https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/fastest-aging-wealthy-economy-breaks-own-fertility-record-again
Quote
South Korea has once again shattered its own record for the world's lowest fertility rate as it faces the prospect of its population of 51 million people more than halving by the end of this century.
Korean women were estimated, based on 2021 data, to have an average of just 0.81 children over their lifetimes, down from 0.84 a year earlier, the statistics office said Wednesday. The number of newborns declined last year to 260,600, which equates to about 0.5% of the population.
The BBC Rethink series (thanks Rupert) had a series on demographics. The talked about Korea. One takeaway that I got was that a nation has three dials and you can set two dials to high, but not three:
1. low immigration
2. low fertility
3. dynamic economy
In other words, you can have low immigration and low fertility if you are willing to give up on a dynamic economy, which is the choice that Japan has made. This post made me wonder about Korea and immigration. Following a link in the original article, I got to this
QuoteRecruited four years ago to represent the ruling Saenuri Party as a proportional representative in parliament, Lee has become an outspoken campaigner for immigration in a society that prides itself on ethnic homogeneity
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/movie-star-turned-lawmaker-spurs-immigration-debate-in-korea#xj4y7vzkg
So it sounds like most Koreans want to walk the path of stagnation.
As as strong as the anti-immigration voices in the US are, it always strikes me how much the melting pot mentality we (I??) have. This willingness to let a nation wither for the sake of ethnic homogeneity just seems so foreign to me (for lack of a better phrase). It's hard for me to wrap my head around that choice.
>> for the sake of ethnic homogeneity
Ethnic issues are part of the mix, but so is the realization that unconstrained population growth is a recipe for difficulties of many sorts.
Certainly unconstrained growth in parts of the world is a major stressor there too. Nigeria above all.
But in Korea we are not talking about unconstrained population growth, but population freefall. The projection is for the country to lose over half its population if fertility rates hold steady and immigration doesn't fill the gap. Those are big ifs, of course. The future has a way of surprising us.
Still, that sort of decline has all kinds of problems too. In particular things like the ratio of working people to retired people gets so out of whack, you can end up with each working person supporting two retired people and it becomes very hard for people to get services. Radically increasing the retirement age helps with that, but most governments can't do that.
A modern country cutting its population in half in 70 years is unprecedented. In fact, I doubt there's any modern industrialized country that has ever seen any population decline over a period of 20 years (Japan is 10 years into modest decline).
What happens? Who takes care of all those old people? What happens to all the housing? Japan has bet big on robotics instead of immigration. But there are some interesting articles about people living in these 1960s towns in Japan that consist of mostly empty apartment blocks. Sort of like the Japanese version of some of those Detroit neighborhoods, except everyone lives in one giant, increasingly empty building.
That said, the future is not predictable. Traditionally, fertility has been tied to economy. After the Black Death, age at first marriage and thus fertility increased as land was more available and there was an inheritance effect where family wealth that had been splitting got concentrated.
If the compensation for the rare few workers still left gets high enough, that might reverse the trends. For example, if it becomes financially feasible for only one spouse to work and still have three kids, I think you'll see a lot more families with three kids. There's no reason to think that the current fertility rate will in fact last 70 years.
Anyway, it's fascinating.
Japan births at new low as population shrinks and ages | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/business-japan-economy-82a54de52e3d121b80b9ba2bc0917225
The global drop in birth rates seems to be accelerating. I bet the current projections are off.
8 billion people, 6 billion jobs.
Or 6 billion people, 4 billion jobs
http://th3core.com/talk/hardware-technology/robotic-apple-harvester-in-action-oddlyterrifying/
It remains to be seen.
Sperm counts worldwide have plunged 62% in under 50 years: study
https://nypost.com/2022/11/15/sperm-counts-worldwide-have-plunged-62-in-under-50-years-study/
>>sperm
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/475460-the-last-straw?language=en-US
>>>sperm
Xenoestrogens are ubiquitous today. Testosterone levels are declining too. The average human is less futile and has less sexual desire than just a few decades ago -- that's only part of the picture though. I do believe that there are a lot of social and economic reasons for the decline too.
BTW: if you are in the mood for an on-topic dystopian movie I highly recommend Children of Men.
>Children of Men
Great flick!! One of my faves.
Quote from: littleman on December 01, 2022, 06:34:16 PM
The average human is less futile
If only that were not a typo.
>less futile
Sorry, my dyslexic brain does weird things with typed text. I'll sometimes see letters on the page that aren't there or replace words with other words. It's very strange, but I can't fully trust what I see.
I liked it.
