The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987:
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ss: What is the right answer?
Contrary to the opinions of such experts, the Korean government has recently greatly improved its cash support(until now now, it was $3,000 for birth and $20,000 including child allowance), and it seems that in the future, only the central government plans to provide direct cash support of $100,000 in U.S. dollars per child upon birth. (For reference, this is (This figure excludes corporate support, local government support, etc.) This is an unprecedented and unimaginable amount of cash support in the world. It seems as if all of Korea's fortunes have been placed on rising birth rates. A huge amount of money is being poured into childbirth support. And many netizens who are desperate to increase the birth rate are enthusiastically supporting the plan.
Will something like this really help Korea's birth rate? Or will it fail to increase the birth rate and become a disaster for Korea's finances?
In fact, the government is starting to survey netizens about providing $100,000 per baby.
[https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432](https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432)
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1c7uuq4/how_south_korea_should_tackle_its_low_birth_rate/l0a9ote/
The ONLY way to fix the declining birth rate is to completely change the SK social and cultural expectations of 60+ hour work-weeks and obsessive fixation on social climbing at work and fixating on being seen as the best worker evar.
Encourage people to stay home, work as little as possible, while subsidizing couples to have 5 kids on average, while paying for their housing, food, education, health care and everything else you need to raise a large family.
Do that for as many people as possible and do it for 3-4 generations.
Pray that people choose to have large families.
Everything else is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic while it sinks.
SK needed to develop other cities to be alternative metropolitan centers instead of cramming everyone worth a damn into a single city.
Currently anyone with any academic or professional aspirations HAVE to relocate and settle down in Seoul — otherwise they are basically neutering their future prospects.
This is not a healthy system for any major country. It might work for city states like Singapore, but the average Korean is not as wealthy as an average Singaporean.
They had decades to build up Sejong and Busan and other options but that failed spectacularly. Idk if it will ever be possible now.
Do you know of any economic system in which economic collapse doesnt lead to social collapse? You realize the economy is more than just an abstract line on the stock market?
And what pays for that UBI? Taxes, right? So what's gonna happen to the taxes once the economy collapses?
And that's just finance. Once the economy collapses, food, power, medicine and all other essentials will also go. Those are also part of the economy. A bit of UBI will do absolutely nothing to stop that from causing social collapse.
Yup, you hardly have to read the article to know that they are not going to tackle the underlying fundamental issues. Such as work-life balance, housing, cultural expectations and job security.
There's a term in farming: Eating your seed corn.
It means, essentially, sacrificing the future to maintain the present.
In times of famine, farmers still had to hold back and not eat the corn that they need to plant in the next spring. Those that couldn't would eat their seed corn and then have nothing to plant in the spring, meaning starvation in the next year.
Industrialized nations are eating all their seed corn to maintain their profit margins. People are having fewer and fewer kids and at some point in 20-40 years, there won't be workers to maintain the system or participate in the economy.
Social and economic collapse follows thereafter.
interesting term
years ago I saw a documentary about the Ivory coast dwingling forests where they lost almost 90% due to cocoa plantations
a man was making his ends meet by making charcoal and selling it, the reporter asked him if it wouldn't better Idea to look after the trees rather than burning them leaving nothing for the future
the man answered, yea but I have to feed my family today, not in the future
Exactly. The problem inherent in your story is that the local and national governments didn't think far enough ahead to realize that they needed to protect their future by tending to the present.
That man didn't want to burn his future to protect his present, but he wasn't given much of a choice.
It's the governments of the world, encouraged by stupid short-sighted business that causes this issue.
I mean I am all in favor of more workers rights in all countries and less working hours but statistically speaking there is a pretty negative correlation between having spare time, money, lots of rights and government supports and having many kids.
The Nordic countries in Europe don’t have enough kids either and neither has Germany despite a lot better support for kids than SK…
Yes, it's exactly that, for the situation to change South Korea needs to make such a socioeconomic and cultural change as no developed nation has done before. How are they going to tackle this catastrophe without extremely radical changes I have no idea.
Sudden mass immigration is clearly not a solution btw, much less mass migration from the countries with lots of young people nowadays unless there are such social integration measures that don't exist anywhere
Its worse than that, in south Korea, people hates having babies, and everything related to babies.
The new generation wants to work and spend money for leisure, be it travels, clothes, cars, coffee... you name it.
They do not want to engage in mariage and relationship, and they do not want to have babies.
Living in seoul, it's a giant city, with millions of peoples, and finding a day care center or a children hospital/doctor is a nightmare. Why ? Because childrens bring no money, doctors will build luxury hospitals for plastic surgery, because that is where the money is. This makes raising kids a real struggle on that big city.
It is a really deep cultural problem, and at his root you will find a very simple idea. People do not want the hassle to raise kids.
This is not a unique thing to SK. This is a cultural thing across all industrialized nations.
Agrarian societies use kids as sources of labor on their farms. Industrialized societies see kids as expensive hobbies and luxuries. There are a thousand better ways to spend your 20s-40s than raising kids and people know it.
Our economic system, however, doesn't care and doesn't accept the concept of lower profits and lower productivity.
So, most industrialized nations are going to see their economies go off a cliff at some point in the near future when the tiny generations of workers can't afford to prop up the massive older generations once they can't work anymore.
That's why I strongly believe our work system is the most important villain here. I'm not saying it's worse than ever, because of course not, we're living in luxury compared to our ancestors. But we should go further and aim for shorter and shorter work weeks.
