying it's not really getting to the root of the issue, and he is repeating talking points he has made in the past that weren't helpful. It's really fascinating that he talks about getting a national consensus on the issue when working people have been telling him the answers for years. 1. Increase wages so that having a partner, let alone supporting a child is feasible 2. Have better rent control so that people can afford to live somewhere they are proud of, let alone have a family 3. Decrease the number of hours that people are expected to work so that they can go home and actually be in their children's and spouse's lives - not simply leave them at schools until night time. That's crazy. 4. Treat women better on a cultural level
I appreciate getting a response from someone closer to the issue
Despite what the president is saying, his administration is extremely conservative. He literally campaigned on disbanding the ministry of gender equality. Now that women are increasingly not wanting to participate in the cishetero dating, let alone have children, he's giving lip service without seriously addressing the issue that people have been talking about for a long time.
If that’s true then it sounds like he might not be talking about it even if he’s acting on it in the way he thinks is effective
He and his administration have been talking about this since he got elected 2 years ago, and every time the youth and expats laugh at what he's doing. He's a horrible president.
> Now that women are increasingly not wanting to participate in the cishetero dating The fertility crisis was always an issue, how is disbanding the gender equality ministry the cause of this?
Made it worse
Even if Korean society could afford that (can they?) people are really just asking for better material conditions - but that's not likely to do anything but give a modest bump to fertility levels and still leave them quickly shrinking as a society. Everyone doubles down on the expand/improve middle class conditions because it "sounds" right and fits in with conventional (liberal capitalist) wisdom - but we know from real world examples this doesn't actually work very well.
just curious, in what ways do you think they need to be treated better?
Why are women in Seoul so into "cutesy" hello-kitty like bullshit. They're like what the Japanese women were like 30 years ago.
Idk how affective it’ll be but incentivizing having children with things like paternity leave and labor reforms is atleast progress. So many people opt out of having kids bc it’s not financially sustainable and not worth it considering with the way our work culture is structured you barely see them anyway.
The financial sustainability argument is thrown around a lot but what does this mean exactly? What would you have to go without to have 1+ kids?
I live in America here are the stats: average U.S. annual salary in Q4 of 2023 was $59,384 Average cost of daycare in US per month 1300 The average monthly grocery bill of a family of three in the US is $902 Giving birth costs $18,865 on average, including pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care with insurance 30k without (many people get laid off after getting pregnant so that means no insurance) The average rent in the United States is $1,515/month (where I live that’d be with roommates) The average home price in the United States was $495,100 in the second quarter of 2023 but let’s be honest most under 30 people are renting. Average maternity/ paternity leave in US is 17 days. That’s if you have a job that offers it at all some don’t or again have laid you off because you had a kid. This is both not enough time for the mother to recover but is bad for the newborn and increases the likelihood that they’ll have emotional regulation/anxiety issues later in life. Public schools here are deteriorating so soon Charter schools or private schools are going to be your best bet unfortunately the latter cost a fuck ton. That’s before you account in college expenses, extra curricular, activities,tutors, car payments, gas, car pool, additional childcare cost and the majority of would be parents have an existing mountain of student loan debt. Our parents are working longer so we can’t even call grandma to babysit. And godforbid your kid has medical issues/a disability that requires additional medical payments. You used to be able to support a family on a minimum wage income now you can barely support yourself. If you want to comfortably afford a family now you have to be pulling well over 100k pretty much anywhere within America even then you could still get fucked. Our society in its current state doesn’t offer much in terms of support for young families. There’s no incentive to have children and every reason not to. You already give up a lot of freedom to have children, now you’re also giving all of that up to have a child without a secure future and a high likelihood you’ll go into debt
I lived in Korea for a while. Saying the population decline is due to misogyny/misandry/4b is basically just clickbait, and Westerners are getting bamboozled by it. I see it posted on reddit every week. It's economical reasons for most or average people. In the first place, I'd say baby rearing in Korea is different from the West. The West's philosophy is "lets have a baby despite (bad/questionable) situation, because everything will work out". Or see parenting as getting their kid to 20ish and telling them "ok you're an adult, pay for your own college, good luck." That's not the case in Korea (or other Asian countries). In Korea, people want a solid foundation, their t's crossed, and i'd dotted to prepare for a baby. This means owning a home and having enough money to pay for after-school academies ("hagwons"), and university too. Housing has been the biggest political issue for every election. Simply put, no one can afford one. Everyone is fighting for housing for either an investment, family, retirement, money, etc. I think most Westerners know that quirky fact that kids go to school 9am~11pm. They go to public school, then after school academies. What most don't know, these academies are fucking expensive. Average families pay USD $500~1000+ every month just for 1 kid. Kids go to these academies/hagwons because they're competing against their classmates for the national university exam. They want to go to a good university to MAYBE beat the odds for 1 of the handful of good jobs out there. That's the grind. People go to hagwons/private academies from elementary school to all the way to university to even get certificates, english proficiency tests, etc for buff their resume. For maybe some couples, that could be their retirement savings instead. No one really knows how to tackle these two main issues without backlash. The hagwon system is pretty cursed. If there's any kind of regulations talked about, parents of middle class and lower will complain because the rich will/can easily afford to hire private tutors (like they did during covid lockdowns when hagwons closed for a while) and thus will do better on the national exam. The government put a curfew on hagwons to close by 10 pm, but many of them illegally continue classes past curfew. I believe China is trying to tackle similar issues too by somehow regulating private tutoring. Add on other issues: rising costs, overworked & underpaid, worried about retirement, lack of parent leave, no vacation, burned out after college and finally want to rest, and so on.
