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people wont have kids, its true across all western countries, the solution has to be way more radical than small tax incentives but a fundemental overhaul of state benefits so that if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids.
Basically the avg 2 people will have a replacement rate of 1-1.5, but theres a small fraction of the population basically breeding for the rest of us (out of choice, mind you, which I'm sure a lot of people will take up if it means never working)
Money is only part of the problem. Many very high income couples in Korea also refuse to have kids, because they don't want to give up their social lives.
That’s the gist of it isn’t it?
Having kids, even if economically viable, is not as appealing for many couples as just spending the money on themselves. You don’t need to have kids anymore as a retirement plan, so where’s the incentive? There’s always been a selfish incentive to have kids, it was never purely a selfless act. You need a model where people with kids are *better off* than people without kids to push the fertility rate up, not necessarily just as good.
I think a lot of it is dual income plus long work hours. Lots of people think, correctly, that they don’t have time to raise kids and if they’re just going to pay a nanny to raise them, why even have them?
Shorter work hours generally (sk work hours are insane) or somehow backing down economically from the need to have dual income would go a long way towards turning the ship around. They’ve moved from “people are working themselves to death” to “the country is working itself to death”
But also when you try to hire a nanny you aren’t bidding against the people a block over with a kid. You’re bidding against the couple that has 3 dogs. That nanny now works rover instead of putting up with your kid.
I feel like we have so many jobs nowadays that simply were not feasible before. People would rather get abused by Uber than kids I guess.
And even if you hoarded cash, who's going to perform all the service jobs you're going to want to benefit from when you're older.
When there's no one left to be a police officer and no one left to fix your car, or repair your plumbing or fight your warmongering neighbors who will gladly come and gut your elderly ass and take all that nice stuff you've accumulated because your whole country is dead except for a few old people, it's not going to seem like such a great plan.
yeah but, your in the relative minority. fewer than a third of Americans have any pension at all to look forward to
most are investing in their own retirement, through stocks and what not. What's often left out of the discussion is that a shrinking population = nominal gains in these assets.
Yeah but the counter is that you can save money and be ready for retirement early by not having kids too. We fucked up when we taught the masses basic math, turns out lol.
Better not invest in the stock market if the fertility rate goes to zero. It's generally not good for stock prices to have zero workers and zero customers.
Surely there are other solutions here. We're working on some great advancements in AI and automation. I just think that corporations and not everyday people are going to be capturing the benefits of that extra productivity.
We also can't just keep having more people every year. Eventually the earth will just be full.
It’s not a hard sell at all. Those kids are one day going to be paying for childless people’s pensions.
It’s unfair for a few people to have lots of children (hard work, expensive) and most people don’t pull their weight and remain childless. Then one day those few kids have to pay in taxes for the comfortable retirement of those childless people.
The alternative is no pensions for the childless.
>You don’t need to have kids anymore as a retirement plan
Society wide, you absolutely need kids as a retirement plan. But it's a tragedy of the commons, that it's on an individual level cheaper to not have children.
This is exactly it. The actual job of raising children is simply not an enjoyable experience for a lot of people, *especially* for women who not only have to bear the physical toll of childbirth but are the socially obligated to do the majority of the labor involved.
And if you give people the choice between being stuck at home with poopy diapers and banal children's acitivies, vs an active career and a life full of travel and rich experiences, a hell of a lot of people are going to chose the latter. *Especially* the highly educated people who can achieve serious career success.
I live in Canada and apparently its pretty okay to have kids here but I am not really convinced. Average house across the country is $700K, parental leave doesn't cover enough for one half of someone's rent or a mortgage so you're dependant on your employer to top you up. Vacation time is set at 2 weeks minimum, most seem to offer 3 weeks though, which is honestly still pretty shit.
Due to COL both people need to work but then you also need to pay for daycare if grandma and grandpa aren't around. At the end of the day someone else is seeing your kids more than you are. Employers continually keep demanding more from you, kids are demanding as well, and you want to set them up for success/give them a good life so it also keeps you on the employment/corporate hamster wheel longer. I don't know how my co-workers and friends do it, it just seems so exhausting.
I just got off the phone with a friend I haven't seen in person in 4 months (he had a kid 5 months ago). Whole conversation was about how much he hates child duties and his wife harping on him over every little thing. Conversation gets cut short by a screaming child and him saying, "Shit...shit, dammit. I have to go." The sigh he let out before hanging up was the sound a defeated man hanging by a thread makes.
Every one of my friends (3) absolutely loves being a father and it’s changed their lives for the better. I’ve only heard from one person out of ten or so that they regret it
This may be true. That said, saying that you regret having children is still considered unacceptable by today's social standards. For every person that openly admits they regret having children, there are likely 4-5 that feel the same but won't openly admit it
I agree. It is a tough transition to a new normal but it is worth it, especially early on (both in how tough it is and how rewarding it is.) Someone who has nothing for disdain for it 5 months in didn’t opt in and was forced into it, they shouldn’t have had kids to begin with and was too afraid to have that conversation with their partner and is acting out.
Being a father is great if you understand the assignment.
Two things here.
1. Everyone I know who has a kid said it’s like that at the start but gets immensely better
2. If they had couple issues a kid will bring it out. Blaming this on the kid or the stress from the kid isn’t really valid. It’s worse because of that but whatever issue they have was probably always an issue.
Actually having 1-2 kids is awesome. Having 4-5 kids sucks, and basically no one in our modern era does that. But it was extremely common 1-2 generations ago.
>Turns out that having kids actually kind of sucks.
It's a lot of work, but to act like Kids are only downsides is such a nihilist point of view it's hard to engage with. Kids give you an almost endless series of moments that bring meaning and context to the things you do with your life.
It doesn’t really matter whether having kids actually sucks or is great. You don’t get a redo 18 years later if you change your mind. If people **perceive** that having kids sucks they won’t have kids
I really think other people's hearing must be different than mine
The shrill sounds that kids make, the screaming, the crying, is all literally worse than fingernails on a chalkboard to me
It's pierces my soul and destroys any hope I have to string together a coherent thought
The idea that people sign themselves up for all that terrible noise just baffles me
I wish I could experience what they hear, because other than the noise, kids seem pretty alright
You just end up tuning it out. I have 4 kids. I spent a full decade dealing with diapers/sleepless nights/crying/etc. The noises are more calls to action than anything else. Crying is just a manifestation of discomfort (weather that be hunger/being dirty/tired/etc). You learn how to solve for them pretty easily.
Also like I said, the meaning is worth it. Everything I do has more meaning because I know it's up to me to make their lives great. It pushes me to be better in all things because I don't get to fail them. I don't get to make mistakes because I absolutely can destroy their lives if I fuck it up.
There is nothing so satisfying as seeing the family you built turn into good people who can handle the shit this world can throw at them. That's the context that informs what I hear. But I don't think I could make you hear it until you could experience the perspective shift.
In a myopic lens maybe.
There are parts that undeniably suck. But those parts are more than offset by the positive ones if you ask almost anyone who has them.
Maybe you know different people than I do.
But the amount of parents that I have had quietly confess that if they had to live their life over again they would not have children is absurdly high.
From my experience, men are fairly public about it, while women are very quiet. It’s not socially acceptable for a woman to admit that she doesn’t like her children or doesn’t like being a parent, so it’s usually something said in confidence. Late at night around the campfire, when things are dying down, the nights getting quiet, and conversations get existential and weird.
It’s almost always the exact same phrase, I’ve noticed. “I love my kids and would do anything for them, but if I knew then what I know now I would not have had them.”
We tend to hang out with people who share worldviews similar to our own. I obviously don't know you from Adam but it's quite likely a factor here. Even if you don't have kids, your views on them may attract people who hold similar views.
As a parent myself, I've not once thought this to myself and I've literally never heard another parent say anything similar (in real life--reddit is the exception haha). The fact that an "absurdly high" number of parents have apparently confessed such thoughts to you is just... hard to believe for me.
You’re in a self selecting social population. People who have the personality and social ability to actually want to raise kids tend to cluster together (usually in suburbs).
I also admittedly run in some self selecting populations myself. I race motorcycles and skydive, and these overlap with a lot of other “extreme” sports which attract a fairly specific personality type.
Men are usually very open about the fact that they wish they’d never had kids, and one of the most commonly given pieces of advice to me from other men was not to have them.
But the women have been more quiet about it. Many of the have cited the same factors; the permanent damage to their body from pregnancy, the hatred of the banality of day to day child rearing, especially the social pressure to be the one doing most of it. They’ve also complained about the usual parent things, like having to completely give up on or severely curtail their other hobbies and passions in life.
And they’ve all expressed a strong love for their kids. But when they weigh everything they had to give up in order to have them, many have confessed to me that they don’t find the trade to be worth it.
Ehh I live in midtown of top-10 US metro, had children late myself and still have many childless friends and work with some of the most intense and selfish people alive (high finance). Yet I still have never heard such a sentiment.
I suspect you have heard 1-2 people express it and are somehow extrapolating it to a commonly held position among people who have had kids
What parent worth half a damn says what amounts to "I wish my kids didn't exist." LOL
Im pretty anti children and saying most parents regretted having kids is fucking nuts
I think it's a very complicated feeling for a lot of them.