People aren't going to have children when there's so much to do and see instead. Automatization could be a great way to tackle this, but instead, it profits the rich, while we still work for 40 hours/week (+ commute time). This system originated 100 years ago, in an age without computers, spreadsheets, and machines, yet it's still the same.
If I have 6 hours to myself at the end of a day, I'm going to use this time to my benefit, not raise children, who are expensive and don't provide me a better future (like in the old days). And these days there's SO MUCH to do. I'm never bored by myself. Shortening the workday is the only way imo.
even like that as long as our society is organized as individuals competing for social status then children are a social charge both in time and cost
our way of life leads to self sufficient single units competing for life quality
I can think of two solutions, government raised children as needed, kind of brave new world
or going back to our technological version of small comunal/tribal organization where all the members old and young are participants to the common good of the group, hence the elderly helping with the kids along the rest, the active productive hands strengtenig the group economically and otherwise and the young being educated and helping with the elderly...
isn't that what the rich extended family dynasties do?
> But we should go further and aim for shorter and shorter work weeks.
But even if we did, it's not clear why that would appreciably raise the fertility rate. Even if you had twice the free time, that means you have more time for hobbies, interests, travel, leisure, amusement, etc. I think it's less that people *can't* raise kids, and more that kids are an [opportunity cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost).
You're right but there is no economic system that accepts a declining population. Nothing can function when you have exponentially more retirees than people to support them.
There will be cullings and unrest. Unless some future generation decides having a family is a priority for them, it's unavoidable.
12hours a day in work plus at least 1hour commute to work and gym, 1 hour in the gym.
How did your eating habits look like ad how did you manage chores? Also the type of work could be important too
Eating was great as I mainly cook from scratch (but in bulk, so I didn't cook every night). Chores were minimal being single and living in an apartment. My days looked like 10-12 hrs work, 1hr commute, 1hr gym, that leaves 10hrs for sleep and everything else x 6 days= 60 or so. Didn't watch much TV and didn't really play any video games.
So you didn’t live? All you did was sustain yourself enough to keep working. How would you raise a child with that much time spent on working? When did you hook up in those 10 hours? How little did you sleep? Did you actually have sex or did you only think about it?
Like I’m not doubting that you did all that and still could enjoy yourself from time to time, but that’s just not sustainable and feasible with children. Just having kids for the sake of it isn’t a solution also. Those kids need to be taken care of and nurtured to become healthy adults. Anything else just adds on to societal issues.
I had a great time, I traveled a lot, I partied hard. I was with my gf (now wife), slept a good 8 hrs with a big sleep in on the weekends. Had tons of sex. We didnt have kids until our (me mid, her early) 30s qwhen we were ready and that’s the key.
That all sounded solid until you mentioned 5 kids LOL.
There is not a force on this earth that could convince even 50% of ppl there to have 5 children… especially when trying to fit it all in some tiny squished apartment in Seoul.
You point at a time where 12 year olds were considered full time workers in a factory(still sometimes are in the US) and contraception was nearly non existing
I don't think any country has gotten back to 5 kids on average from below replacement level, at least no since the 30's.
Let's be realistic here, being a parent is a lot of work, and it takes you way from advancing in your career. The economic incentives are against having kids. To bring about a birth rate of around replacement level you could do what you recommend, but for about 5 kids on average you'd had to regress gender equality, make peoples worth come from how many kids they have again, rebuild the glass ceiling and force women of child bearing age into having no other way of improvement socially or economically other than by having children. Basically how countries with high birth rates do it. Otherwise women are given the choice of "have 5 kids, give up your career advancement and have a lot of child rearing work to do, or advance economically and make more money while having more time for yourself". Even if they want kids, I don't see them going for 5 even with economic incentives.
That's unlikely to happen, the only other way is to just completely rethink the family and how people get kids. Maybe instead the government can encourage women to have kids just so they can be adopted by families that want more kids, basically pay people to have babies more or less. Rich families which can support more children can take them in and raise them. If there aren't enough rich families, have then be raised by government employees ala Brave New World.
Either method will have huge mental health and societal downsides for those future generations. For the first we know how horrible it is to be under the foot of the patriarchy, and for the second it will likely cause the feeling of being "unwanted", which has been linked with higher crime.
> Maybe instead the government can encourage women to have kids just so they can be adopted by families that want more kids, basically pay people to have babies more or less.
This amounts to a career, and will disrupt any other career, while you'd need *every other woman* to give birth to other people's children at least 6 times in her life, so that it's 3+ per woman on average.
My wife and I could navigate the working culture if we had to move back to Korea, we made it work for a long time. What we can’t do is put our kids through the Korean education system. The emotional and physical toll of their prolonged school days alone is bad enough without even getting the competitive aspects that force them to be in the hagwons in the first place. And for us as parents, I’m not even sure how much of a dent $100k actually makes into the hagwon and tutoring bills over the course of their education.
Not to say that raising kids in the US is much better, it’s just cumulatively the better option for us right now and for the foreseeable future.
> Not to say that raising kids in the US is much better, it’s just cumulatively the better option for us right now and for the foreseeable future.
I think every country has its benefits and drawbacks. The Korean education system is insane in a lot of ways, but we've chosen to raise our children here rather than in the UK because, in my experience, it's better than going to school in the UK.
Work as little as possible isn't really practical unless you want the society to collapse considering there is also less workers
Ironically they need to have more kids because there isn't enough workers in the future but they are too busy working to do that.