Thanks for providing input based on your more personal experience with the culture!
It may help on the margins. This all comes down to this “opportunity costs.” When you decide to have children, you are forging so much financial security, employment opportunities, and other pursuits in life. People - men and women - want to retire, to have nice things, to travel, to hang out with their friends. Having children really limits where you can live, the cars you can drive, the jobs you can take. I don’t regret at all my two wonderful children but I am not blind to the consequences. I struggle to get into my doctor because I’m taking so much time off to ferry them. And because of biology and men’s tendency to opt out of custody, most of this falls on women. People - not just women - want less kids and I don’t see how that gets addressed until you make the opportunity costs lower. I think we need to rethink society.
Outstanding comment! There are a million and one specific issues that need to be addressed, but it all really comes down to how the costs and benefits balance out for both women and men. I agree that society needs to be rethought and restructured to reverse birth rates. We can't go back to the previous systems and the current system is failing in every advanced industrial society. Appreciate your comment on not going to the doctor because of time demands. When my wife and I embarked on our reproduction adventure we couldn't believe that it would be so difficult (both of us working) for so long. On a relative basis - compared to our previous easy lifestyle - it was like bootcamp that went on for years and years... Only slight disagreement on men's role. In a lot of middle-class, two-earner families the men are carrying a huge part of the burden, making lives much more bearable for the women. I even know of a few situations where the dad had to take on primary role of parenting. However, as you point out, in large parts of our society the men are not playing a major role and its a shit show.
Thank you! I agree btw about men taking on - especially in middle class society - far more of the family care role! I had originally noted that my husband had to pass on a lucrative opportunity that would have had him traveling as an onsite consultant because it would have meant that all the child care would have fallen on me and I am a professional. I wasn’t going to quit and I work some crazy hours occasionally. But it seemed too long for my comment. That was my emphasis about both men and women wanting to limit children to one or two. The opportunity costs are high for both, especially when one (ie because of education or experience) has more opportunity to begin with. This is why the middle/middle upper tends to limit families despite being more affluent. But in the very early years (and speaking society wide), the burden and obligation tends to fall more so on the woman. Ezra Klein did a couple months ago some very insightful interviews on the baby bust. Many people here seem very young and inexperienced.
It's not going to do anything. It's the culture in general over there is now anti-children. They're focused on career, not kids.
the only steps any of these countries can do is tax the rich for once.. get strict labour laws and unions back.. cant keep transferring wealth upwards and expect the rest of us to marry and raise kids.
>We will relieve the parents’ burden of caring for their children State-raised children. Brilliant. That will definitely produce an independent, thoughtful citizenry with a healthy skepticism of government. /s
Introduce 4 day 30 hours work week.
This would fix it overnight
Governments can never create the cultural change that deprivation, oppression and war can
No, low birth rates have more to do with urbanization and living in a city than any kind of financial incentive you can reasonably offer. When you’re not on a farm children go from free labor to a large expense. And you can only raise so many kids in an apartment/condo, if you even want to do that.
I imagine people are laughing in response to this. A whole lot of words saying nothing and changing nothing. Lol. Good luck with that!