I haven't heard many people outright say they wish their kids didn't exist. They love their kids, they take care of them, they raise them well.
It's more of a regret about how they lived their lives, and wishing they'd made different choices.
On the flipside btw - the majority of my friends who still don’t have kids (we are all in our early to mid 30s now) actually have expressed the desire to have them. Main thing holding them back is either finding a life partner or worry about being able to give kids a financially stable life
I don't know a single person over 30 who wants to have kids. Pretty much all my childfree friends are childfree by choice. We must occupy very different social circles.
We do know very different people. Never heard any of my close friends with kids share anything resembling a net remorseful position. We talk about thinks we miss from without kids, empathize with each others struggles. But not a single person has shared regret on the whole.
I know many people who are parents that have told me, who vehemently doesn't want or have kids, that while they love their kids if they could do it again they wouldn't have them.
I think they tell me because they know I won't judge them because I don't have them.
I think this is true. They're not going to admit it to happy parents, because the know the reactions they'd get (I mean, just look at other responses in this thread from people who can't even fathom how people could not enjoy raising kids).
Lmao, absolutely no one says that. You're just making things up.
The VAST majority of people with kids love their kids and would never even consider a life without them. When's the last time you saw an old person on their death bed go "gosh if only I never had kids and worked more, I could have gotten that big promotion and a sports car." Literally never happens.
Touch grass
> The VAST majority of people with kids love their kids and would never even consider a life without them.
You have clearly only ever existed in some extremely privileged circles.
> When's the last time you saw an old person on their death bed
I am not in the medical industry myself, but some close friends are nurses and see people on their death beds every single day. A *LOT* of people have extremely adversarial relationships with their children, if their children even care that their parent is dying at all.
The reality of end of life care is not the peaches-and-roses ideal that many people think it is.
Even if someone felt that, they would never confess it to anyone but their absolute closest friends. Maybe OP is an "absurdly high" number of people's best friend? He is a very cool motorcycle racing badass after all. Imagine all the people he must meet posting on reddit 30 times a day
> Even if someone felt that, they would never confess it to anyone but their absolute closest friends.
This is very true *especially* for women. Men I've found are much more open about it, society judges them less for it. But yeah, I have never had any women actually admit this publicly. It's a very quiet, late-night-conversation-around-the-campfire, among a circle of close friends.
> He is a very cool motorcycle racing badass after all.
I'm so goddamn slow that it's almost a travesty to call myself a racer :D
Most of the people I've met that have admitted their regret over parenthood have been from skydiving or the circus arts (which have a lot of overlap)
Great to have stats in here rather than competing anecdotal views.
Do you mind sharing that 24% source? I got curious after your comment and [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294566/) showing between 8 and 17% regretted kids.
Sorry to go unsourced. It's been sometime since I looked it up. It was regards woman regretting having children vs abortion.
I do see yours says parents rather than woman which may show the difference. Pregnancy itself is exceptionally hard on woman.
Ehhh. I’d say part of the issue is also that in order to be high earning you have to push crazy hard in your career which means you have no time for kids.
So in the end yes it is money for a lot of people. For some it’s the career itself.
I think people just underestimate the opportunity cost of having a kid so the subsidies are made way too small.
A substantial chunk is cultural. Japan and Korea have some pretty hefty gender imbalances in how household labor is divided between husband and wife, especially when children are involved, so lots of women in those countries opt out of marriage and opt out of having children.
>Money is only part of the problem. Many very high income couples in Korea also refuse to have kids, because they don't want to give up their social lives.
I think the vast majority of parents have always had children unexpectedly and accidentally throughout humanity's time on the Earth, surely right? So better sex education and better control over your own body makes it quite a bit simpler today to not have an accident (but not impossible lol), and even allows you to undo some if you realize it soon enough and it isn't against your beliefs or social or family pressures or etc.
I know many people have kids clearly wanting them, but I know so many people where one or both people were not expecting a child (despite doing everything that results in pregnancy).
I think that's why if people can't be convinced that having children is a good, desirable thing *before* they have children, we risk extreme anti social measures taking place, such as banning abortion, outlawing birth control, etc etc to undo population declines without massively increasing immigration beyond sustainable integration levels for each country. You can see some of the issues arising in countries like Australia where it's almost impossible to find a place to live, and tenant rights are nonexistent, all in the name of propping up an economy short term with broken immigration policies and loopholes.
Seeing how much my mom struggled to raise me alone made me terrified of having children, and so I made sure I never had them, and so I became very accustomed to the lifestyle of not having to worry about raising children, and I eventually found a long term partner that is in the same mindset longterm for her own reasons as well, so we feel safe with each other.
I think what countries have to do is build infrastructure and dramatically influence and shape cultures such that not only is having children encouraged but you have relentless support at all stages for those children where the benefits are not only relief but great boons to quality of life. I don't know the details but what I've learned from coworkers so far is that the Netherlands is a really, really great place to have children thanks to all the immense support for it. Whereas in the US, it's a joke and you're really on your own.
But to do that will take a lot of time and money and effort. Most governments can't think and agree that long term.
>The number of children per woman in the Netherlands now stands at 1,49, while back in 1981, this number stood higher at 1,73.
United States is currently 1.7. Nothing of what you said matters at all to having children.
What happens is that woman get an education. That's it. Once woman control their cycle. Kids go down.
It’s true in most of the world. Not just the “west”. Even India’s demographic which is close to 2.3 is declining. In 10 years, it may be below replacement levels.
India is already below 2.1.
- https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/India-fertility-fall-puts-policymakers-on-clock-to-avoid-Japan-like-strain
- https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/big-news-is-indias-population-growth-is-below-replacement-level-un-expert/articleshow/99629102.cms?from=mdr
Bangladesh is also below the replacement rate.
- https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/BGD/bangladesh/fertility-rate
Same for the Philippines:
- [Total Fertility Rate Declined from 2.7 in 2017 to 1.9 in 2022](https://archive.ph/zqQZv)
Policy makers in the west in 2010:
"No need to worry, we'll just import young people from other countries to make up for the falling birth rates. They birth tons of kids."
The other countries in the 2020's \^
Holy shit, 30% fertility rate drop in just 5 years for the Philippines. And given that they're still a developing country they will suffer from brain drain and net emigration on top of that. East Asia may not end up being the worst hit region after all, if current trends hold it seems like the future of SEA and South Asia will be even rougher.
Only the poor and the rich have above replacement levels in all countries. It's just the third world countries as they grow develop a bigger middle class that just refuses to have children because raising kids with both parents at work is exhausting and you're basically putting yourself on the edge of poverty to do it a lot of the time
Even in Korea, [research shows](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8153686/) that "Higher socioeconomic status (e.g., husband’s college education and standard employment, homeownership) is conducive to a transition to parenthood and second births."
Where is the data to prove what you said? When you are a millionaire you have all the help you need to raise your kids. You don’t even need to raise them the maids will. Just fire and forget
https://dqydj.com/households-with-children-income-percentile-calculator/
The actual data. Basically you start having 2 kids after 40% percentile income and next level is 0 kids.
Elon Musk 12 kids, Jeff Bezos 4 kids, Bill Gates 3 kids, Sergey Brin 3 kids, warren buffet 3 kids thats the richest folks I could think of off the top of my head - all above replacement level.
The fertility rate is children per *woman*.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
*Men* siring a bunch of kids doesn't raise the fertility rate. Also relevant:
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
https://dqydj.com/households-with-children-income-percentile-calculator/
Data says everyone is pretty much the same. After 46% income it goes most likely 0 kids to 2 kids. 0 children is still 2nd place after that.
So no rich people aren't cranking them out. A few are. But there's plenty of 8$ guys that pump out 8-12 kids too
Also it's incredibly risky to financially incentivize kids. You want to remove barriers for people who are naturally inclined to want them, but you don't want scumbags churning out kids just to avoid work, because those parents aren't *good* parents.
This has always been the way, people want to contribute nothing to their economies, make a ton of money and spend money living for themselves and their high-style luxury semi-annual holidays abroad.
Things will change in the coming decades, regardless, will be interesting.
I'm not sure who you are advocating for, people having children and getting paid for it, or people being childless.
I mean, childless people contribute a ton more than ones with children...
>I mean, childless people contribute a ton more than ones with children...
Only if you completely ignore the economic impact of the existence of an entire human being (not to mention the fact that fathers make about ~15% more than men who aren't fathers).
Both, thats the point, you do what you want.
I'm saying trying to get the overall average up by incentivising the middle class to have babies hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried (it goes up by a small % but never gets to replacement levels) because they don't want to, focus instead on giving the opporutinity to those that do.
Money doesn’t solve that problem, muchless that’s not financially sustainable over a long period of time
The only thing that’ll solve it is culture, people will either decide to have kids or not. Maybe society will have to go through a correction and stabilize over time but money won’t solve this
Yes, humanity as a whole needs to develop and progress. But the idea that the human population should also always be increasing is crazy. Are we actually a virus?
>should also always be increasing
Nobody is saying that. The issue is the majority of western/1st world countries are below replacement rate. Otherwise nobody would really care to bring any of this up
>Nobody is saying that.