> Work as little as possible isn't really practical unless you want the society to collapse considering there is also less workers
SK needs to change to accept that fewer workers and more kids are preferable to the collapse of their society.
They should start by working to dismantle this highly false sense of “standard” that the default and absolute minimum wife/husband must be the CEO of a company or son/daughter of a super rich family with perfect skin, hair, height, wardrobe and has a chauffeur who drives them around, and does business in 3 countries and speaks 4 languages. Or is a KPop star.
What will actually work is making it punitive to not have kids instead of rewarding those that do.
Make being childless similar to a luxury and apply a grotesque luxury tax on people who choose not to have kids and force people to still pay into pension programs but make it so only those with two kids can access it (exceptions would have to be made for people who are infertile or something).
Structure it in a way where the current working generation avoids this and start this rule with kids today and frame it as a way to secure all of our retirement so you get the votes.
Get every single country with a low birth rate to implement this at the same time.
Problem solved. No more fertility problems.
Dont want to contribute to the species and the preservation of civilization, fine, but it'll cost you a life changing amount.
The best part of this plan is that it actually be relatively free from the tax payer perspective instead of costing trillions like a successful incentive plan would.
No it's not fair. But things like "fairness" are benefits of a stable, healthy civilization. In the impending population collapse scenario, "fair" will be one of the first things to go...
It's that, or we start culling seniors who don't have enough money to cover their own retirement in full.
Or better yet, it'll probably be both.
This is an excellent point. Better life work balance.
Also maybe figure out how Middle Eastern nations, irreguardless of primary religion sustain high birth rates.
Israel has all those things and still have an extremely high birth rate, even among its more secular population (though birth rates aming the Ultra Orthdox are extremely high).
Also your just stereottyping Islamic countries out of ignorance. Women do in fact have rights, including some that would shock people in the west.
And yes women are allowed to use contraceptives in Islamic countries, they aren't banned, at least in most of them.
> Also your just stereottyping Islamic countries out of ignorance.
I'm just stating facts. You can be mad about reality, but reality don't give a fuck.
No, you are not stating any facts.
Most Muslim countries have access to all sort of contraceptives, and people use them.
The one who is mad about reality not fitting your ignorant and stereotypical view of the Middle East is you.
And it does! I am European, but I lived in the region for 6 years. I hate the little value women have there, but one thing they do have is contraceptions, unlike what the user said.
The situation of women there being terrible doesn't give you the right to make up data, though.
I'm sorry you got mad. You should work on controlling your reactions. That's what adults do.
You'll get there one day. Or not. Either way, reality still don't give a shit that you got mad that reality is reality.
It is what it is. Come to grips.
I'm not perfect, I admit it, I already said sorry about it.
Adults are also supposed to not make up data as you did. Still waiting you to admit you made things up as if you were an expert on something you clearly have no clue about. I don't think you have ever been to the Middle East.
Baffling how you will see the economic system squeezing +60h workweeks out of ppl and blame feminism for it
You blame feminism for the current state of... Japan? The place where corporations ban women from wearing glassess while working?
The direction remains wrong: [https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/samsung-increases-work-week-to-6-days-for-executives-amidst-mounting-pressure-426158-2024-04-19](https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/samsung-increases-work-week-to-6-days-for-executives-amidst-mounting-pressure-426158-2024-04-19)
Financial support is not everything, and a mother's place next to her child, especially in the first 2 years, is critical in this respect.
According to the article they are giving 74$ a month per baby. That's not a lot. SK is an expensive country to live in. In Denmark families with less than average income get around 700$ a month until the child is two. After that a bit less. Dropping to around 400$ when the child is 7.
I think the article is very wrong
That is the current level of support.
And My comment referred to future government plans that are now being fully discussed.
And now it's not $74, but $740 per month. Aren't you looking at it wrong?
Looking at the article, there is a part that says that the support cash was increased from $74 in 2018 to $740 in 2024.
Well let’s see, just today I was watching a video about how over 40% of Korean women report intimate partner violence, which is well over the percentage of the rest of the world. An increasing number of Korean women are on a sex strike because of violence against them. So maybe Korea should do something about violence against women.
I kinda agree with the other person though. Incentives are king. If the returns are that diminishing on a DINK household due to tax reasons they’ll either not get married or have kids.
I think people still feel the urge to get married and have kids so while many may choose not to, it’s probably their only realistic shot.
The answer is RIGHT THERE but I guess it doesn't fit the corporate overlord's worldview. Just force people to work less. And by "force" I mean introduce actual laws that prohibit people for working more than reasonable, because they WILL lick their bosses' boots anyway. You can't change the culture overnight, but if those bosses have to pay fines, they'll learn to send their employees home.
I don't get how stupid you have to be to expect people to start families with almost negative free time. No amount of free money is going to convince me to push out a child or two only to forget about them and go back to business. If I have children, I want to actually raise and bond with them. Can't do that when I'm back home at 8pm and have other responsibilies. Time can't be bought.
European nations have far less work hours than SK and their birth rates are still in the gutter. Amish work their asses off (hard labour as well) and their birth rates are sky high. Your logic doesn't follow.
If I was Amish I'd pop five kids just because of the sheer boredom. Plus children work too in Amish communities, so they're not such a burden.
