“Notably, Chang’s report claims that biological females develop earlier than males do, so requiring girls to enter school at younger ages will create classes in which the two sexes are of more equal maturity as they age. This, the author posits, makes it more likely that those classmates will be attracted to each other, and marry and have children further down the line.”
(…)
“The report does not include evidence of any correlation between female students’ early enrollment and the success rate of their romantic relationships with men. The author also does not detail specific mechanisms by which his proposed policy would increase romantic attraction or birthrates.”
They have a problem with patriarchy and not with birth rates. Birth rates are just the symptom.
Seeing that there is a big trend in young Korean women to abstain from men, marriage and family, I’d say starting to treat women like actual people could very well make a difference.
But yeah, getting them into school earlier and probably indoctrinate them earlier into good obedient wives could work too.
Do you have sources for the statistic you’re using to drive your conclusion? Such as the trends of abstinence.
I wouldn’t call this a “source”, but it’s an interesting explanation of the 4B movement.
https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html
They do anything before they pay people more.
I’m of the opinion we just need to stop focusing so hard on raising the birthrate and focus more on taking care of the people and population we have. We don’t need more people on the planet - 8 billion humans is plenty. We need to figure out successful economic strategies that don’t require perpetual population growth rather than trying to breed our way into economic security.
Our men need a handicap or they can’t succeed
It’s really easy, and I’ll explain it once again for the idiot governments in the back.
GIVE LARGE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR HAVING CHILDREN AND RAISING FAMILIES.
This concludes my Ted Talk.
It’s that easy in most countries (though really just making it not a financial detriment to reproduce is better), but in South Korea it’s more than the money. A lot of South Korean women are withholding reproductive labor due to the intensity of the cultural misogyny
Fuck that, I’m not paying for breeders to ruin the planet more.
Right?
Doesn’t work. My country gave around 15% of minimal pay per kiddo. People who shouldn’t have children had lots of them. People who should…had the same amount as before that. Slightly better finances tho, but they still waited till they were able to provide for child.
What country are you from?
People don’t need large incentives. They need help with daycare/eldercare, education, and healthcare. They need to be able to afford places to live that can fit a family. These are things that everyone needs, it’s just more critical to having a family
No government can afford giving large enough baby bounties to move the needle. Kids are really, really expensive.
what is it now, $200k+ from 0-18? (depending on where you live)
Being this out of touch with reality is the problem with countries right now. The elites and politicians don’t know what’s going on because they are staying in power long past their usefulness.
the elites and politicians never once in their life had the life of a normal person. that’s what. they born into their wealth and power and just think the rest of us are lazy for not being born into it.
Actual answer: stop overworking your fucking population.
“My source is I made it the fuck up”
TBF, it’s possible this guy knows it’s crap, but had to deliver an original idea.
Maybe try dealing with the massive reactionary anti-feminist incel movements that continue to victimize Korean women and girls daily? Just a thought.
“We’ve got a birthrate crisis, maybe we should make it so a single income of someone working 40 hours a week can support a family of 4?”
“… Or we could explore literally every other option no matter how ridiculous and not do anything which would impact corporate profits even a single penny.”
I mean, after all, their problem is that they want more workers, so they can make more money. Letting people work less defeats the point.
It’s our fault for ever thing they would try to fix their problem by making their own problem worse.
Any sensible country will think about providing more incentives to women & couples to have more children and fix financial stressors that’s scaring people away from parenthood.
But no let’s try some nutjob theories 😂
They have done some but it’s not been enough to fix their issues
And then you plan to force people to have kids too? Because otherwise it’s not going up.
Jumping through hoops after Hoops after hoops all to avoid admitting that the problem is capitalism. Classic
Capitalism? How about people just might not want kids enough for birthrate to be higher than 2?
Even North European countries with all their social programs and safety nets are way under 2.
This simply doesn’t matter. It’s a purely economic issue that can be solved other ways besides the birth rate.
How come the stats are the same everywhere and numbers have been going down since way before the economy became an issue? Was the economy an issue in the 60s? Because people keep saying “back then you could raise a family on a single income!” but the birthrate was still going down!
It’s funny how education, women rights and access to birth control are a much better indication of fertility levels than the economy, it’s as if the economy doesn’t have as much of a role in it and people are blaming it because that’s the issue they’re facing at the moment while ignoring that poor people have more kids than rich people.
Korea has that issue but the issue is the same everywhere and global population is predicted to start dropping by the end of the century, it won’t just be an economic issue at this point.
It’s almost like once you’ve stopped exerting religious and social pressure for every woman to have five kids and given access to birth control… The birth rate is going to drop.
And you know, that’s not a bad thing. Especially when the global birthrate is still higher than replacement, and the planet is finite.
Short term, East Asia should be less racist and take a few immigrants. Long term, we will need to figure out another way to keep the species going within the next few centuries.
Or simply accept that population will go down
Population shrinking is probably a good thing, but population shrinking too quickly might be all sorts of bad.
It’s hard to see where we really are with so many variables, so many future decisions, but I believe we’ve passed the point of “good shrinking” and are well into “all sorts of instability and disruption”. If replacement rate is 2.1 kids/woman, and South Korea is already like 1.1, that’s a huge difference. As current generations pass, each succeeding one will be half its size. That’s a problem.