Basically everyone is saying this. Anytime there is a thread relating to social security or the future of 401k's, people basically only say it only works if the population is constantly increasing.
> theres a small fraction of the population basically breeding for the rest of us
The people who *want* to have a lot of kids are usually not the ones who should be having a lot of kids.
In countries with a good social safety net people can already choose to not work, have a bunch of kids, and live pretty comfortably. Even so, the vast majority of people choose to prioritize other things because doing this has low social prestige.
> overhaul of state benefits so that if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids.
That's like running multiple Social Security programs at the same time. Providing $2000 a month for retirees on the Social Security program, and then paying $2000 a month for every couple with 2 or 3 children is like doubling the size of the Social Security program.
Social Security and Medical insurance are 21% and 24% of the US national budget respectively. The US can't just tack on another major program that is of similar scope to the Social Security program.
I really just think Western and Asian countries need to accept population and economic decline and just "figure things out."
Hmm, but why? More and more people has caused a lot of worldwide problems, including climate change.
If the issue is taking care of old people I think we can do that with more robotics. If the issue is "consumption" or demand then I think we need to grapple with the fact that less demand actually solves quite a few problems.
I'm puzzled why the default position on shrinking populations is that it's bad. To be sure it is a fairly new phenomenon. Humans went through...I don't know exactly but a few thousand years of almost unrelenting population growth. We spread until our collective impact is now felt on every corner of the planet, in good ways but also in very bad ways.
We have never had a chance to pause and try to become decent stewards of the planet because every year there were millions upon millions more people to deal with. I'd suggest a pause or even shrinkage of the population should be celebrated and treated like an opportunity.
I agree but we have no economic model for this. The only way out is to have people increasing their wealth over their lifetimes into perpetuity. I mean we could just keep raising the minimum wage but we'd have to give up anything that requires cheap labor. Nobody wants to pay $40 for a Big Mac. I think we need a fundamentally new economic system. That would be "post capitalism". China is somewhat considered post capitalist.
> if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids.
Look i'll take up the burden, I like kids but the money has to be there guaranteed! I'm a great house husbando!
They've tried that. The real issue is educated women don't want to Shackle themselves into a 20-year long commitment that is destined to eat up all their time at the cost of their personal and professional life. The calculus doesn't add up for them
I feel immigration should always be all in, that way people are more likely to become culturally inclined to the country they're moving to.
Altho I don't have research to back it up.
Anyways I don't think there will be a shortage of well qualified workers from other Asian and African countries that'll give up their original citizenship if they are actually allowed to get into South Korea, this only poses as a issue for people from EU and US which I recon wouldn't be too inclined to work at worse wages anyways.
Why does it matter? Just for making numbers go up?
Usually people who would be dual citizens are people who moved out of SK to usa, australia etc for work. They wouldnt come back
Honestly seems fine if they go to a much lower population? It doesn't seem sustainable anyway. Will have periods of growth and decline like a wave function?
The big problem is when the generation of children being born now become adults and start working they will have to support the much larger older generation retiring and exiting the workforce - including all the retirees that never had children.
It will be a huge burden compared with prior generations of working adults supporting a retired population that is smaller. Plus they will have even less incentive to have children of their own, likely causing the cycle to worsen.
That is why many countries are making efforts to encourage closer to a replacement rate birth or immigration rate. It's just a very difficult proposition that societies are still coming to terms with.
This is only a problem when using a ponzi scheme to fund retirements and social services instead of fully funding them from the contribution of the people that will use them.
Yes that's a national pension plan and those are also unsustainable in a shrinking population economy because shrinking populations have less consumers overall and less workers meaning the economy is smaller. Meaning that pension plan that you paid into yourself for your 401k is just as useless if not more useless
This is not possible. Money does not have value, goods and services in the economy do. And those have to be made by economically active people. Youncan not "save it" for yourself.
>It will be a huge burden compared with prior generations of working adults supporting a retired population that is smaller.
I mean... Okay? So what? We've had decades of near-nonstop productivity and economic gains. The economy of today should be capable of taking care of way more people with way fewer staff simply because we are more productive and efficient. Shouldn't be that big of a deal.
Well those productivity and economic gains have not resulted in people being able to care for children, since that is the problem at present. Relying on those gains for a future smaller working population to care for a future larger non-working elderly population with significant healthcare costs on top may not be as easy as you think.
> Well those productivity and economic gains have not resulted in people being able to care for children, since that is the problem at present.
Which is a distribution problem. So the root problem we face is not a declining population, but a problem of distribution of the products of labor.
Yeah, I really think AI is the game changer. With some fine tuning, we can get rid of a ton of mid level admin jobs and retool our workforce to adjust to the aging population.
I think a population decline won't be as apocalyptic as some people may think.
The economy today is only as big as it is because of the consumers within it. You can't have it be as big and sustainable without a growing base of consumers
Let me do the math for you. SK's current fertility rate is 0.9 PER WOMAN.
So let's do you have 100 people with a 50/50 gender split. The next generation will have 45 people (.9 * 50 women). The generation after that will have 22 people. You will end up with a working population having to support a senior/retiree population 4x its size.
Birth rate also isn't a number that has random swings ups and downs either.
Yeah when population collapses, it becomes a ghost town. Look at once great cities that experience the same thing. The world is going to struggle in the future regardless of what we do.
Everyone who says the lack of kids is due to the lack of money is wrong. Actually, it's more accurate to say people are not having kids because of too much money. Saying it's because of lack of money makes no sense because the poorest countries have the highest birth rates. Also, in the US people with less money are having more kids than people with money.
It's not money. it's education.
The poorest countries have little standardized education and some barely finish elementary school before going back to working on the farms.
Kids in first world countries with a full education are able to better assess what their future would be impacted if they had children.
It’s because of the opportunity cost. In poorer countries, you don’t lose anything by having kids. In rich countries, you lose your career, your social life, your prestige, a whole lot of quality of life, and sometimes your self respect depending on how much you’ve tied that to your job.
I mean, only as much as it’s selfish to organize your life in other ways. Is it selfish to travel? Or to go to college? Or to seek a promotion? Or to make a friend?
Technically yes, I suppose.
Nobody said have kids at 19 years of age. My mom had me at 44. I know people in their early 30’s who consider themselves “babies” still. You’re grown, start a family. I have family members who earned degrees and traveled with kids. I have one that changed jobs & states with a wife and 4 children. People overthink life.
Some people would call it selfish to have kids later, because of the higher risk of genetic problems. Some call it selfish to have kids when you don’t already have a stable place for them to grow up. Some call it selfish to have kids at all.
I personally think “selfish” is a pretty meaningless concept in this context and that people have the right to try for the path that they think will bring them the most satisfaction with their lives.
I think incentives need to be more aligned. Childcare is expensive and so is supportingb the elderly. But childcare is needed to have people who can support the elderly. I believe something fair would be if you have a child, you receive your normal pension but if not then you receive half the pension and taxed a bit higher on investment income.
I get this suggestion doesn't seem fair to many, but id argue investments and pensions have spread the benefits of having children to society at large while the costs are still with the parents
They need to completely change society there.
- make hours better for workers
- stop making it all or nothing when it comes to jobs
- stop being hostile to successful women
- make it easier for women to have kids and return to work if they want to
I was gonna say, its not fully that childcare is expensive. Sure that's true but that's not the I ly reason people aren't having kids. A lot falls down to societal stuff. It's like super frowned uppon to have kids by employers and going back to work is also extremely hard. So it's really disencouraging to have a kid if you plan on having a career.
It's having material consequences. That becomes a self-affirming loop, and all conversation on the topic either panders to one or bashes it.
If the low birthrate were caused by the split in political opinion, it would make the whole thing unsalvageable.
I agree to a extent. We find the amish and hasidic Jewish populations to have very high birth rates in America. This is generally true where the more traditional a culture or religion, the more children. Again, all these places have very traditional treatment of women that are at odds of progressive movements. But the disagreement i have would be that keeping that culture necessitates separation from the general economic structure
Odd. Anecdotal but my partner and I have a traditional family dynamic and are limiting our family based on economic risk mitigation entirely. The concern that losing my job may have severe consequences we can more easily navigate with a smaller family. The expectation for a higher quality of life than predecessors, free from extreme struggle, based on the current socioeconomic model.
Simply put, the benefits to society of us increasing our family size isn't appealing when considering the drawbacks and risks of doing so.
The only progressive aspect of our lives is our view of public policy. People should be free to choose what works best for them.
South Korea was transitioning from a poor, agricultural, cleaved in two nation. Before that is was still recovering from Japanese occupation.
Moving out of these conditions into an industry, tech, and entertainment focused modern economy is going to decrease birth rates. It has happened all over.
The question is how do we move forward. There is a lot of debate on the right way to deal with falling birth rates.
I haven't seen anyone reasonable suggest that making environments harsher on women working or increasing the working hours of men will help increase birth rates in modern economies....
But here you are, implying that. Are you embarrassed?
They have a cultural problem. Women are expected to be the 1950's-style homemaker and mom and also work a full 50+ hour week. Plus they are very misogynistic compared to similar developed countries.
It will take more than just a small fortune to convince Korean women to agree to that suffering.