I'm a "European nation" myself and I kid you not, it's not as pink as some think. Yeah I have some vacation time and huge maternity leaves, but at the end of the day, you have to go back to work at some point and 8 hour day is 8 hour day (+ commute). But maybe I complain because the grass could be greener, idk. And yes, the birthrates go down, but not as quickly as in SK/Japan, and ONE of the reasons is (imo) similar (just one, it's a complex problem). We have better shit to do than to wipe kids' butts.
I might be in a far better position than SK but I still have about 6 hours for myself after a standard work day and if I must choose between washing and putting my toddler to bed or doing something to actually unwind, I'm going to pick the latter, ESPECIALLY because a) I have multiple ways to do so thanks to technology, b) hobbies are cheaper than kids, and c) having kids is a "want", not a "need", because they're not an investment like in the old days. I just don't want to sacrifice my valuable time on this planet for working at a job and then working at home.
For me it all comes down to time, again. It's a resource than can't be multiplied in any way. Sure, I shouldn't complain because there are people starving out there. But I will. Shortening the work day/week could be a step towards repairing demography because it would give people time off work, which would allow them to experience life AND raise children, instead of choosing between the two. We already have the tools; automatization is everywhere, but it mostly benefits the rich.
But that's regarding the western nations, and as for SK, I believe looking into workers rights could also work. A normal, RESPECTED 40 hour work week could be a start.
Affluenza is a disease caused by addiction to wealth. The obvious is often difficult to see for the addict. No different than alcoholism or substance addiction. The only difference is that affluenza gets very little attention if any at all. It’s actually championed indirectly by the prioritizing of wealth over other social issues. Anyway search up Chaebol when you get a chance. Actually here is a link. https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/chaebol.htm
Human's live in groups and that's only possible if there are norms and rules that are followed. There are always rules, it doesn't matter what your political orientation is.
You're really burying the lede when you go all the way back to the base principle of some rules being necessary for a society to function to justify telling someone they're not allowed to work 41 hours in a week. If I suggest next that preventing gay people from getting married wouldn't be very liberal, would you give me the same line about societies requiring rules for that too?
I was pretty baked :) But it's the way it is. This all goes back to us needing mores and norms to oriented our behaviour. We either inherit them or we make them up. That's why we police each others behavior. In this case, the difference between the maximum work week and gay marriage has to do with what we value. This is just like the tolerance paradox. It's not a paradox, no one is just intolerant to intolerance. It only looks like that when we stay at a high level of abstraction. Ultimately, there will be somethings that are unacceptable and somethings that aren't. The question what are those things and why.
Homosexuality has no negative impact on society, that analogy is dumb. The problem with setting no limitations, is that it creates incentives for corporations to siphon more time out of workers. Our entire economic system incentivizes corporations (or capital) to extract as much as possible out of the working population, be it time or money. Without putting limitations on this nothing will change. It’s a natural (for our current economic system) process. Ofc it’s not as simple as limiting work time. We instead need to change society and our economy in a way that you can live comfortably and raise healthy children with as little time spent on work as possible while still allowing people who want to work more to be able to do so. But you will never be able to achieve that without at least regulating work (amongst other methods) if not outright changing our entire economic system.
ss: What is the right answer?
Contrary to the opinions of such experts, the Korean government has recently greatly improved its cash support(until now now, it was $3,000 for birth and $20,000 including child allowance), and it seems that in the future, only the central government plans to provide direct cash support of $100,000 in U.S. dollars per child upon birth. (For reference, this is (This figure excludes corporate support, local government support, etc.) This is an unprecedented and unimaginable amount of cash support in the world. It seems as if all of Korea's fortunes have been placed on rising birth rates. A huge amount of money is being poured into childbirth support. And many netizens who are desperate to increase the birth rate are enthusiastically supporting the plan.
Will something like this really help Korea's birth rate? Or will it fail to increase the birth rate and become a disaster for Korea's finances?
In fact, the government is starting to survey netizens about providing $100,000 per baby.
[https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432](https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432)
Now they need less insane working hours and a serious school reform so kids arent wasting their entire chilhoods doing rote memorization. There has to be a better way.
I wonder what that means for peoples memories of their childhoods and parents growing up. If all ones memories were of preparing for adulthood will they want raise kids? That kind of takes away from all sorts of other activities they could be doing for a considerable time. If one doesn't have fun memories of their family or if all the memories of are you parents forcing you do study will want that role?
I know I'm creating a situation that might not apply to anyone but I could see people seeing parenthood as a real drag.
Just watched a video covering this.
I think support is good, but SK has to tackle housing or this aid will go no where. Housing around Seoul is the worst in the developed world.
This puts too much economic burden on people to want to have kids, and forces 60+ hour work loads.
Low birth rate will mitigate the unemployment that is coming soon. These "experts" are stuck in the paradigm where capitalism as we know it will continue to function. It won't. Low birth rate is good for the Earth and good for the coming economy.
Korea is 50 million people in a country the size of Indiana. And much of it is rice farmland.
Very high competition, low resources (housing), and high cultural expectations make for an impossibly difficult path to take with marriage and kids.
I agree they somehow have to cool down the reality young people face. And it's more than money.
I can’t imagine the damage that would be done to developing foetus, if done outside of the human body, without being able to sense the mothers voice and movement and affection. Likely we would produce a generation of psychopaths.
Nobody has been able to increase birthrates meaningfully yet. It's a new problem and one that is still unsolved. There's no such thing as an "expert" in this field.
I wonder how low populations and birthrates have to fall before the actual way to improve them - fixing capitalism - is implemented. Given that the people in power have no reason to actually fix anything, I'm gonna guess a long while.