Before I started studying 16th century history, I was very good with to/too/two and their/there and your/you're. Now I get them wrong more often than right, but the result is rarely something that makes me smile. "Futile" was a great typo :-)
And it made me think... humans are less fertile, but are they less futile? Does a feeling of futility have anything to do with the demographic turn? I would guess that less futility brings down fertility since people have a sense of control, but past a certain point, maybe that reverses.
Anyway, the typo is one of those errant events that reframes the question in an interesting way!
>Japan births at new low as population shrinks and ages
Millions of empty homes in Japan are being sold for a song or even given away. Foreigners are taking notice
There are 8 million akiya, or "vacant homes," whose owners have died or moved away, mostly in the countryside.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2023/03/05/millions-of-empty-homes-in-japan-are-being-sold-for-a-song-or-even-given-away-foreigners-are-taking-notice.html
Too bad Bill doesn't post any longer. I remember some details about vacant homes being taxed at very high rates in Japan and how that has a tendency of making their value drop to nothing over time.
I happen to think Thanos was right. But nothing causes more builder nightmares than a flat or shrinking population. Fewer vehicles sold, too. So there goes the current economy built on continuous population growth.
Not Korea, but Japan:
https://i.redd.it/8xyo5rdghbma1.jpg
The second half of the twenty-first century will be very interesting.
Somewhat related
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust
This is quite long, so the TL;DR is roughly this.
Background
- France saw its fertility rate fall 100 years before any other country
- it went from being the "China of Europe" with almost 5x the population of England to having only about 1.2x the population
- Under Louis XIV and Napoleon, it meant that France could field armies as large or larger than opponents even when several countries combined.
- but by 1815 (i.e. Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo), the die was cast. France's fertility had been in decline for 50 years while fertility in other countries increased, resulting in a huge
relative decline in population.
- whereas birthrates in FR and England (and Wales) were similar in 1700, by about the 1830s, France had fallen from over 4.5 to 3.5 children per woman while in England and Wales, fertility rose from a bit under 5 per woman to six.
- this decline in fertility relative to surrounding countries led to the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, with France being defeated by what would have been a minor power a century earlier. And by 1914, the Germans could field a larger army than the French.
The interesting part that's relevant to looking forward into the 21st century...
France had a declining population relative to England. England became home to the industrial revolution and population boomed. You can see these as two strategies for economic development. Over the period 1760 to 1860, when the demographic divergence was the greatest, GDP per capita in France and England stayed in almost lockstep with each other.
In other words, France reduced the denominator and England increased the numerator, with the result that both countries saw GDP per capita double over the period. So while France ceased to be a dominant global military power, it remained a significant economic power with a high and increasing standard of living even in the face of substantial decline in fertility. But it was NOT below replacement rate.
The conclusion (my emphasis)
QuoteWhat can we learn from this? Today, the political and economic prospects of an empty planet are a worry for many, as more and more countries reach fertility rates below replacement levels. The population of China is projected to halve by 2100. The historical fertility transition in France shows that demographic decline – at least while still above replacement levels – does not necessarily spell society's eternal doom. In particular, it could be a way for developing countries to adapt to climate change, by reducing the pressure of overpopulation and generating a 'demographic dividend', where the ratio of working-age to dependent population rises, raising average incomes and living standards. Just such a dividend has helped many developing countries escape the Malthusian trap, as it did for France in the eighteenth century.
In other words, unanswered is the question of whether or not relative population decline compared to other countries has useful lessons in a world of absolute population decline.
Saw a graph today, Japan's death rate now exceeds its birth rate by 700k+ / year.
+
Last year, roughly twice as many people died as were born, with fewer than 800,000 births and nearly 1.58 million deaths.
'No babies, no Japan': PM Kishida's aide says country 'will disappear' if people don't have more children
https://www.firstpost.com/world/no-babies-no-japan-pm-kishidas-aide-says-country-will-disappear-if-people-dont-have-more-children-12247682.html
This community's quarter century without a newborn shows the scale of Japan's population crisis
"All the elderly people took turns holding my baby," Miho recalled.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/asia/japan-population-crisis-countryside-cities-intl-hnk-dst/?dicbo=v2-zxRWM5x&hpt=ob_blogfooterold
This does seem like a fixable problem to me. I am pretty sure with enough incentive people would start having more babies. Also, a slow trickle of migrants would counter the population crash without changing their culture that much. There is some irony that xenophobia will ultimately cause the future migration into Japan to be less assimilated.
>enough incentive
That's the funny part. The governments (other than Finland, Denmark, others?) talk it up but seem to end up only doing that. I'm sorry, but a sex talk and a few hundred dollars worth of diapers & formula ain't going to impress a couple living from paycheck to paycheck.