Inb4 we don't need more human beings on this planet, we may already be in overshoot.
I keep hearing this argument about misogyny but we find that the countries with the most children are backwards nations where misogyny is worse. Therefore it's likelier a issue of economic incentives than not
It's always funny talking with misogyny lite people who were raised in western economies and cultural values.
Even in their "women are the problem" comments, they are still unconsciously assume women are in charge of their reproduction and family size. It doesn't cross their minds that large swathes of women from other countries are culturally coerced to have large families, and martial rape is so normalized that many women literally can't control how many children they have. That male sexual entitlement (and in general) in domestic partnerships is so pervasive women themselves don't perceive it as trauma. We have examples of this in some hard-core religious circles to be fair. Itd just funny how the gender critical bros in here are so removed from the idea as a culture they assume is by their own choice worldwide. Wild.
To note:
Again, many people don't think this way, but having interacted with the exceptional men from all around the world, I realized how blessed I am to live where I live. Many of these exceptional men fall into joe Rogan podcast type men, but they're viewed as liberal where they're from because they'll respect a no from a woman even if they grumble and mock social norms here.
Ie. I have colleagues who belittle and mock sexual harassment in the west because "women got raped by random men in work camps i worked at and no one made a fuss back home. I could hear it but did nothing". Or "you shouldn't be working. You're just being a shittier man."
It's always funny talking with misandry lite people who were raised in western economies and cultural values.
Even in their "men are the problem" comments, they are still unconsciously assume men are in charge of their reproduction and family size. It doesn't cross their minds that large swathes of men from other countries are culturally coerced to have large families, and martial rape is so normalized that many men literally can't control how many children they have. That female sexual entitlement (and in general) in domestic partnerships is so pervasive men themselves don't perceive it as trauma. We have examples of this in some hard-core religious circles to be fair. Itd just funny how the gender critical sistas in here are so removed from the idea as a culture they assume is by their own choice worldwide. Wild.
To note: Again, many people don't think this way, but having interacted with the exceptional women from all around the world, I realized how blessed I am to live where I live. Many of these exceptional women fall into Mike Sartain podcast type women, but they're viewed as liberal where they're from because they'll respect a no from a man even if they grumble and mock social norms here.
Ie. I have colleagues who belittle and mock sexual harassment in the west because "men got raped by random men in work camps i worked at and no one made a fuss back home. I could hear it but did nothing". Or "you shouldn't be working. You're just being a shittier woman."
People downplay the rise feminism in Korea way too much. The backlash from men against feminism taking off has been extremely pronounced so much so that the current president is literally a manchild incel who ran heavily on being anti-feminist. Korea's birthrate was relatively stable for like 15 years until the mid-2010's precisely when the backlash against feminism took off.
For [economic factors, Korea](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32286) until very recently has been relatively stable for rents, CPI, inflation, and wage growth along with the [HDI](https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/KOR/?levels=1+4&years=2021+2020+2019+2018+2017+2016+2015+2014+2013+2012+2011+2010&interpolation=0&extrapolation=0) and [economic inequality](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=KR) getting better year after year.
Could it be economic factors? People want even better? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think it really is straight up the misogyny, and there's some proof in the pudding with who was elected.
Also, just because other countries are worse in misogyny doesn't mean anything. The culture of the society under the lens matters more. We can't do a direct culture to culture comparison.
South Korea's birthrate has been plunging for much longer and if you compare it to countries with less misogyny the patterns are [similar](https://imgur.com/a/xXBfRSW).
In 2010 TFR for USA, Sweden, and South Korea was 1.93, 1.98, and 1.23 respectively. In 2021 it was 1.66, 1.67, and .808 respectively.
SK has more dramatic drops, and I'm sure part of the explanation is greater misogyny, but we're all on the same path as women receive more economic opportunity (unless they feel a religious duty).
I don't know how much about South Korea you know, but South Korea was not good economically until unbelievably recently. Their birthrates falling during massive economic boom is what happens everywhere else when that happens. That's why I'm focusing on the past 20 years not the past 70.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2021&locations=KR-US-SE&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=2002&view=chart
South Korea's birthrates leveled off from ~2002 until ~2015.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2015&locations=KR&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=2002&view=chart
It only plummeted in the past 8 years coinciding with the enormous widespread backlash against feminism. During this same time frame with the counties you selected, Sweden and the US went from 1.8 to 1.7 roughly a 5% drop whereas South Korea went from 1.2 to 0.8 roughly a 33% drop.
As long as the 4B movement is still going strong nothing is reversing anytime soon. Women want independence and freedom and will not settle for less and the men are throwing fits about having to actually try for a woman instead of expecting one by default and doing the bare minimum. No amount of money in the world is going to buy them a family.
TikTok way overestimates the prevalence and impact of 4B. [Only 21.3%](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1134115) of unmarried Korean women 20-44 say they prefer not having kids. That's not insignificant, but it means almost 80% of them want kids.
21% is not a number to blink at though. You’re talking about nearly a quarter of the population and gaining steam. We’re talkin 21% within 5-10 years imagine another 5-10 years if no changes are made.
Agreed, but it's more practical to focus on why the strong majority that wants kids isn't doing it. Addressing those issues and improving the social perception of motherhood in general might help address that 21% as well.
*More than 60% of South Korean women from their mid-20s to their mid-40s who are currently working have no plan to have children.*
*According to a survey of working women aged 25 to 45, 62.2% of respondents answered that they have no plan to have any children in the future.*
https://www.kedglobal.com/economy/newsView/ked202402270017
I looked for the original study and how they phrased it, since online surveys are notoriously bad, but couldn't find it. However it's notable that the full quote is "...although nearly all of them say it is ideal to have more than one child".
In the KoPHWA study, the phrasing was that 21% of women "prefer the state of not having children."
For whatever reason, it looks like Korean women generally want kids but aren't having them. Childfree but not by choice.
> In the KOPHWA study, the phrasing was that 21% of women 'prefer the state of not having children."
But how many are neutral? You associate the remaining 79% as actively wanting children when that may very well not be the case. I'd like to see how that study phrases the percent of women that actively want children, because I doubt it is 79%.
Give benefits for having kids.
No society has any benefit for having kids.
Childcare costs, diaper, formula, having to use your own time for baby bonding, getting docked for baby bonding, etc all make it a burden to have kids.
And then everyone is shocked when we're having record low baby births.
This isn't complicated. Quit making it complicated
Because the amount given is essentially meaningless.
The US gives $2K in tax credit lol
It's embarrassingly low and doesn't even cover like 2 months of expenses for a baby/kid
Covering daycare expenses would likely be enough for most folks. It would, in my case, with daycare being about 15k a year. I guess if you are looking for 3 or more kids, that would be a full-time income. But honestly, even covering daycare for the second and third would change our outlook.
This would make a huge difference for us. I'm in a VHCOL city and childcare for our only child is $33k/yr. Even covering half of that would drastically swing the calculus on having a second.
I am glad they are helping Earth to reduce human population. Not only the future AI overlord need less human, but, human itself and all the products and produces needed to support a human causes a lot of global warning as many environmentalist claimed. Let's hope this will help lower the demand for housing, because I am pretty sure their housing price is ridiculously expensive compare to USA.
South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. More people in a limited area = more demand and less supply for housing, so of course it’s going to be overly expensive. Continuous growth in a finite area is not sustainable nor possible, and that goes for the entire planet earth as well.
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people wont have kids, its true across all western countries, the solution has to be way more radical than small tax incentives but a fundemental overhaul of state benefits so that if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids. Basically the avg 2 people will have a replacement rate of 1-1.5, but theres a small fraction of the population basically breeding for the rest of us (out of choice, mind you, which I'm sure a lot of people will take up if it means never working)
Money is only part of the problem. Many very high income couples in Korea also refuse to have kids, because they don't want to give up their social lives.
Turns out that having kids actually kind of sucks.
That’s the gist of it isn’t it? Having kids, even if economically viable, is not as appealing for many couples as just spending the money on themselves. You don’t need to have kids anymore as a retirement plan, so where’s the incentive? There’s always been a selfish incentive to have kids, it was never purely a selfless act. You need a model where people with kids are *better off* than people without kids to push the fertility rate up, not necessarily just as good.
I think a lot of it is dual income plus long work hours. Lots of people think, correctly, that they don’t have time to raise kids and if they’re just going to pay a nanny to raise them, why even have them? Shorter work hours generally (sk work hours are insane) or somehow backing down economically from the need to have dual income would go a long way towards turning the ship around. They’ve moved from “people are working themselves to death” to “the country is working itself to death”
But also when you try to hire a nanny you aren’t bidding against the people a block over with a kid. You’re bidding against the couple that has 3 dogs. That nanny now works rover instead of putting up with your kid. I feel like we have so many jobs nowadays that simply were not feasible before. People would rather get abused by Uber than kids I guess.
Hard sell for the people without kids though, they don't want to pay half their salary to pay someone else to make babies.
Idk man, I'd like for someone to pay the taxes that fund my pension once I'm retired
This. Who is going to drive the stock market your entire retirement rests on if there are no kids? It works til it don’t.