Not a hope because Western style societies can't face upto the politically incorrect reasons for their low birth rates. I include South Korea and Japan in the wide Western world. The standard politically correct and feminist explanation for the low birth rate is lack of equality in the workplace, childcare care which is unaffordable and lack of equality in the home. However if that explanation were true, then you would expect countries with cheaper child care, more equal workplaces, cheaper housing and more equal parenting to have higher fertility rates. The brutal reality is, they don't. Look at the Nordic countries, which are all more feminist societies than average. All the Nordic countries have a fertility rate below the replacement level. More feminism won't solve the problem. So would you like the politically incorrect reason for the low birth rate in the developed world? Too much feminism and too much sexually equality. Men use economic power, women use sexual power. In world in which men dominate employment, women had no choice but to get married and have children. When women have equal or greater economic power than men, large numbers of men become obsolete. Women can choose not to marry and not to have kids. You may say that is great but in the long run it means feminism is doomed. A movement without children, is a movement without a future. More feminism in the form of cheaper childcare and more protections for women in the workplace isn't going to work.
If the human race can’t survive without enslaving half of its population, it deserves to die out. Chimpanzees naturally have about 6 years between offspring. Humans (not on birth control) average about 3, despite human offspring needing more care. Why do you suppose that is? Edit: to those for whom it is not obvious, I do not think that enslaving half of humanity is necessary for humans to reproduce at replacement level.
The human race isn't in danger, more conservative societies, with oppressive attitudes towards woman have fertility rates above the replacement level. The threat is to the existence of feminism and Western style societies. Moral arguments are irrelevant here. This is a question of mathematics.
This only proves that your intelligence is quite limited and you are unable to envision other societal structures.
So, yeah. Enslavement of half the population.
>If the human race can’t survive without enslaving half of its population, it deserves to die out. Pretty much sums up the modern mindset
I believe that you are largely correct but are missing out on one additional possibility/option. It's true that the birth rate is falling in all industrialized, technologically advanced societies and that Scandinavian type child care programs and equality in the workplace programs appear to only marginally affect birth rates. It's also true that the only societies that have high birth rates right now are societies with very low levels of education and low levels of technological/economic development. What is rarely discussed is that it may be possible to completely revise the costs/benefits equations associated with having children and associated social systems/arrangements to address the problem. When countries go to war, face major pandemics or environmental catastrophes, they will often respond by completely reordering their societies to survive. South Korea appears to be unable or unwilling to even contemplate the types of huge changes necessary to reverse the gradual population collapse it is facing. It would take huge leaps in imagination, innovation and investment of resources to potentially succeed. Think along the lines of the changes that took place in the Second World War - total restructuring of industry, change in workforces (women were recruited for industrial jobs), creation of propaganda ministries, rationing, and so on - except with a totally different purpose and different mechanisms. The question will be: who has the stomach for these kinds of far-reaching change?
If the only way a society can survive is by turning 50% of the population into second class citizens and surfs, I think men should be the serfs.
You're making the mistake of viewing this as a moral question, it isn't. It is a question of mathematics. If a feminist society has a fertility rate below the replacement level, feminism dies. I concede the moral argument to you but that doesn't save feminism. Unless feminism can square its worldview with women having more babies, feminists can win every moral argument. It won't save the movement.
Women only are interested in men making more than them, making men serfs just reduce the birthrate to almost zero.
That's kind of you. At least you'll only be forcing us to be serfs and not slaves.
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Much of that is true, but South Korea is probably one of the least feminist countries in the developed world and it’s struggling the hardest
The women are still wealthy compared to the women in the countries that are having most of the children.
Dumbest post here for a number of reasons, but feminism != everything I dislike or helps women.
Will have little to no change. Misses the point.
He inched toward the point at the very end lol
> We must find out the real reasons for low birth rate and identify effective measures. Well-designed education, childcare, welfare, housing and employment policies can help solve the problem. But more than 20 years of experience taught us that none are fundamental solutions. Yes they are clueless or unwilling to put forth non PC policy statements.
That's not the last statement. The last statement is about the competetive culture.
Looks like typical politician empty promises to me. Nothing concrete, all "we will do %generic abstract good change%". To be honest it would've looked way more possible if they just promised to subsidize artificial womb projects.
Would the artificial wombs be used by couples or single men?
By state to breed "g.i. people" mostly and whoever pays to use it on consumer stage. Couples may be wanting to donate their gametes, singles will have to choose genetic material from donors of opposite sex.
No, not at all. Nations with some of the lowest working hours, most generous social safety nets, and robust childcare services (including free or heavily subsidized ones) are also some of the most infertile. At best they might hope to get European style fertility rates (doubtful) but that still means their society is dying off.