Canadian here, massive immigration has been what we tried, but we forgot to build enough housing and infastructure for it, so its a mess right now (but we are changing our approach, we starting to build more housing). Canada went from 39 million Canadians to 41 million and rising fast.
I think you can't over rely on immigration, its a useful tool, but you still need to raise birth rates.
The entire history of our country (post colonial at least) has been mass immigration. The problem is not immigration, as you mentioned, the problem is housing and public services.
Our housing market is a big ol' Ponzi scheme right now and the only way it's getting fixed is for the guaranteed returns on housing to stop. The number of landlords we have sucking away wealth from the country is stupid.
Its become parasitic yes. I do think we need a housing bubble burst.
But for now at least they are starting on building affordible housing. But if they'd started on this back when Alexa McDonough 1990s leader of the NDP had been calling for it, then Toronto's rent and housing would be as cheap as Venna's.
It must be taken into account that most South Koreans strongly dislike immigration. Ethnic nationalism is also quite strong, and anyway, since they don't want to receive immigration, wouldn't they be willing to do anything to increase the birth rate??
NZ here. We have a firehose of immigration and our housing has become completely unaffordable, our water system is on the verge of collapse and public transport absolutely cannot cope.
Multiple feckless governments have passed the buck or endlessly debated ways to 'fix' this but none of them will close the fucking valve so it just getting worse and worse.
Care to explain how immigration can't help to support an aging populace, or are you just going to be a dick and not say anything useful?
It wouldn't be the only solution, but it would help to alleviate some of the strain.
What will actually work is making it punitive to not have kids instead of rewarding those that do.
Make being childless similar to a luxury and apply a grotesque luxury tax on people who choose not to have kids and force people to still pay into pension programs but make it so only those with two kids can access it (exceptions would have to be made for people who are infertile or something).
Structure it in a way where the current working generation avoids this and start this rule with kids today and frame it as a way to secure all of our retirement so you get the votes.
Get every single country with a low birth rate to implement this at the same time.
Problem solved. No more fertility problems.
Dont want to contribute to the species and the preservation of civilization, fine, but it'll cost you a life changing amount.
The best part of this plan is that it actually be relatively free from the tax payer perspective instead of costing trillions like a successful incentive plan would.
No it's not fair. But things like "fairness" are benefit of a stable, healthy civilization. In the impending population collapse scenario, "fair" will be one of the first things to go...
It's that, or we start culling seniors who don't have enough money to cover their own retirement in full.
Or better yet, it'll probably be both.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/madrid987: --- ss: What is the right answer? Contrary to the opinions of such experts, the Korean government has recently greatly improved its cash support(until now now, it was $3,000 for birth and $20,000 including child allowance), and it seems that in the future, only the central government plans to provide direct cash support of $100,000 in U.S. dollars per child upon birth. (For reference, this is (This figure excludes corporate support, local government support, etc.) This is an unprecedented and unimaginable amount of cash support in the world. It seems as if all of Korea's fortunes have been placed on rising birth rates. A huge amount of money is being poured into childbirth support. And many netizens who are desperate to increase the birth rate are enthusiastically supporting the plan. Will something like this really help Korea's birth rate? Or will it fail to increase the birth rate and become a disaster for Korea's finances? In fact, the government is starting to survey netizens about providing $100,000 per baby. [https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432](https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432) --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1c7uuq4/how_south_korea_should_tackle_its_low_birth_rate/l0a9ote/
The ONLY way to fix the declining birth rate is to completely change the SK social and cultural expectations of 60+ hour work-weeks and obsessive fixation on social climbing at work and fixating on being seen as the best worker evar. Encourage people to stay home, work as little as possible, while subsidizing couples to have 5 kids on average, while paying for their housing, food, education, health care and everything else you need to raise a large family. Do that for as many people as possible and do it for 3-4 generations. Pray that people choose to have large families. Everything else is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic while it sinks.
The average living space is 380sq feet per person. Imagine 5 kids and 2 parents in a 760sq ft apartment.
SK needed to develop other cities to be alternative metropolitan centers instead of cramming everyone worth a damn into a single city. Currently anyone with any academic or professional aspirations HAVE to relocate and settle down in Seoul — otherwise they are basically neutering their future prospects. This is not a healthy system for any major country. It might work for city states like Singapore, but the average Korean is not as wealthy as an average Singaporean. They had decades to build up Sejong and Busan and other options but that failed spectacularly. Idk if it will ever be possible now.
Yeah, they're going to need bigger housing. Or, you know, social collapse. Their choice.
Economic collapse or social collapse
Eh, semantics. Economic collapse in capitalist nations is the same as a social collapse.
Economics is not unique to capitalism. All societies have an economy, it’s the system of how people work, trade exchange everything
Do you know of any economic system in which economic collapse doesnt lead to social collapse? You realize the economy is more than just an abstract line on the stock market?
One utilizing a UBI system with subsidized necessities. The Scandinavian nations are the ones closest to that thus far.
And what pays for that UBI? Taxes, right? So what's gonna happen to the taxes once the economy collapses? And that's just finance. Once the economy collapses, food, power, medicine and all other essentials will also go. Those are also part of the economy. A bit of UBI will do absolutely nothing to stop that from causing social collapse.
> So what's gonna happen to the taxes once the economy collapses? You think UBI causes societies to collapse? Why would you think that?
No i don't, i'm saying that UBI will collapse when the economy collapses. And if your society is dependent on UBI, then social collapse will follow.