That can be solved by welcoming immigrants because it won’t be solved by trying to force people to have kids. When social programs are introduced to help people raise a family you see a little bump in the numbers and then it goes back down again. It’s as if people realize that having a family isn’t just a financial decision, crazy right?
Medium term, yeah. After a few centuries you’re reaching dangerously small levels, though, assuming normal mortality. Maybe you’re onboard with extinction, but for a couple reasons I’m not, even as shit as we are.
Ok, so the only way to reverse it is to reduce access to birth control and go back on women rights.
There’s a whole lot of stuff that people in this discussion are blaming for birthrate going down but if you look at historical data it was going down even before these things were issues, just because people are more educated, have access to birth control and women have rights over their body. You’re not moving back above 2.1 without getting rid of these things.
Have you ever read A Brave New World? If we can get artificial wombs going - in a few centuries, which is a reasonable timeframe, I think - we could do it that way.
Yes, I know, it wasn’t supposed to be a society to emulate, but that part at least seems fine to me. Getting rid of birth control would be dumb, absolutely agreed.
Bingo and people here can’t wrap their head around that
Yeah but what about eco-anxiety which is another big reason to not wanting a child, and which is another effect of capitalism
Eco anxiety wasn’t a thing in the 70s and 80s, birthrate in rich nations was still under 2 for locals.
During the time period when the highest tax brackets fell from 70% to 50%… Down to now 37%.
Surely the people holding the most money paying near half the taxes they used to didn’t cause them to hold onto that money and drive more and more money up into their hands.
But I have it invested! So you can’t tax it yet, but I rolled it into a company so you can’t tax it or if you can you can’t tax me the same way!
For capitalism to work there has to be strong legal bindings to taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor to make sure they don’t get steamrolled by the system.
We having been pumping the breaks for years on those responsibilities, and more and more people in turn will get steamrolled and forced into starvation, homelessness. The mental health rates being low are directly tied to money in the middle and lower classes.
If we made a rule that for every 10 people who committed suicide do to scarcity that the richest person would be killed as well, we would run out of rich people not trying to promote subsidizing the poor pretty quick and trying to get the happiness of the people up instead of only worrying about profits.
That’s crazy obviously… But we need healthier motivation to make the world a better place. That isn’t a healthy one.
Look at historical data, birthrate just goes down as nations develop, it’s true everywhere no matter how taxed the rich are or how much fertility programs exist. The whole world isn’t the USA.
check the authors’ browser history
South Korea, are you ok?
It can’t possibly be the crushing weight of capitalism that is impacting young people’s lifestyles.
No. And neither is its education system.
This report imparts the image of a sweaty old man with steepled fingers tapping against each other panting heavily and grunting “little girls…develop faster…” And then letting that statement hang in the air, festering.
This idea is a complete non-starter from a practical standpoint. Parents would complain about it either way. Either they wouldn’t want girls in school early or they’d want boys in school early, too.
It’s just much easier to treat children all the same.
Also, I personally think this plan would backfire. Girls graduating wouldn’t want to have to be adults earlier than boys, so they’d stay in school longer. And from what I’ve heard, the most reliable way to reduce birth rates is to educate women more.
I think everyone also knows how to ethically increase the birth rate. Make having children easy and affordable. Lots of government assistance. Make sure everybody has access to cheap or free childcare.
And there’s also the generational problems. Young adults can see the problems that the previous generations caused. You can’t go back in time to fix those. It will be expensive to change this sort of thing.
But quick fixes aren’t going to change the underlying problems.
The best way to increase birth rates in advanced countries is: Work life balance. Restore the traditional tax rates on the rich.
Work life balance meaning one parent can stay home and raise the children without needing that second income to put food on the table.
If both parents work, the birth rate is always going to be lower, even with better work life balance.
Even with a parent at home people weren’t having enough kids to renew the population from the moment they had access to birth control methods.
Not just work life balance, but also the cost of living. I can barely afford to take care of myself, so I’m completely disinclined to go and create a whole new person that will be absolutely dependent on me to provide for it for years. If people can afford to live reasonably comfortably and conditions give them confidence that conditions will remain stable for the next 10-20 years, I bet you’ll see them start having kids. When they’re worried they could be homeless next year if things worsen and their retirement plan is advocating for the right to end one’s life on their own terms, it shouldn’t be a shocker that people don’t want to add kids into the mix.
Also, perhaps decades of social stigma that said having a bunch of kids is something only poor, ignorant people do that represents a moral failing amongst the upstanding daughters of decent society is a bad thing to maintain when you want folks to keep cranking out more kids to feed into the meat grinder of the workforce.
“cheap or free childcare” No
“stay at home parent” Yes
Lower the work hours per week with same wage so both parents can be there for their children: inconceivable
Why has birthrate been lower than 2 in most developed countries starting in the 60s/70s even if there were social programs and people were able to afford to have a family with a single salary?
Maybe people who don’t have access to birth control have accidents and they need to deal with the consequences and in fact, when given the choice, people don’t have enough kids to renew the population? Crazy, right?
Really, there’s nothing specifically wrong with having a low birth rate. On a large scale, we have an overpopulation problem, and there’s not really a negative for each person having fewer children. Of course, smarter people will decide to have fewer kids. But eventually, it will all balance out.
Exactly my point in another message, there are people desperate to get out of their overpopulated country and countries where they need new people yet leaders can’t do the math.