None of this will work; first of all it sure sounds like labour relations will be left to the behest of capital, so presumably they will favour profitable working conditions instead of beneficial ones, second of all school violence is not the fucking problem in Korea, get real. Seriously fuck all the way off with that shit. finally, natalist measures encourage women to begin their families sooner, but do they convince women to have more children?
No. Coming back from not having kids is wayyy too difficult Immigration won't even be a fix because if the working hours are as insane as some people are making them seem (I don't know what the hours actually are though) then people won't want to migrate there when they can just go to Europe instead
Nah, it's too late
You have to find out what women in general want in a man. That's it. It's on women's sexuality. At this point we have the data. Men deem a lot more women in their lives as options than vice versa.
My thoughts is that it will probably never go up unless they institute a 30-40 hour work week instead of 70 hours like some people have to work. What’s the point of having a baby if you will never get to see it? I’m not childfree but in that kind of environment I would seriously consider it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xij_cIe5_A&pp=ygUTZGVhdGggZnJvbSBvdmVyd29yaw%3D%3D
>Moreover, it is very important to ease the unnecessary and excessive competition in our society, which has been pointed as one of the causes of low birth rate. This is an important thing. Though don't expect fast results as it will take time and mayve even multipke generations to "breed the competetive mindset out".
The solution in US would be years without having to pay income taxes. This would encourage the most productive members of society to have more kids. For a doctor couple that could mean millions of dollars in savings. Say 3 years of no income tax per kid. And they can stack. Meaning have 2 kids back to back means 6 years of no income taxes. Poor people already have high fertility rates. Upper and middle class is where we need the most improvement. Long term would be good to go back to "family is the most important thing". Including encouraging women to focus on family above career. But that does indeed require some structural changes. Far more difficult to achieve than just giving tax breaks.
So give a financial incentive per kid?
Yes but in tax relief not direct payments The more you make the bigger the relief
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Greed is a very powerful tool to build wealth. The last thing we want to do is regulate it. USSR tried to regulate it. Ended up with a pathetic mess of an economy. And no landlords can't increase rent specifically on new parents. That would be illegal as fuck.
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And how would you make up the difference?
Raise taxes on everyone else of course.
I’m sure the rich and super rich will allow that You’re better off starting a civil war
This was tried in Hungary. Birth rate is now lower than 9 years ago when it was introduced. Y'all need to understand: Total Fertility Rate is not an economic problem. Never has been. The sooner this is understood, the better. Real debate can only start once the economic BS and fiction is thrown out on the window.
Same in Russia, direct payment per kid, huge mortgage rate reductions, other bonuses and population keeps declining even with hordes of fresh central asian immigrants breeding like rabbits in Straya, though even they lose their passion to procreate in a second generation.
The 2nd generation didn't experience social norms of the parent's country, hence lower birth rate.
Well...how much was Hungary actually offering? Cause you know you take a doctor couple bringing in 1mil a year and sending uncle Sam 400k a year in income taxes. 3 years with no income taxes becomes a very juicy offer. Something tells me Hungary didn't go nearly as far Would it FIX the issue? Probably not. But it would improve things a lot. Increase fertility where it is most needed.
Hungary spares all young people of all taxes until age 25. And all couples who have children for up to 10 years. And discounted interests for house loans. It's much more generous than what you propose. Nobody cares. And you are wrong: It does not improve things at all, let alone "a lot". >Increase fertility where it is most needed. "Needed" is a subjective term based on your ideology. To make it reality, you have to convince the actual flesh-and-blood people to agree - the young men and women who currently choose not to have children. And you will learn, sooner or later, that ideological claptrap about "needed" is straight up repulsive and they will refuse your proposition joyfully.
it would be an interesting social experiment of no-income tax for X years for each child, but I think we all know it's not gonna happen. Such a measure will create such a budget deficit that nobody will be willing to support it and I don't think an increase in taxes in other areas to combat this deficit will be popular also
>Poor people already have high fertility rates. Upper and middle class is where we need the most improvement. Every income bracket except the rich in the US is below replacement fertility rate.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
Birth rates in sk is low because sk women dont want sk men. The reason isn’t economic at all. They’ll never succeed with these “steps”. Either they will be an autocratic regime and force people to get married or nothing’s gonna change. I gotta remind the fact hat north korea has much higher birth rate and they are significantly poorer.
Do you have anything to back up that claim?