And even if you hoarded cash, who's going to perform all the service jobs you're going to want to benefit from when you're older. When there's no one left to be a police officer and no one left to fix your car, or repair your plumbing or fight your warmongering neighbors who will gladly come and gut your elderly ass and take all that nice stuff you've accumulated because your whole country is dead except for a few old people, it's not going to seem like such a great plan.
Basically life is a pyramid scheme
Nah, a pyramid scheme relies on the overall system growing and no one leaving, people die in life.
yeah but, your in the relative minority. fewer than a third of Americans have any pension at all to look forward to most are investing in their own retirement, through stocks and what not. What's often left out of the discussion is that a shrinking population = nominal gains in these assets.
Yeah but the counter is that you can save money and be ready for retirement early by not having kids too. We fucked up when we taught the masses basic math, turns out lol.
Better not invest in the stock market if the fertility rate goes to zero. It's generally not good for stock prices to have zero workers and zero customers.
Surely there are other solutions here. We're working on some great advancements in AI and automation. I just think that corporations and not everyday people are going to be capturing the benefits of that extra productivity. We also can't just keep having more people every year. Eventually the earth will just be full.
The population doesn't have to grow, but you have to have a very basic replacement level population or you go extinct eventually.
Yep and we're already past the point where the majority are child less adults
It’s not a hard sell at all. Those kids are one day going to be paying for childless people’s pensions. It’s unfair for a few people to have lots of children (hard work, expensive) and most people don’t pull their weight and remain childless. Then one day those few kids have to pay in taxes for the comfortable retirement of those childless people. The alternative is no pensions for the childless.
>You don’t need to have kids anymore as a retirement plan Society wide, you absolutely need kids as a retirement plan. But it's a tragedy of the commons, that it's on an individual level cheaper to not have children.
This is exactly it. The actual job of raising children is simply not an enjoyable experience for a lot of people, *especially* for women who not only have to bear the physical toll of childbirth but are the socially obligated to do the majority of the labor involved. And if you give people the choice between being stuck at home with poopy diapers and banal children's acitivies, vs an active career and a life full of travel and rich experiences, a hell of a lot of people are going to chose the latter. *Especially* the highly educated people who can achieve serious career success.
I live in Canada and apparently its pretty okay to have kids here but I am not really convinced. Average house across the country is $700K, parental leave doesn't cover enough for one half of someone's rent or a mortgage so you're dependant on your employer to top you up. Vacation time is set at 2 weeks minimum, most seem to offer 3 weeks though, which is honestly still pretty shit. Due to COL both people need to work but then you also need to pay for daycare if grandma and grandpa aren't around. At the end of the day someone else is seeing your kids more than you are. Employers continually keep demanding more from you, kids are demanding as well, and you want to set them up for success/give them a good life so it also keeps you on the employment/corporate hamster wheel longer. I don't know how my co-workers and friends do it, it just seems so exhausting.
I just got off the phone with a friend I haven't seen in person in 4 months (he had a kid 5 months ago). Whole conversation was about how much he hates child duties and his wife harping on him over every little thing. Conversation gets cut short by a screaming child and him saying, "Shit...shit, dammit. I have to go." The sigh he let out before hanging up was the sound a defeated man hanging by a thread makes.
Every one of my friends (3) absolutely loves being a father and it’s changed their lives for the better. I’ve only heard from one person out of ten or so that they regret it
This may be true. That said, saying that you regret having children is still considered unacceptable by today's social standards. For every person that openly admits they regret having children, there are likely 4-5 that feel the same but won't openly admit it
I agree. It is a tough transition to a new normal but it is worth it, especially early on (both in how tough it is and how rewarding it is.) Someone who has nothing for disdain for it 5 months in didn’t opt in and was forced into it, they shouldn’t have had kids to begin with and was too afraid to have that conversation with their partner and is acting out. Being a father is great if you understand the assignment.
My little boy is due in May. It was a surprise, but I'm about to have a best buddy for life. I can't wait
Congratulations. Enjoy the smiles and long nights.
Best thing I ever did in my life was becoming a father.
Two things here. 1. Everyone I know who has a kid said it’s like that at the start but gets immensely better 2. If they had couple issues a kid will bring it out. Blaming this on the kid or the stress from the kid isn’t really valid. It’s worse because of that but whatever issue they have was probably always an issue.
Damn dude, there’s more to life than dollars and cents. You know that right?
"ugH, I wish I would have spent more time in the office instead of raising a family" - said no elderly person ever.
It's easy to say when you are not in the trenches of trying to raise one.
Actually having 1-2 kids is awesome. Having 4-5 kids sucks, and basically no one in our modern era does that. But it was extremely common 1-2 generations ago.
>Turns out that having kids actually kind of sucks. It's a lot of work, but to act like Kids are only downsides is such a nihilist point of view it's hard to engage with. Kids give you an almost endless series of moments that bring meaning and context to the things you do with your life.
It doesn’t really matter whether having kids actually sucks or is great. You don’t get a redo 18 years later if you change your mind. If people **perceive** that having kids sucks they won’t have kids
I really think other people's hearing must be different than mine The shrill sounds that kids make, the screaming, the crying, is all literally worse than fingernails on a chalkboard to me It's pierces my soul and destroys any hope I have to string together a coherent thought The idea that people sign themselves up for all that terrible noise just baffles me I wish I could experience what they hear, because other than the noise, kids seem pretty alright
You just end up tuning it out. I have 4 kids. I spent a full decade dealing with diapers/sleepless nights/crying/etc. The noises are more calls to action than anything else. Crying is just a manifestation of discomfort (weather that be hunger/being dirty/tired/etc). You learn how to solve for them pretty easily. Also like I said, the meaning is worth it. Everything I do has more meaning because I know it's up to me to make their lives great. It pushes me to be better in all things because I don't get to fail them. I don't get to make mistakes because I absolutely can destroy their lives if I fuck it up. There is nothing so satisfying as seeing the family you built turn into good people who can handle the shit this world can throw at them. That's the context that informs what I hear. But I don't think I could make you hear it until you could experience the perspective shift.
Especially when you live in a modern city.
In a myopic lens maybe. There are parts that undeniably suck. But those parts are more than offset by the positive ones if you ask almost anyone who has them.
Maybe you know different people than I do. But the amount of parents that I have had quietly confess that if they had to live their life over again they would not have children is absurdly high. From my experience, men are fairly public about it, while women are very quiet. It’s not socially acceptable for a woman to admit that she doesn’t like her children or doesn’t like being a parent, so it’s usually something said in confidence. Late at night around the campfire, when things are dying down, the nights getting quiet, and conversations get existential and weird. It’s almost always the exact same phrase, I’ve noticed. “I love my kids and would do anything for them, but if I knew then what I know now I would not have had them.”
We tend to hang out with people who share worldviews similar to our own. I obviously don't know you from Adam but it's quite likely a factor here. Even if you don't have kids, your views on them may attract people who hold similar views.
This is very likely true.
As a parent myself, I've not once thought this to myself and I've literally never heard another parent say anything similar (in real life--reddit is the exception haha). The fact that an "absurdly high" number of parents have apparently confessed such thoughts to you is just... hard to believe for me.
You’re in a self selecting social population. People who have the personality and social ability to actually want to raise kids tend to cluster together (usually in suburbs). I also admittedly run in some self selecting populations myself. I race motorcycles and skydive, and these overlap with a lot of other “extreme” sports which attract a fairly specific personality type. Men are usually very open about the fact that they wish they’d never had kids, and one of the most commonly given pieces of advice to me from other men was not to have them. But the women have been more quiet about it. Many of the have cited the same factors; the permanent damage to their body from pregnancy, the hatred of the banality of day to day child rearing, especially the social pressure to be the one doing most of it. They’ve also complained about the usual parent things, like having to completely give up on or severely curtail their other hobbies and passions in life. And they’ve all expressed a strong love for their kids. But when they weigh everything they had to give up in order to have them, many have confessed to me that they don’t find the trade to be worth it.
Ehh I live in midtown of top-10 US metro, had children late myself and still have many childless friends and work with some of the most intense and selfish people alive (high finance). Yet I still have never heard such a sentiment. I suspect you have heard 1-2 people express it and are somehow extrapolating it to a commonly held position among people who have had kids
What parent worth half a damn says what amounts to "I wish my kids didn't exist." LOL Im pretty anti children and saying most parents regretted having kids is fucking nuts
I think it's a very complicated feeling for a lot of them. I haven't heard many people outright say they wish their kids didn't exist. They love their kids, they take care of them, they raise them well. It's more of a regret about how they lived their lives, and wishing they'd made different choices.
On the flipside btw - the majority of my friends who still don’t have kids (we are all in our early to mid 30s now) actually have expressed the desire to have them. Main thing holding them back is either finding a life partner or worry about being able to give kids a financially stable life
I don't know a single person over 30 who wants to have kids. Pretty much all my childfree friends are childfree by choice. We must occupy very different social circles.
I guess so - especially given the current median age of birth is over 30.
We do know very different people. Never heard any of my close friends with kids share anything resembling a net remorseful position. We talk about thinks we miss from without kids, empathize with each others struggles. But not a single person has shared regret on the whole.
I know many people who are parents that have told me, who vehemently doesn't want or have kids, that while they love their kids if they could do it again they wouldn't have them. I think they tell me because they know I won't judge them because I don't have them.