In the US, give 'em free childcare until kindergarten age. The trouble with that is they really only want white, christian babies.
> The trouble with that is they really only want white, christian babies.
More xenophobia.
THE REAL REASON SOUTH KOREANS AREN'T HAVING BABIES (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/south-korea-fertility-rate-misogyny-feminism/673435/)
tl;dr: too much burden on women as they are expected to work (for less) & do all the household duties; gender wars and women just dropping out of dating, cost of living
>> enough incentive
Funny you should say that. This afternoon I was listening to a sociologist on Fresh Air who was talking about the substantial reduction in child poverty due to the relatively modest Covid benefit.
It got me thinking about a broad child benefit that would make it easier for people to decide to have children. Seems obvious and as a childless person, I'd be happy to pay it, just like I'm happy to pay for public schools.
But then this discussion made me ask, "Does it even work?"
It looks like the answer is, "Kinda, sorta." It looks a lot more expensive than, say, immigration. Estonia has boosted its fertility rate, but with a lavish set of benefits that seem pretty unthinkable in the US (1.5 years of fully paid parental leave). I don't think Americans like kids *that* much.
QuoteThis is where family policies can help, including child allowances. Research from other countries shows that direct payments lead to a slight increase in birthrates — at least at first. In Spain, for instance, a child allowance led to a 3 percent increase in birthrates; when it was canceled, birthrates dropped 6 percent. The benefit seems to encourage women to have children earlier, but not necessarily to have more of them — so even if it increases fertility in a given year, it doesn't have large effects over a generation.
In addition to the international evidence, there is data on the effect of direct payments on parents in the United States. Alaskans get a payment each year, based on oil revenues. Because it varies annually and increases with the number of children, researchers have been able to examine its effect on fertility. Payments increased fertility, their studies have shown. A study that covered the years 1984 to 2010 found the increase was bigger for some groups: Alaskan Natives; those without college degrees; and unmarried women.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/upshot/americans-fertility-babies.html
QuoteThe picture is somewhat different across the Gulf of Finland, where the Baltic nation of Estonia has managed to boost its birth rate during the last decade and a half.
The upturn can at least to some extent be attributed to government decisions to invest in family policies, mostly in the form of increased financial support for large families.
In addition to the generous family leave policy introduced in 2004 – which provides a year and a half of fully paid benefits – in 2017 the country launched a monthly child benefit: €60 for the first child, €60 for the second and €100 for the third child. The state also rewards families for having three or more children: they receive a monthly bonus of €300 euros. In total an Estonian family with three children receives €520 euros per month in family benefits.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191017-does-it-make-sense-to-pay-people-to-have-kids
Canada's population grew by record 1 million in 2022, spurred by international migration | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-growth-migration-1.6787428
The world's peak population may be smaller than expected
New evidence suggests Africa's birth rates are falling fast
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/04/05/the-worlds-peak-population-may-be-smaller-than-expected
Russia's population nightmare is going to get even worse
The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler's occupation.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/04/russias-population-nightmare-is-going-to-get-even-worse
>The world's peak population may be smaller than expected
The patterns seem to repeat nearly universally around the globe.
Sad about Russia, but not at all a surprise.
>Africa
I wonder which types of birth control are impacting 3rd-world countries the most? Condoms, I'm guessing?
That's a good question. In the developed world set and forget birth controls (like IUDs and implants) have gained a lot of popularity due to convince and effectiveness.
old data...
Generally, developing countries only have a few methods of birth contraceptives offered to the public. In developing countries, the most common birth contraception methods include female sterilization (21%) and the IUD (15%). [3]
African countries typically have incredibly low accessibility for every method of birth control. In 1999,
73% of African countries offered condoms,
65% offered the pill,
54% offered IUDs,
42% female sterilization,
26% male sterilization.[4]
Birth Contraceptives in Developing Countries
https://wiki.ubc.ca/Birth_Contraceptives_in_Developing_Countries
Quote from: rcjordan on June 01, 2023, 02:48:30 PM
I wonder which types of birth control are impacting 3rd-world countries the most?
Is that even the right question? Though hard to untangle, birth control is downstream of other cultural changes (giving women more education and control of their lives, economic changes that make it less "useful" to have a large family, infant mortality decreases and so forth).
I remember reading something years ago from an aid worker in India who said that he was explaining to a man with 12 kids that with condom use he could continue to have sex without having to have unwanted children. The man looked at him quizzically and said, "Well, I wanted 12 kids and now I have them, so I now I will start using condoms."