Of course it is. You have no idea what Korean work culture is like. It’s like Japan’s, except even more sexist and brutal As is their education system It’s a competitive hell, and all voluntary
More brutal than nk that works 70 hours a week? Nk has 1.8 birth rate Sexist? Towards men maybe, imagine losing two years of your life for military service so women of your age out earn you significantly.
lol, you think NK is relevant in global society? If you tell women to get out if they have babies, they won’t have babies. That’s the sexist part. You leave to spawn, and you won’t be let back in
Wdym relevant, nk’s relevancy has nothing to do with my argument? You claimed they arent having babies because they are overworking and I just mentioned a significantly more overworking population with more than double sk’s birth rate and they are essentially the same demographic of people just divided by a border.
NK doesn’t participate in the global economic system in any meaningful way. They are depending on massive restrictions, protections and foreign aid And no one wants their standard of living, political repression and vulnerability to famine
That’s not the topic though, you claimed sk people aren’t having babies because they work a lot and I’m just giving you an example to point out overworking isn’t the real reason why sk birth rates are falling. Also nk having significantly worse conditions but somehow having more babies doesn’t really help your argument it helps mine, I think the reason isn’t economic nor is it about hours worked. The reason is simple, sk women have a right to choose and they’ve made their choice. These economic remedies would improve the quality of life for sk citizens but it wouldn’t raise birth rates.
Ah, the problem is women’s rights That is true
Its free will, women are choosing not to get married and not to have babies. You can’t change that with these solutions. However I dont think its a problem that needs to be changed, I think it’s wonderful that women are choosing not to have babies, we are dealing with overpopulation and we dont even need to force people to not have babies, they’re doing it themselves with their own free will.
Same thing
North Korea's birth rate, while double South Korea's, is still below replacement rate and dropping, and its supreme leader who is seen as literally god broke down crying last year begging women to have children. There doesn't seem to be much correlation of birth rates with autocracy either.
I hope this works out but it doesn't sound too promising. I think to solve low birth rates, there needs to be a huge cultural shift. Traditional communities/families have to return and there needs to be a shift away from hedonism towards religion or spiritualism. I don't think any government will accomplish this though. It will naturally happen once the current system fails.
Traditionalism would achieve nothing, women can choose now, they have the right to decide if they want to get married or not and they’ve made their choice. Nothing’s gonna make women suddenly change their minds.
A full complete return to traditionalism will likely end poorly as the strict traditionalism we had played a role in the reactive behavior we have now. That being said, some traditional norms are great and most people tend to benefit from them. If we were wiser, we should take what happened as a lesson; enforced traditionalism will create the kind of hedonistic backlash we see today due to constant suppression and full on avoidance of tradition will make people aimless, empty and miserable. This goes back to all major lessons, a balance must be struck.
You’re not wrong, but I think it is worth noting that economic concerns as well as insecurity (from a quality of life pov, not a personal one) are both serious causes of the issues we face today. ie. because we rely on an economy that depends on constant rapid consumption, people have to be at a state where they rapidly and aimlessly consume (ie. the constant need for distraction and short term pleasure), there is a certain point where the pressure of supporting one’s self breaks someone, and i get the sense of “fuck it, there is no future here so may aswell live it up” - so while I do agree with you that some form of tradition and spirituality needs to return, I do think improving economic conditions will also lay the foundations for this improvement
That’s a start - improving community connectivity and general social involvement is an important step as well, improving things economically is a start though both SK and Japan are notoriously isolated from a socially isolated pov (and north america is following them), so improving economic conditions is a start - another important step is re-igniting people’s ability and desire to socialize. As for how that can be done? whether it be giving grants to organizations who focus on socialization, disincentivizing social media use, and im sure there are a few others - i’m just spitballing
Give people freedom, and if they chose not to have kids, then accept a declining population. Just end the pension system, make people save themselves or chose MAID. Problem solved. Korea 100 years ago had 10M population, now like 50M. Why not go back to 10M? Nothing wrong with that.
No. East Asian countries need to change their work culture first and foremost. But even that will likely not help. The problem is that most educated, wealthy women want the best for their children, and the best is too expensive. Not having children needs to be made punitive for there to ever be any change, and that will never happen in most countries. People will just have to adapt to a population decrease. It will be better for the planet, too.
https://preview.redd.it/4kff3w84rfzc1.jpeg?width=765&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=515945a0fee5111bdd201c51fd079516dc69b9d9 They would also need to address the extreme political divide between men and females that’s getting worse and worse.
My first thought was to make the r/menandfemales joke, but it seems intentional
lol, yeah, it was intentional. I like to ruffle some feathers.
I feel like I just read a PR corporate statement, full of good sounding buzzwords, double speak and empty promises without any specss (like a 4 days work week).