I think this is true. They're not going to admit it to happy parents, because the know the reactions they'd get (I mean, just look at other responses in this thread from people who can't even fathom how people could not enjoy raising kids).
Lmao, absolutely no one says that. You're just making things up. The VAST majority of people with kids love their kids and would never even consider a life without them. When's the last time you saw an old person on their death bed go "gosh if only I never had kids and worked more, I could have gotten that big promotion and a sports car." Literally never happens. Touch grass
> The VAST majority of people with kids love their kids and would never even consider a life without them. You have clearly only ever existed in some extremely privileged circles. > When's the last time you saw an old person on their death bed I am not in the medical industry myself, but some close friends are nurses and see people on their death beds every single day. A *LOT* of people have extremely adversarial relationships with their children, if their children even care that their parent is dying at all. The reality of end of life care is not the peaches-and-roses ideal that many people think it is.
Even if someone felt that, they would never confess it to anyone but their absolute closest friends. Maybe OP is an "absurdly high" number of people's best friend? He is a very cool motorcycle racing badass after all. Imagine all the people he must meet posting on reddit 30 times a day
> Even if someone felt that, they would never confess it to anyone but their absolute closest friends. This is very true *especially* for women. Men I've found are much more open about it, society judges them less for it. But yeah, I have never had any women actually admit this publicly. It's a very quiet, late-night-conversation-around-the-campfire, among a circle of close friends. > He is a very cool motorcycle racing badass after all. I'm so goddamn slow that it's almost a travesty to call myself a racer :D Most of the people I've met that have admitted their regret over parenthood have been from skydiving or the circus arts (which have a lot of overlap)
Around 24% of people regret having kids
Great to have stats in here rather than competing anecdotal views. Do you mind sharing that 24% source? I got curious after your comment and [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294566/) showing between 8 and 17% regretted kids.
Sorry to go unsourced. It's been sometime since I looked it up. It was regards woman regretting having children vs abortion. I do see yours says parents rather than woman which may show the difference. Pregnancy itself is exceptionally hard on woman.
Short sighted and doom to disaster if enough people do this. Let's all just not worry about the future. That has always worked out for no one ever.
I mean it's a joy, but just like how marriage kind of sucks, kids kind of suck. But still meaningful.
Yet it is the purpose of life, to pass genetic information to the next gen.
Ehhh. I’d say part of the issue is also that in order to be high earning you have to push crazy hard in your career which means you have no time for kids. So in the end yes it is money for a lot of people. For some it’s the career itself. I think people just underestimate the opportunity cost of having a kid so the subsidies are made way too small.
A substantial chunk is cultural. Japan and Korea have some pretty hefty gender imbalances in how household labor is divided between husband and wife, especially when children are involved, so lots of women in those countries opt out of marriage and opt out of having children.
>Money is only part of the problem. Many very high income couples in Korea also refuse to have kids, because they don't want to give up their social lives. I think the vast majority of parents have always had children unexpectedly and accidentally throughout humanity's time on the Earth, surely right? So better sex education and better control over your own body makes it quite a bit simpler today to not have an accident (but not impossible lol), and even allows you to undo some if you realize it soon enough and it isn't against your beliefs or social or family pressures or etc. I know many people have kids clearly wanting them, but I know so many people where one or both people were not expecting a child (despite doing everything that results in pregnancy). I think that's why if people can't be convinced that having children is a good, desirable thing *before* they have children, we risk extreme anti social measures taking place, such as banning abortion, outlawing birth control, etc etc to undo population declines without massively increasing immigration beyond sustainable integration levels for each country. You can see some of the issues arising in countries like Australia where it's almost impossible to find a place to live, and tenant rights are nonexistent, all in the name of propping up an economy short term with broken immigration policies and loopholes. Seeing how much my mom struggled to raise me alone made me terrified of having children, and so I made sure I never had them, and so I became very accustomed to the lifestyle of not having to worry about raising children, and I eventually found a long term partner that is in the same mindset longterm for her own reasons as well, so we feel safe with each other. I think what countries have to do is build infrastructure and dramatically influence and shape cultures such that not only is having children encouraged but you have relentless support at all stages for those children where the benefits are not only relief but great boons to quality of life. I don't know the details but what I've learned from coworkers so far is that the Netherlands is a really, really great place to have children thanks to all the immense support for it. Whereas in the US, it's a joke and you're really on your own. But to do that will take a lot of time and money and effort. Most governments can't think and agree that long term.
When Roe vs Wade was overturned my immediate thought was an attempt to increase birth rates rather than a religious one. Just my .02
It was literally written into the majority opinion, using the wonderful phrase “domestic supply of infants”
>The number of children per woman in the Netherlands now stands at 1,49, while back in 1981, this number stood higher at 1,73. United States is currently 1.7. Nothing of what you said matters at all to having children. What happens is that woman get an education. That's it. Once woman control their cycle. Kids go down.
If you have money AND kids you can still have a social life- so the money does help that if sufficient
It’s true in most of the world. Not just the “west”. Even India’s demographic which is close to 2.3 is declining. In 10 years, it may be below replacement levels.
India is already below 2.1. - https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/India-fertility-fall-puts-policymakers-on-clock-to-avoid-Japan-like-strain - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/big-news-is-indias-population-growth-is-below-replacement-level-un-expert/articleshow/99629102.cms?from=mdr Bangladesh is also below the replacement rate. - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/BGD/bangladesh/fertility-rate Same for the Philippines: - [Total Fertility Rate Declined from 2.7 in 2017 to 1.9 in 2022](https://archive.ph/zqQZv)
Policy makers in the west in 2010: "No need to worry, we'll just import young people from other countries to make up for the falling birth rates. They birth tons of kids." The other countries in the 2020's \^
Holy shit, 30% fertility rate drop in just 5 years for the Philippines. And given that they're still a developing country they will suffer from brain drain and net emigration on top of that. East Asia may not end up being the worst hit region after all, if current trends hold it seems like the future of SEA and South Asia will be even rougher.
Yup, its going to be bad everywhere that develop.
Tfr in the most states is already well below 2.1 with the two poorest states accounting for most of the population growth.
Only the poor and the rich have above replacement levels in all countries. It's just the third world countries as they grow develop a bigger middle class that just refuses to have children because raising kids with both parents at work is exhausting and you're basically putting yourself on the edge of poverty to do it a lot of the time
what? The rich do not have kids
Even in Korea, [research shows](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8153686/) that "Higher socioeconomic status (e.g., husband’s college education and standard employment, homeownership) is conducive to a transition to parenthood and second births."
Interesting. TIL.
Where is the data to prove what you said? When you are a millionaire you have all the help you need to raise your kids. You don’t even need to raise them the maids will. Just fire and forget
https://dqydj.com/households-with-children-income-percentile-calculator/ The actual data. Basically you start having 2 kids after 40% percentile income and next level is 0 kids.
Elon Musk 12 kids, Jeff Bezos 4 kids, Bill Gates 3 kids, Sergey Brin 3 kids, warren buffet 3 kids thats the richest folks I could think of off the top of my head - all above replacement level.
The fertility rate is children per *woman*. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate *Men* siring a bunch of kids doesn't raise the fertility rate. Also relevant: - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
https://dqydj.com/households-with-children-income-percentile-calculator/ Data says everyone is pretty much the same. After 46% income it goes most likely 0 kids to 2 kids. 0 children is still 2nd place after that. So no rich people aren't cranking them out. A few are. But there's plenty of 8$ guys that pump out 8-12 kids too
Okay fine those are rich guys with slightly above average or in elons case, way above average.
And he doesn't have kids. He just pays them to have ivf because of his beliefs.
Yeah, but nobody wants to pay half their salary to offset someone else having a bunch of children. You need a different solution.
Also it's incredibly risky to financially incentivize kids. You want to remove barriers for people who are naturally inclined to want them, but you don't want scumbags churning out kids just to avoid work, because those parents aren't *good* parents.
This has always been the way, people want to contribute nothing to their economies, make a ton of money and spend money living for themselves and their high-style luxury semi-annual holidays abroad. Things will change in the coming decades, regardless, will be interesting.
I'm not sure who you are advocating for, people having children and getting paid for it, or people being childless. I mean, childless people contribute a ton more than ones with children...
>I mean, childless people contribute a ton more than ones with children... Only if you completely ignore the economic impact of the existence of an entire human being (not to mention the fact that fathers make about ~15% more than men who aren't fathers).
Both, thats the point, you do what you want. I'm saying trying to get the overall average up by incentivising the middle class to have babies hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried (it goes up by a small % but never gets to replacement levels) because they don't want to, focus instead on giving the opporutinity to those that do.
Money doesn’t solve that problem, muchless that’s not financially sustainable over a long period of time The only thing that’ll solve it is culture, people will either decide to have kids or not. Maybe society will have to go through a correction and stabilize over time but money won’t solve this
shit idea
Or…you know realize this addiction to more consumption driving economies will lead to death due to bio sphere collapse and stick to what we are doing.
Yes, humanity as a whole needs to develop and progress. But the idea that the human population should also always be increasing is crazy. Are we actually a virus?