I think they are all the right questions. There is the desire to have children and then there is the desire to have sex without having children. Condoms have a 12% failure rate in real world practice over the course of a year. I am sure they are better today than in the 90s, but I had my share of them breaking on me. It was common enough for me to cause some anxiety. Similarly, one of my children was conceived while using the 'pill' -- statistically 9% effective over the course of a year. Anyway, my wife and I both come from a long line of extremely fertile people, her mother was conceived 14 years after a tubal ligation while her parents were in their mid 40s. Probably TMI, sorry. Anyway, my kids I have had a lot of talk about birth control.
Bringing it back on to the general level, I am sure you are right that economic and social changes are making it less desirable to have large families. On a subsistence level farm a child is another hand, in a city a child is another person to feed, educate, etc.. The pressures keep going in the direction of fewer children*. Also part of the equation is also the spread of better birth control technology than was available a few decades ago.
*It might be that in a few decades only the wealthy will have children -- that's a dystopian thought, but I can see it happening.
Japan falling birth rate: $38 Billion plan to boost births and avert society's collapse
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/38million-plan-to-boost-births-and-avert-japanese-society-s-collapse-20230602-p5ddhf.html
This year in South Korea, there are more than 250 elementary schools with only one new student.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/154pfhb/this_year_in_south_korea_there_are_more_than_250/
The internet has made it much easier to share the drudgery that comes with children. I'm not saying that is the reason younger people don't have kids, but ... it does make me wonder.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n9kv
Another reason Korean women are not getting married;
Too long to listen to. Its a complete erosion of trust in the Korean man.
QuoteJournalist Park Hyo-sil gets a tip off that music and TV star, Jung Joon-young, is being investigated by police for secretly filming a woman during sex. We find out about Jung, his wholesome, attractive personality and wide popularity. And we meet one of his superfans whose whole life revolves around him. She, like many others, don't want to believe the accusations against Jung.
So when Park publishes her story she encounters an extraordinary backlash. And it gets worse after the woman who made the allegation against Jung withdraws it and the police drop the case. Jung's career goes from strength to strength. Except, someone has seen what's on Jung's phone...and it's far worse than just one secret sex video. The contents of that phone will shake the K-pop world and South Korea.
For the first time, we give the definitive account of the sex scandals that brought down some of Korea's biggest K-pop stars. It's a tale of depravity, power and excess - hidden behind a facade of wholesome pop music.
Off topic but...
>the drudgery that comes with children
My third one is off to college today. It's a tear-fest in my house.
Wow! How old is the youngest now?
The youngest is will be 12 in November. She's an amazing artist. The weight lifter has been on her own for about three years now. She graduated with her BS at 21 and has moved up into management at the crisis center she's been working at since she was 15. She is currently saving up for grad school.
I brought it up because of Heather's "drudgery that comes with children". Raising children isn't all sacrifice there are a lot of rewarding aspects to parenting too. I get the choice of not wanting children, but sometimes I feel like people who make this choice over emphasize the negative and ignore the positive. The hole from this one leaving the house is definitely felt.
>Raising children isn't all sacrifice there are a lot of rewarding aspects to parenting too.
I wasn't able to have children, so ....
Sorry about that. It seems fertility is so random. Two of mine were conceived while using birth control.
QuoteI wasn't able to have children, so ....
My heart goes out to you.
We are blessed with one daughter, a constant heartache... after IVF. Sue wanted loads of children..
Sorry to hear that Heather!
I think the "drudgery" conversation is mostly a media trope honestly, not something I hear parents or non-parents actually do very often in real life. Sort of like a generation or two (or three) back where wives were described as "the old ball and chain" or "the old battle axe." The number of men who felt that way about their wives was probably close to zero, but to judge from sitcoms and movies of the time, you would think it was common.
That's a good point and you might be right. Probably most of the declines in birth rates are due to economics.
Historically, fertility is highly influenced by the economy. There is good data on this for late medieval Tuscany based on tax and census records.
One of the big economic shifts has been the participation of women in the workforce. That may be the biggest change globally. In the US, the insane cost of housing in large cities is probably a big factor. You could speak to this better, but I always hear of downtown SF as essentially a child-free zone.
Personally, I'd be hard-pressed to say why exactly I did not want kids, but frankly it was a decision I came to during my years of deep depression in my 20s. I decided I didn't want to be responsible for that. I am not saying that is a good reason (if true, why not adopt?) or that my mind was working well at that time (definitely was not), but that was the root of it. Then as I felt better in my 30s, I just never changed my mind. I think if I had been happy in my 20s, I would have felt very differently about having kids. I've actually always liked kids and gotten on with them well.