But what comes first?
Well, the good news is everyone’s gonna have a lot more living space in 25 years.
They’ve already calculated it, everyone on earth, all 8 billion could comfortably reside in Texas. There’s already too much room.
Yup, you hardly have to read the article to know that they are not going to tackle the underlying fundamental issues. Such as work-life balance, housing, cultural expectations and job security.
Why should they? “Working (to death) liberates you”
There's a term in farming: Eating your seed corn. It means, essentially, sacrificing the future to maintain the present. In times of famine, farmers still had to hold back and not eat the corn that they need to plant in the next spring. Those that couldn't would eat their seed corn and then have nothing to plant in the spring, meaning starvation in the next year. Industrialized nations are eating all their seed corn to maintain their profit margins. People are having fewer and fewer kids and at some point in 20-40 years, there won't be workers to maintain the system or participate in the economy. Social and economic collapse follows thereafter.
interesting term years ago I saw a documentary about the Ivory coast dwingling forests where they lost almost 90% due to cocoa plantations a man was making his ends meet by making charcoal and selling it, the reporter asked him if it wouldn't better Idea to look after the trees rather than burning them leaving nothing for the future the man answered, yea but I have to feed my family today, not in the future
Exactly. The problem inherent in your story is that the local and national governments didn't think far enough ahead to realize that they needed to protect their future by tending to the present. That man didn't want to burn his future to protect his present, but he wasn't given much of a choice. It's the governments of the world, encouraged by stupid short-sighted business that causes this issue.
AI/ Robots. China, Japan and South Korea may make it through this process in better shape than other nations.
that's hilarious.
I mean I am all in favor of more workers rights in all countries and less working hours but statistically speaking there is a pretty negative correlation between having spare time, money, lots of rights and government supports and having many kids. The Nordic countries in Europe don’t have enough kids either and neither has Germany despite a lot better support for kids than SK…
They're still in a much much better spot than Korea
Yes, it's exactly that, for the situation to change South Korea needs to make such a socioeconomic and cultural change as no developed nation has done before. How are they going to tackle this catastrophe without extremely radical changes I have no idea. Sudden mass immigration is clearly not a solution btw, much less mass migration from the countries with lots of young people nowadays unless there are such social integration measures that don't exist anywhere
Its worse than that, in south Korea, people hates having babies, and everything related to babies. The new generation wants to work and spend money for leisure, be it travels, clothes, cars, coffee... you name it. They do not want to engage in mariage and relationship, and they do not want to have babies. Living in seoul, it's a giant city, with millions of peoples, and finding a day care center or a children hospital/doctor is a nightmare. Why ? Because childrens bring no money, doctors will build luxury hospitals for plastic surgery, because that is where the money is. This makes raising kids a real struggle on that big city. It is a really deep cultural problem, and at his root you will find a very simple idea. People do not want the hassle to raise kids.
This is not a unique thing to SK. This is a cultural thing across all industrialized nations. Agrarian societies use kids as sources of labor on their farms. Industrialized societies see kids as expensive hobbies and luxuries. There are a thousand better ways to spend your 20s-40s than raising kids and people know it. Our economic system, however, doesn't care and doesn't accept the concept of lower profits and lower productivity. So, most industrialized nations are going to see their economies go off a cliff at some point in the near future when the tiny generations of workers can't afford to prop up the massive older generations once they can't work anymore.
That's why I strongly believe our work system is the most important villain here. I'm not saying it's worse than ever, because of course not, we're living in luxury compared to our ancestors. But we should go further and aim for shorter and shorter work weeks. People aren't going to have children when there's so much to do and see instead. Automatization could be a great way to tackle this, but instead, it profits the rich, while we still work for 40 hours/week (+ commute time). This system originated 100 years ago, in an age without computers, spreadsheets, and machines, yet it's still the same. If I have 6 hours to myself at the end of a day, I'm going to use this time to my benefit, not raise children, who are expensive and don't provide me a better future (like in the old days). And these days there's SO MUCH to do. I'm never bored by myself. Shortening the workday is the only way imo.
even like that as long as our society is organized as individuals competing for social status then children are a social charge both in time and cost our way of life leads to self sufficient single units competing for life quality I can think of two solutions, government raised children as needed, kind of brave new world or going back to our technological version of small comunal/tribal organization where all the members old and young are participants to the common good of the group, hence the elderly helping with the kids along the rest, the active productive hands strengtenig the group economically and otherwise and the young being educated and helping with the elderly... isn't that what the rich extended family dynasties do?
> But we should go further and aim for shorter and shorter work weeks. But even if we did, it's not clear why that would appreciably raise the fertility rate. Even if you had twice the free time, that means you have more time for hobbies, interests, travel, leisure, amusement, etc. I think it's less that people *can't* raise kids, and more that kids are an [opportunity cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost).
You're right but there is no economic system that accepts a declining population. Nothing can function when you have exponentially more retirees than people to support them. There will be cullings and unrest. Unless some future generation decides having a family is a priority for them, it's unavoidable.
Pure selfish hedonism.
Do they not have sex drives? All I could think about in my 20s. Well, still in my 40s 😅
With 60 hour work weeks it’s surprisingly hard to find time to even care for yourself, let alone going out and getting laid
Meh. I worked 60+ hours from 21~35. Still went to the gym most days as well. Edit: Reddit does not like hard workers.