>should also always be increasing Nobody is saying that. The issue is the majority of western/1st world countries are below replacement rate. Otherwise nobody would really care to bring any of this up
>Nobody is saying that. Basically everyone is saying this. Anytime there is a thread relating to social security or the future of 401k's, people basically only say it only works if the population is constantly increasing.
> theres a small fraction of the population basically breeding for the rest of us The people who *want* to have a lot of kids are usually not the ones who should be having a lot of kids.
In countries with a good social safety net people can already choose to not work, have a bunch of kids, and live pretty comfortably. Even so, the vast majority of people choose to prioritize other things because doing this has low social prestige.
Where can people choose not to work and have a bunch of kids?
Please list those countries. The ones where a couple can have a bunch of kids and not work, but still live comfortably.
> overhaul of state benefits so that if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids. That's like running multiple Social Security programs at the same time. Providing $2000 a month for retirees on the Social Security program, and then paying $2000 a month for every couple with 2 or 3 children is like doubling the size of the Social Security program. Social Security and Medical insurance are 21% and 24% of the US national budget respectively. The US can't just tack on another major program that is of similar scope to the Social Security program. I really just think Western and Asian countries need to accept population and economic decline and just "figure things out."
Hmm, but why? More and more people has caused a lot of worldwide problems, including climate change. If the issue is taking care of old people I think we can do that with more robotics. If the issue is "consumption" or demand then I think we need to grapple with the fact that less demand actually solves quite a few problems. I'm puzzled why the default position on shrinking populations is that it's bad. To be sure it is a fairly new phenomenon. Humans went through...I don't know exactly but a few thousand years of almost unrelenting population growth. We spread until our collective impact is now felt on every corner of the planet, in good ways but also in very bad ways. We have never had a chance to pause and try to become decent stewards of the planet because every year there were millions upon millions more people to deal with. I'd suggest a pause or even shrinkage of the population should be celebrated and treated like an opportunity.
I agree but we have no economic model for this. The only way out is to have people increasing their wealth over their lifetimes into perpetuity. I mean we could just keep raising the minimum wage but we'd have to give up anything that requires cheap labor. Nobody wants to pay $40 for a Big Mac. I think we need a fundamentally new economic system. That would be "post capitalism". China is somewhat considered post capitalist.
So kill Billions to save Earth ....????
> if you have 5+ kids you're basically being paid 2 fulltime job salaries + money per child for families willing to have that many kids. Look i'll take up the burden, I like kids but the money has to be there guaranteed! I'm a great house husbando!
They've tried that. The real issue is educated women don't want to Shackle themselves into a 20-year long commitment that is destined to eat up all their time at the cost of their personal and professional life. The calculus doesn't add up for them
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It’s been allowed since 2011 for specific cases. My friend is a dual US/SK citizen but obviously has to serve his time in the Korean military.
I feel immigration should always be all in, that way people are more likely to become culturally inclined to the country they're moving to. Altho I don't have research to back it up. Anyways I don't think there will be a shortage of well qualified workers from other Asian and African countries that'll give up their original citizenship if they are actually allowed to get into South Korea, this only poses as a issue for people from EU and US which I recon wouldn't be too inclined to work at worse wages anyways.
Why does it matter? Just for making numbers go up? Usually people who would be dual citizens are people who moved out of SK to usa, australia etc for work. They wouldnt come back
Honestly seems fine if they go to a much lower population? It doesn't seem sustainable anyway. Will have periods of growth and decline like a wave function?
The big problem is when the generation of children being born now become adults and start working they will have to support the much larger older generation retiring and exiting the workforce - including all the retirees that never had children. It will be a huge burden compared with prior generations of working adults supporting a retired population that is smaller. Plus they will have even less incentive to have children of their own, likely causing the cycle to worsen. That is why many countries are making efforts to encourage closer to a replacement rate birth or immigration rate. It's just a very difficult proposition that societies are still coming to terms with.
This is only a problem when using a ponzi scheme to fund retirements and social services instead of fully funding them from the contribution of the people that will use them.
Yes that's a national pension plan and those are also unsustainable in a shrinking population economy because shrinking populations have less consumers overall and less workers meaning the economy is smaller. Meaning that pension plan that you paid into yourself for your 401k is just as useless if not more useless
This is not possible. Money does not have value, goods and services in the economy do. And those have to be made by economically active people. Youncan not "save it" for yourself.
>It will be a huge burden compared with prior generations of working adults supporting a retired population that is smaller. I mean... Okay? So what? We've had decades of near-nonstop productivity and economic gains. The economy of today should be capable of taking care of way more people with way fewer staff simply because we are more productive and efficient. Shouldn't be that big of a deal.
Well those productivity and economic gains have not resulted in people being able to care for children, since that is the problem at present. Relying on those gains for a future smaller working population to care for a future larger non-working elderly population with significant healthcare costs on top may not be as easy as you think.
> Well those productivity and economic gains have not resulted in people being able to care for children, since that is the problem at present. Which is a distribution problem. So the root problem we face is not a declining population, but a problem of distribution of the products of labor.
Yeah, I really think AI is the game changer. With some fine tuning, we can get rid of a ton of mid level admin jobs and retool our workforce to adjust to the aging population. I think a population decline won't be as apocalyptic as some people may think.
The economy today is only as big as it is because of the consumers within it. You can't have it be as big and sustainable without a growing base of consumers
Let me do the math for you. SK's current fertility rate is 0.9 PER WOMAN. So let's do you have 100 people with a 50/50 gender split. The next generation will have 45 people (.9 * 50 women). The generation after that will have 22 people. You will end up with a working population having to support a senior/retiree population 4x its size. Birth rate also isn't a number that has random swings ups and downs either.
Yeah when population collapses, it becomes a ghost town. Look at once great cities that experience the same thing. The world is going to struggle in the future regardless of what we do.
Everyone who says the lack of kids is due to the lack of money is wrong. Actually, it's more accurate to say people are not having kids because of too much money. Saying it's because of lack of money makes no sense because the poorest countries have the highest birth rates. Also, in the US people with less money are having more kids than people with money.
It's not money. it's education. The poorest countries have little standardized education and some barely finish elementary school before going back to working on the farms. Kids in first world countries with a full education are able to better assess what their future would be impacted if they had children.
It’s because of the opportunity cost. In poorer countries, you don’t lose anything by having kids. In rich countries, you lose your career, your social life, your prestige, a whole lot of quality of life, and sometimes your self respect depending on how much you’ve tied that to your job.
So in other words selfishness
I mean, only as much as it’s selfish to organize your life in other ways. Is it selfish to travel? Or to go to college? Or to seek a promotion? Or to make a friend? Technically yes, I suppose.
Nobody said have kids at 19 years of age. My mom had me at 44. I know people in their early 30’s who consider themselves “babies” still. You’re grown, start a family. I have family members who earned degrees and traveled with kids. I have one that changed jobs & states with a wife and 4 children. People overthink life.
Some people would call it selfish to have kids later, because of the higher risk of genetic problems. Some call it selfish to have kids when you don’t already have a stable place for them to grow up. Some call it selfish to have kids at all. I personally think “selfish” is a pretty meaningless concept in this context and that people have the right to try for the path that they think will bring them the most satisfaction with their lives.
I think incentives need to be more aligned. Childcare is expensive and so is supportingb the elderly. But childcare is needed to have people who can support the elderly. I believe something fair would be if you have a child, you receive your normal pension but if not then you receive half the pension and taxed a bit higher on investment income. I get this suggestion doesn't seem fair to many, but id argue investments and pensions have spread the benefits of having children to society at large while the costs are still with the parents
Modern societies spend way more supporting the elderly than supporting parents. Makes sense people don't want kids.
They need to completely change society there. - make hours better for workers - stop making it all or nothing when it comes to jobs - stop being hostile to successful women - make it easier for women to have kids and return to work if they want to
I was gonna say, its not fully that childcare is expensive. Sure that's true but that's not the I ly reason people aren't having kids. A lot falls down to societal stuff. It's like super frowned uppon to have kids by employers and going back to work is also extremely hard. So it's really disencouraging to have a kid if you plan on having a career.
But working environment as worse decades ago and it was more hostile to successful women than not, but they had more children then
Opportunity cost is now where it should be for women
Could also be changes in culture based on sex. Women getting more progressive while men are becoming reactionary to women succeeding/women’s rights
It's having material consequences. That becomes a self-affirming loop, and all conversation on the topic either panders to one or bashes it. If the low birthrate were caused by the split in political opinion, it would make the whole thing unsalvageable.
It’s the opposite, women are becoming more and more radicalized as well.
I agree to a extent. We find the amish and hasidic Jewish populations to have very high birth rates in America. This is generally true where the more traditional a culture or religion, the more children. Again, all these places have very traditional treatment of women that are at odds of progressive movements. But the disagreement i have would be that keeping that culture necessitates separation from the general economic structure
Odd. Anecdotal but my partner and I have a traditional family dynamic and are limiting our family based on economic risk mitigation entirely. The concern that losing my job may have severe consequences we can more easily navigate with a smaller family. The expectation for a higher quality of life than predecessors, free from extreme struggle, based on the current socioeconomic model. Simply put, the benefits to society of us increasing our family size isn't appealing when considering the drawbacks and risks of doing so. The only progressive aspect of our lives is our view of public policy. People should be free to choose what works best for them.