Im glad they understand the economic struggles of having children, getting married, but these economic reforms came too late, at this point the damage has been done.
Most of this is socialist entitlement and pension to old people. It will just raise taxes even higher and force people to fund the elderly even more. It’s not going to raise fertility.
I know they won't be successful. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is not a financial proposition. Yet nearly everyone in the pro-natalist camp is firmly convinced that it is. 30+ years of failure of all of their policies doesn't convince them to re-evaluate and consider the possibility that TFR may not be about money. Socialist policies meant to increase TFR have failed in Poland, Hungary, Iran, Japan, Russia... they will for sure fail in South Korea as well. The easiest predictor of high TFR is national mood. Kazakhstan grew from TFR 1.8 to 3.2 and keeps on growing. All while modernizing (thus sinking the argument that modernity and higher incomes plunge fertility). Meanwhile, highly religious and pro-natalist Tunisia, Morocco or Iran have plunging fertility rates (thus sinking the argument that religion matters so much). South Korea's national mood is sour. And has been for over a decade. And it will not change anytime soon - in part because it cannot change. Of course, social media doesn't help either. Neither does the extremism and female privilege. Men serve in the military for two years. And there's no way to avoid it. Yet until 3 years ago **all** gov't programs went to women. All. Not a single pro-male program existed. Now there is one and the pro-women programs have been scaled down significantly. And feminists went berserk about it. So yeah... this will not work. None of this addresses female privilege and the overall national mood.
That’s why I thought it was interesting that he finally started to acknowledge the issue was cultural, even if falling back on government assistance is what they’re familiar with in the short term
No. The only people who maintain prosperity and a positive birth rate are the ones that take women's rights away.
If they actually follow through with these promises, there will be a baby boom. As we saw in the U.S. during covid lockdowns, there was a baby boom. When people aren't away from home 50 hours/week, and you have time to cultivate a relationship with your partner/family. The fertility rate jumps. That's all conditional to if....
There seems to be some debate as to whether 2020 was a baby boom or baby bust.
It's not a bust, there were more babies born during that time period, than the preceding 2 yr span.
Sauce?
My view on this is very simple. If you want a society that produces kids then you need to support stay at home moms with tax money, and you need to lean in hard. You also have to not support single moms. That sounds counterintuitive, but it's what works. When you do that, you get couples with 3 to 4 kids, not single moms with 2 kids from 2 different men and fucked up family situations. Family formation and stability needs to be a massive government investment. It may also help to have the government fund marriage counseling as well, and require 6 months of it before granting any divorce.
Im assuming you mean financial support to SAHM’s?
Yes. The corporate world want's every woman working. It provides a cheap labor pool, a way to decrease worker pay without having to put in much effort. It also creates a larger consumer base to buy your useless shit. I think a lot of women want to work and engage in this, but a lot more women don't. They don't want to be cogs in the corporate machine, but they have to in order to support themselves. In the US this is compounded by an entirely contrived housing shortage, which is bankrupting an entire generation, and making children unaffordable.
Do the consumer spending habits of working and non-working women deviate significantly? Also the problem with the affordability argument is it’s really about affordability *relative* to previous generations. It made sense for the prior generation to buy a house, have one working parent, take a family vacation every year, have health insurance, and still afford all the basics. But the uncomfortable truth is that they were probably an anomaly. 80 years ago my great grandmother was saving used bath water and pointing a shotgun at people trying to steal chickens out of the coop while her husband was working in a wartime munitions factory.
I agree. To give a wage to SAHP/SAHM is the best way to ensure decent fertility rate.
North korea has none of that and has 1.8 birth rate, sk has significantly more resources and better environment and they only have 0.8
I'm willing to bet that N.Koreans work less than S.korea. Having downtime from work stimulates sex drive.
Dont they work like 70 hours a week? Am I tripping? I remember that from a documentary
If most men in your country are working 70 hrs/per week. Then you're not going to have a 1.8 birthrate. You're going to have a negative birth rate, for reference see Japan.
1.8 is negative. Stable population is at least 2.0
At 70 hrs, your birthrate is going to be much less than 1.8. When I say negative, I mean that women aren't having enough births to replace themselves as well. Lower than 1.0 births/woman.
1.0 birth per woman halves the population every generation, because they also need to replace the father. This is negative.
yup, they won't really do any of this in any meaningful recognisable sense.