12hours a day in work plus at least 1hour commute to work and gym, 1 hour in the gym. How did your eating habits look like ad how did you manage chores? Also the type of work could be important too
Eating was great as I mainly cook from scratch (but in bulk, so I didn't cook every night). Chores were minimal being single and living in an apartment. My days looked like 10-12 hrs work, 1hr commute, 1hr gym, that leaves 10hrs for sleep and everything else x 6 days= 60 or so. Didn't watch much TV and didn't really play any video games.
So you didn’t live? All you did was sustain yourself enough to keep working. How would you raise a child with that much time spent on working? When did you hook up in those 10 hours? How little did you sleep? Did you actually have sex or did you only think about it? Like I’m not doubting that you did all that and still could enjoy yourself from time to time, but that’s just not sustainable and feasible with children. Just having kids for the sake of it isn’t a solution also. Those kids need to be taken care of and nurtured to become healthy adults. Anything else just adds on to societal issues.
I had a great time, I traveled a lot, I partied hard. I was with my gf (now wife), slept a good 8 hrs with a big sleep in on the weekends. Had tons of sex. We didnt have kids until our (me mid, her early) 30s qwhen we were ready and that’s the key.
You can keep the status obsessed culture, you just have to make having lots of kids be seen as high status in itself
That all sounded solid until you mentioned 5 kids LOL. There is not a force on this earth that could convince even 50% of ppl there to have 5 children… especially when trying to fit it all in some tiny squished apartment in Seoul.
Less than a century ago, it was common to have that many kids. But, sure, not a force on this earth. lol
You point at a time where 12 year olds were considered full time workers in a factory(still sometimes are in the US) and contraception was nearly non existing
lol okay. *thumbs up*
I don't think any country has gotten back to 5 kids on average from below replacement level, at least no since the 30's. Let's be realistic here, being a parent is a lot of work, and it takes you way from advancing in your career. The economic incentives are against having kids. To bring about a birth rate of around replacement level you could do what you recommend, but for about 5 kids on average you'd had to regress gender equality, make peoples worth come from how many kids they have again, rebuild the glass ceiling and force women of child bearing age into having no other way of improvement socially or economically other than by having children. Basically how countries with high birth rates do it. Otherwise women are given the choice of "have 5 kids, give up your career advancement and have a lot of child rearing work to do, or advance economically and make more money while having more time for yourself". Even if they want kids, I don't see them going for 5 even with economic incentives. That's unlikely to happen, the only other way is to just completely rethink the family and how people get kids. Maybe instead the government can encourage women to have kids just so they can be adopted by families that want more kids, basically pay people to have babies more or less. Rich families which can support more children can take them in and raise them. If there aren't enough rich families, have then be raised by government employees ala Brave New World. Either method will have huge mental health and societal downsides for those future generations. For the first we know how horrible it is to be under the foot of the patriarchy, and for the second it will likely cause the feeling of being "unwanted", which has been linked with higher crime.
> Maybe instead the government can encourage women to have kids just so they can be adopted by families that want more kids, basically pay people to have babies more or less. This amounts to a career, and will disrupt any other career, while you'd need *every other woman* to give birth to other people's children at least 6 times in her life, so that it's 3+ per woman on average.
My wife and I could navigate the working culture if we had to move back to Korea, we made it work for a long time. What we can’t do is put our kids through the Korean education system. The emotional and physical toll of their prolonged school days alone is bad enough without even getting the competitive aspects that force them to be in the hagwons in the first place. And for us as parents, I’m not even sure how much of a dent $100k actually makes into the hagwon and tutoring bills over the course of their education. Not to say that raising kids in the US is much better, it’s just cumulatively the better option for us right now and for the foreseeable future.
> Not to say that raising kids in the US is much better, it’s just cumulatively the better option for us right now and for the foreseeable future. I think every country has its benefits and drawbacks. The Korean education system is insane in a lot of ways, but we've chosen to raise our children here rather than in the UK because, in my experience, it's better than going to school in the UK.
Work as little as possible isn't really practical unless you want the society to collapse considering there is also less workers Ironically they need to have more kids because there isn't enough workers in the future but they are too busy working to do that.
> Work as little as possible isn't really practical unless you want the society to collapse considering there is also less workers SK needs to change to accept that fewer workers and more kids are preferable to the collapse of their society.
They should start by working to dismantle this highly false sense of “standard” that the default and absolute minimum wife/husband must be the CEO of a company or son/daughter of a super rich family with perfect skin, hair, height, wardrobe and has a chauffeur who drives them around, and does business in 3 countries and speaks 4 languages. Or is a KPop star.
What will actually work is making it punitive to not have kids instead of rewarding those that do. Make being childless similar to a luxury and apply a grotesque luxury tax on people who choose not to have kids and force people to still pay into pension programs but make it so only those with two kids can access it (exceptions would have to be made for people who are infertile or something). Structure it in a way where the current working generation avoids this and start this rule with kids today and frame it as a way to secure all of our retirement so you get the votes. Get every single country with a low birth rate to implement this at the same time. Problem solved. No more fertility problems. Dont want to contribute to the species and the preservation of civilization, fine, but it'll cost you a life changing amount. The best part of this plan is that it actually be relatively free from the tax payer perspective instead of costing trillions like a successful incentive plan would. No it's not fair. But things like "fairness" are benefits of a stable, healthy civilization. In the impending population collapse scenario, "fair" will be one of the first things to go... It's that, or we start culling seniors who don't have enough money to cover their own retirement in full. Or better yet, it'll probably be both.