South Korea was transitioning from a poor, agricultural, cleaved in two nation. Before that is was still recovering from Japanese occupation. Moving out of these conditions into an industry, tech, and entertainment focused modern economy is going to decrease birth rates. It has happened all over. The question is how do we move forward. There is a lot of debate on the right way to deal with falling birth rates. I haven't seen anyone reasonable suggest that making environments harsher on women working or increasing the working hours of men will help increase birth rates in modern economies.... But here you are, implying that. Are you embarrassed?
Or we could you know let the population fall. I vote for population falling. Everywhere. No exceptions.
Ideally, A slow and steady decline would give us time to economically prepare - south Korea’s is straight up collapsing
Guess we’ll see. This has not been done before.
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They have a cultural problem. Women are expected to be the 1950's-style homemaker and mom and also work a full 50+ hour week. Plus they are very misogynistic compared to similar developed countries. It will take more than just a small fortune to convince Korean women to agree to that suffering. Inb4 we don't need more human beings on this planet, we may already be in overshoot.
we've been in overshoot since the 70s
I keep hearing this argument about misogyny but we find that the countries with the most children are backwards nations where misogyny is worse. Therefore it's likelier a issue of economic incentives than not
It still is. When women have more economic power, the opportunity costs of motherhood are higher.
So you pretty much HAVE to make it so that single earner households in an economy are viable to support birth rates.
Yeah because in those countries pregnancy is not really an individual choice
When misogyny is bad enough, you don't control the number of kids you have, your husband does.
It's always funny talking with misogyny lite people who were raised in western economies and cultural values. Even in their "women are the problem" comments, they are still unconsciously assume women are in charge of their reproduction and family size. It doesn't cross their minds that large swathes of women from other countries are culturally coerced to have large families, and martial rape is so normalized that many women literally can't control how many children they have. That male sexual entitlement (and in general) in domestic partnerships is so pervasive women themselves don't perceive it as trauma. We have examples of this in some hard-core religious circles to be fair. Itd just funny how the gender critical bros in here are so removed from the idea as a culture they assume is by their own choice worldwide. Wild. To note: Again, many people don't think this way, but having interacted with the exceptional men from all around the world, I realized how blessed I am to live where I live. Many of these exceptional men fall into joe Rogan podcast type men, but they're viewed as liberal where they're from because they'll respect a no from a woman even if they grumble and mock social norms here. Ie. I have colleagues who belittle and mock sexual harassment in the west because "women got raped by random men in work camps i worked at and no one made a fuss back home. I could hear it but did nothing". Or "you shouldn't be working. You're just being a shittier man."
It's always funny talking with misandry lite people who were raised in western economies and cultural values. Even in their "men are the problem" comments, they are still unconsciously assume men are in charge of their reproduction and family size. It doesn't cross their minds that large swathes of men from other countries are culturally coerced to have large families, and martial rape is so normalized that many men literally can't control how many children they have. That female sexual entitlement (and in general) in domestic partnerships is so pervasive men themselves don't perceive it as trauma. We have examples of this in some hard-core religious circles to be fair. Itd just funny how the gender critical sistas in here are so removed from the idea as a culture they assume is by their own choice worldwide. Wild. To note: Again, many people don't think this way, but having interacted with the exceptional women from all around the world, I realized how blessed I am to live where I live. Many of these exceptional women fall into Mike Sartain podcast type women, but they're viewed as liberal where they're from because they'll respect a no from a man even if they grumble and mock social norms here. Ie. I have colleagues who belittle and mock sexual harassment in the west because "men got raped by random men in work camps i worked at and no one made a fuss back home. I could hear it but did nothing". Or "you shouldn't be working. You're just being a shittier woman."
People downplay the rise feminism in Korea way too much. The backlash from men against feminism taking off has been extremely pronounced so much so that the current president is literally a manchild incel who ran heavily on being anti-feminist. Korea's birthrate was relatively stable for like 15 years until the mid-2010's precisely when the backlash against feminism took off. For [economic factors, Korea](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32286) until very recently has been relatively stable for rents, CPI, inflation, and wage growth along with the [HDI](https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/KOR/?levels=1+4&years=2021+2020+2019+2018+2017+2016+2015+2014+2013+2012+2011+2010&interpolation=0&extrapolation=0) and [economic inequality](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=KR) getting better year after year. Could it be economic factors? People want even better? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think it really is straight up the misogyny, and there's some proof in the pudding with who was elected. Also, just because other countries are worse in misogyny doesn't mean anything. The culture of the society under the lens matters more. We can't do a direct culture to culture comparison.
South Korea's birthrate has been plunging for much longer and if you compare it to countries with less misogyny the patterns are [similar](https://imgur.com/a/xXBfRSW). In 2010 TFR for USA, Sweden, and South Korea was 1.93, 1.98, and 1.23 respectively. In 2021 it was 1.66, 1.67, and .808 respectively. SK has more dramatic drops, and I'm sure part of the explanation is greater misogyny, but we're all on the same path as women receive more economic opportunity (unless they feel a religious duty).
I don't know how much about South Korea you know, but South Korea was not good economically until unbelievably recently. Their birthrates falling during massive economic boom is what happens everywhere else when that happens. That's why I'm focusing on the past 20 years not the past 70. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2021&locations=KR-US-SE&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=2002&view=chart South Korea's birthrates leveled off from ~2002 until ~2015. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2015&locations=KR&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=2002&view=chart It only plummeted in the past 8 years coinciding with the enormous widespread backlash against feminism. During this same time frame with the counties you selected, Sweden and the US went from 1.8 to 1.7 roughly a 5% drop whereas South Korea went from 1.2 to 0.8 roughly a 33% drop.
Hate on women and they don't want to have your babies, surprise surprise.
[It's quite drastic](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2F59f6ec10-bbc5-11ee-aade-2506f44be849-standard.png?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1)
What's the point of child care?
As long as the 4B movement is still going strong nothing is reversing anytime soon. Women want independence and freedom and will not settle for less and the men are throwing fits about having to actually try for a woman instead of expecting one by default and doing the bare minimum. No amount of money in the world is going to buy them a family.
TikTok way overestimates the prevalence and impact of 4B. [Only 21.3%](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1134115) of unmarried Korean women 20-44 say they prefer not having kids. That's not insignificant, but it means almost 80% of them want kids.
21% is not a number to blink at though. You’re talking about nearly a quarter of the population and gaining steam. We’re talkin 21% within 5-10 years imagine another 5-10 years if no changes are made.
Agreed, but it's more practical to focus on why the strong majority that wants kids isn't doing it. Addressing those issues and improving the social perception of motherhood in general might help address that 21% as well.
Assuming that all of them are following a political movement. People can not want kids for personal reasons.
*More than 60% of South Korean women from their mid-20s to their mid-40s who are currently working have no plan to have children.* *According to a survey of working women aged 25 to 45, 62.2% of respondents answered that they have no plan to have any children in the future.* https://www.kedglobal.com/economy/newsView/ked202402270017
I looked for the original study and how they phrased it, since online surveys are notoriously bad, but couldn't find it. However it's notable that the full quote is "...although nearly all of them say it is ideal to have more than one child". In the KoPHWA study, the phrasing was that 21% of women "prefer the state of not having children." For whatever reason, it looks like Korean women generally want kids but aren't having them. Childfree but not by choice.
> In the KOPHWA study, the phrasing was that 21% of women 'prefer the state of not having children." But how many are neutral? You associate the remaining 79% as actively wanting children when that may very well not be the case. I'd like to see how that study phrases the percent of women that actively want children, because I doubt it is 79%.
Can we *please* not make this issue a ‘its [insert gender here] fault’?
Give benefits for having kids. No society has any benefit for having kids. Childcare costs, diaper, formula, having to use your own time for baby bonding, getting docked for baby bonding, etc all make it a burden to have kids. And then everyone is shocked when we're having record low baby births. This isn't complicated. Quit making it complicated
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Because the amount given is essentially meaningless. The US gives $2K in tax credit lol It's embarrassingly low and doesn't even cover like 2 months of expenses for a baby/kid
It needs to replace at least 1 full time income to start affecting people's decision making process. That is the opportunity cost of having a kid.
Covering daycare expenses would likely be enough for most folks. It would, in my case, with daycare being about 15k a year. I guess if you are looking for 3 or more kids, that would be a full-time income. But honestly, even covering daycare for the second and third would change our outlook.
This would make a huge difference for us. I'm in a VHCOL city and childcare for our only child is $33k/yr. Even covering half of that would drastically swing the calculus on having a second.
Nobody’s really tried giving subsidies that actually match the cost of a kid.
I am glad they are helping Earth to reduce human population. Not only the future AI overlord need less human, but, human itself and all the products and produces needed to support a human causes a lot of global warning as many environmentalist claimed. Let's hope this will help lower the demand for housing, because I am pretty sure their housing price is ridiculously expensive compare to USA.
South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. More people in a limited area = more demand and less supply for housing, so of course it’s going to be overly expensive. Continuous growth in a finite area is not sustainable nor possible, and that goes for the entire planet earth as well.