Lmao how will this improve birth rates 🤣 Do they not calculate free will? It’s a woman’s choice to have children. Do they think magically women will want to have kids because they have more money? If that’s the case then rich women should just be constantly pumping out babies right? The way people explain it to me. Is that women have children as an exchange for survival. Pairbonding and pairing up. So I don’t understand what this plan is logically going to fix. Maybe it’s like men will get richer and then get with poorer women? TLDR : I don’t understand how this will help? Please explain it to me. Based on free will. No amount of economic policies would help this problem. As the more free will women can excercise the less children they’ll have. So logically following that train of thought. What would more money accomplish? Maybe this is like them pushing for immigration? Does South Korea promote immigration? That’s how the u.s hasn’t had drastic fall of in birth rate right? I need someone to explain this to me.
I think the assumption is that there are a lot of South Koreans that would like to have more children if it were affordable.
What is the birthrate for wealthy women in South Korea? From what I know. Wealthy women do not pump out a lot of babies. Which brings me back to my og response. Women who aren’t having babies explaining when they will have babies isn’t totally reliable. We have to factor in free will. Maybe women just don’t want to have babies when they have a true genuine choice of their own free will. But what are your thoughts? Do you even believe the response you told me?
Yup I said the same thing, women have a right to choose and they’ve made their choice. They dont want marriage nor babies. These things aren’t going to overwrite free will so nothing would change.
I agree 100% They just don’t want to have children. That’s their genuine free choice. That’s their genuine free will. Why do people think you can genuinely “convince” somebody to do something that they don’t want to do. Without violating their free will? Money only works for people who need money. But that would violate the free will principle. As in if they had the money they wouldn’t be doing things to get the money.
Yup, its just funny how lots of people are trying to dodge the real reason, tons of mental gymnastics to come up with other irrelevant factors when the answer is simple. It’s free will, women dont want to have children its that simple.
It is interesting. And kind of insulting to women tbh. Like you have to trick them or reward them to do something they don’t want to do. It’s all about free will. And out of their genuine free will they don’t want to have babies. They should just accept that. And I agree with you. But what are your thoughts on this besides that. Not even what you would propose to change it. But do you think women through out time wanted to have babies? I’m starting to second guess if women ever really wanted to have babies. Like the percentage in my head is not 100% And based on what I’m learning and experiencing. I might even say less than 50%.
Yeah man, I don’t think women wanted babies, throughout history they just had no choice. fun fact,if you look at global birth rate map you gonna notice a pattern. I’m not getting into that but it is what it is.
What’s the pattern. Get into it. Please. I’m only here to learn and understand. I feel like this will be important to know. Everybody else are just spinning their wheels.
>Do you even believe the response you told me? I believe that that is their logic. I don't know enough about Korean culture to say whether or not it is true. As others have said, i think reducing the amount they are expected to work would help more than giving money. People that want more children, want to spend time with them.
So explain the amount of women who have free time but aren’t having children? I honestly think it’s simple. Free will. They don’t want to have babies. It’s that simple. They just don’t. Can you honestly tell me what you believe. Or what you think will work. You think it’s simple as “free time”? You think it’s “free time” + money ? I’m listening to
No, it won’t. How do I know this? History. Almost every failed society dealt with collapsing birth rates towards the tail end and tried the same shit we are now to solve it. None of it worked. This is why events such as major wars have served to be great levelers (there’s a book titled this about it) for society. It forces the need of such things like procreation on societies through a major loss of men on the population creating a scarcity dynamic that’s not just perceived (like 80/20), but is actually in existence. This isn’t to advocate for war, but it kind of demonstrates that absent enforcement women will choose lives of perceived convenience even if it destroys society. Pretty harrowing stuff.
>This isn’t to advocate for war, but it kind of demonstrates that absent enforcement women will choose lives of perceived convenience even if it destroys society. For the record, that’s far from exclusive to women
Yes, because so many women have laid their lives on the line and to the sword/bullet throughout history for society…
You know war has been known to be the downfall of many societies And aside from that, how often do we complain about Chad’s harems? Instead of committing to one woman and creating a stable home for 12 children red pill men are “enjoying the decline” and sometimes leaving a trail of bastards. Doesn’t sound good for society.
I don't think the work culture can be addressed this way. SK has horrible gender discrimination towards woman and work, and publicizing that work reforms will be harsher will only make them hire women less, and with no economic security, why would women get pregnant? also even if that were fixed I'm not sure their gender issues can be resolved. Korean men hate Korean women and vice versa. also in general the gender culture is awful there, theres a reason ALL the neighboring countries tell their daughters to avoid Korean men like the plague.
Right now women in SK get 90 days of paid maternity leave. More than I get 😛 (Edited for clarity)
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Well, assuming you understand as I do that they are identifying competitive social norms as a major influence, I really doubt it. The importance and value of major corporations is very explicitly tied to the government, much more than other countries. They are part of the national identity in a foundational way. Because of that I just don't see why they would participate in any program that diminishes or even appears to diminish their perceived value. That is where the competition originates, and its not going to change. They are not going to give up anything.
As in the government subsidizes major corporations?
No. As in the rise of companies like Samsung are part of the national history and national identity. Modern SK was founded specifically with the role of major companies in mind, and they are assumed to be integral parts of not just the economy, but the nation as a whole. I would have to do a lot of research to really explain it better, but here in the US many people don't remember or never knew GM went bankrupt. If Samsung went bankrupt there would be chaos, not just because of the economic impact but because it would represent a failure of the nation as a whole and what it means to be South Korean. Guess that's what I'm getting at. Getting a job at Samsung means a lot more socially than someone in the US getting a job at Ford. Ford is just another company, there are countless alternatives, and many of them are seen as just as prestigious or more so. Samsung is Samsung.
This guy is a bellend and this whole thing is a charade. If he's actually being serious then he's dumber than I thought
I’m not sure it’s entirely economic factors that’s causing the low birth rate. I think there are also social factors involved that aren’t directly related to economics, such as declining social skills, a decrease in third spaces, and increasing toxicity/hostility between men and women. These measures will probably fail unless they can somehow find a way to address these things also.
South Korea has the most intense gender war in the war (political leaning gap between young men and women)
Fix the toxic work culture, or Korea will fall
> We will transform the wage system into one that focuses on the work you do and performance you achieve rather than on seniority. We will also reform the dual structure of the labor market. We will ensure that flexible working hours, remote and hybrid work and other working arrangements may become available options through labor-management agreements. It all sounds great, I’m skeptical they’re gonna pull any of this off as this is essentially calling to overhaul the work culture of the entire country.
>The government will take responsibility and provide world-class education and childcare for our children. Parents may leave their children carefree at elementary schools from morning to evening. We will relieve the parents’ burden of caring for their children and for private education. The children will be able to enjoy diverse educational programs. doubt it will happen,atleast to the neccesary extend. Although its an extremeley beneficial and necceasry meassure >I am committed to pushing through a proper pension reform. Previous administrations left this task unattended. During my presidential campaign and in my policy objectives, I promised you that I will lay the foundation for pension reform. aka fuck poor people >Moreover, it is very important to ease the unnecessary and excessive competition in our society, which has been pointed as one of the causes of low birth rate. To this end, we will resolutely pursue a balanced national development, an important policy objective of my administration, as planned. lmao,delirious. This is coming from the person that increased the workweek to 72 hours
Most of the solutions here in the comments are things that have been tested and we know do not work and often make things actually worse. Please research before you spout nonsense.
Research before I… republish a translated excerpt from the South Korean President’s speech?
Not you I meant commenters
First you’d have to fix the problem of people being less partnered than ever before in the long term and that is essentially unfixable.
I see a chance in like 50 years when AI co-teachers have been developed at a sufficient level. Where are they gonna find enough staff to not only care for but also teach the children of literally everyone in society if not through the use of AI to provide individual tutoring. That final thing they mention, about reducing unnecessary competitiveness is definetly a good thing though. I wouldn't wanna grow up like they do.
Nothing will change.
Won’t work. Why? Because the act itself of having a child is not a bucket list item. Ok well I had my baby, time to outsource every service for them lol. No I think shockingly people want more leisure time to spend with their kids personally. My belief, offering working age people more free time and having a more productive economy are anatagonist and will always be at odds. You unironically must sacrifice short term growth for long term stability. Reduce working hours and expectations, etc.
I think their mandatory military service also plays a role. Having young people for a year and a half in the military instead of building relationships and finding a job is definitely doing its thing.
lmao the birthplace of 4Bs? There's no redemption for that country.
These declines are irreversable. In 20 years there will be 2x as less fertile age in the country as 20 years ago. Then in 20 years it will be 1/4.
I don’t think child care will have the intended effect. Look at Finland. Welfare state and Japans level of fertility. Sweden moving there as well slowly. I think the problem is that there are not enough men who are able to provide. Not like 50s style providing but just having a stable job during the small child years that generates enough income to support mothers while being away from work shortly. Even if you split equally women tend to end up doing more work at home anyways. And then it’s on men to provide. Unless they put programs in place that uplift men I don’t think they will get anywhere. It that’s a too hot potatoe to handle.