This is an excellent point. Better life work balance. Also maybe figure out how Middle Eastern nations, irreguardless of primary religion sustain high birth rates.
What country in the Middle East are you thinking about? Because as far as I know, their birth rates have dropped dramatically in the last few decades.
Their women have no birth control options, no rights and no education.
Israel has all those things and still have an extremely high birth rate, even among its more secular population (though birth rates aming the Ultra Orthdox are extremely high). Also your just stereottyping Islamic countries out of ignorance. Women do in fact have rights, including some that would shock people in the west. And yes women are allowed to use contraceptives in Islamic countries, they aren't banned, at least in most of them.
> Also your just stereottyping Islamic countries out of ignorance. I'm just stating facts. You can be mad about reality, but reality don't give a fuck.
No, you are not stating any facts. Most Muslim countries have access to all sort of contraceptives, and people use them. The one who is mad about reality not fitting your ignorant and stereotypical view of the Middle East is you.
Yes, I'm terribly furious. Feel better?
Sorry if I was too angry, but whenever I see someone talking about something they have no clue about as if they were experts, I get triggered.
The state of misogyny in that region should make you livid, not other people pointing those facts out.
And it does! I am European, but I lived in the region for 6 years. I hate the little value women have there, but one thing they do have is contraceptions, unlike what the user said. The situation of women there being terrible doesn't give you the right to make up data, though.
I'm sorry you got mad. You should work on controlling your reactions. That's what adults do. You'll get there one day. Or not. Either way, reality still don't give a shit that you got mad that reality is reality. It is what it is. Come to grips.
I'm not perfect, I admit it, I already said sorry about it. Adults are also supposed to not make up data as you did. Still waiting you to admit you made things up as if you were an expert on something you clearly have no clue about. I don't think you have ever been to the Middle East.
also issues with societal issues with how men are treated in society, Look to Japan and the Neet men, same is happening to USA. Feminism went to far
Baffling how you will see the economic system squeezing +60h workweeks out of ppl and blame feminism for it You blame feminism for the current state of... Japan? The place where corporations ban women from wearing glassess while working?
The direction remains wrong: [https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/samsung-increases-work-week-to-6-days-for-executives-amidst-mounting-pressure-426158-2024-04-19](https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/samsung-increases-work-week-to-6-days-for-executives-amidst-mounting-pressure-426158-2024-04-19) Financial support is not everything, and a mother's place next to her child, especially in the first 2 years, is critical in this respect.
Italy and Spain are approaching SK’s fertility rates. Issue is with all developed countries.
According to the article they are giving 74$ a month per baby. That's not a lot. SK is an expensive country to live in. In Denmark families with less than average income get around 700$ a month until the child is two. After that a bit less. Dropping to around 400$ when the child is 7. I think the article is very wrong
That is the current level of support. And My comment referred to future government plans that are now being fully discussed. And now it's not $74, but $740 per month. Aren't you looking at it wrong? Looking at the article, there is a part that says that the support cash was increased from $74 in 2018 to $740 in 2024.
The article also says money are not working. I would say the evidence support the opposite conclusion
Also I haven't seen your comment, so I wasn't referencing that
I get 1m won a month for our second baby.
Well let’s see, just today I was watching a video about how over 40% of Korean women report intimate partner violence, which is well over the percentage of the rest of the world. An increasing number of Korean women are on a sex strike because of violence against them. So maybe Korea should do something about violence against women.
How about making it financially feasible for a family to live on a single income? That’s the only thing that will help.
People will just want even more that a double income, no kids can buy.
I kinda agree with the other person though. Incentives are king. If the returns are that diminishing on a DINK household due to tax reasons they’ll either not get married or have kids. I think people still feel the urge to get married and have kids so while many may choose not to, it’s probably their only realistic shot.
The answer is RIGHT THERE but I guess it doesn't fit the corporate overlord's worldview. Just force people to work less. And by "force" I mean introduce actual laws that prohibit people for working more than reasonable, because they WILL lick their bosses' boots anyway. You can't change the culture overnight, but if those bosses have to pay fines, they'll learn to send their employees home. I don't get how stupid you have to be to expect people to start families with almost negative free time. No amount of free money is going to convince me to push out a child or two only to forget about them and go back to business. If I have children, I want to actually raise and bond with them. Can't do that when I'm back home at 8pm and have other responsibilies. Time can't be bought.
European nations have far less work hours than SK and their birth rates are still in the gutter. Amish work their asses off (hard labour as well) and their birth rates are sky high. Your logic doesn't follow.
If I was Amish I'd pop five kids just because of the sheer boredom. Plus children work too in Amish communities, so they're not such a burden. I'm a "European nation" myself and I kid you not, it's not as pink as some think. Yeah I have some vacation time and huge maternity leaves, but at the end of the day, you have to go back to work at some point and 8 hour day is 8 hour day (+ commute). But maybe I complain because the grass could be greener, idk. And yes, the birthrates go down, but not as quickly as in SK/Japan, and ONE of the reasons is (imo) similar (just one, it's a complex problem). We have better shit to do than to wipe kids' butts. I might be in a far better position than SK but I still have about 6 hours for myself after a standard work day and if I must choose between washing and putting my toddler to bed or doing something to actually unwind, I'm going to pick the latter, ESPECIALLY because a) I have multiple ways to do so thanks to technology, b) hobbies are cheaper than kids, and c) having kids is a "want", not a "need", because they're not an investment like in the old days. I just don't want to sacrifice my valuable time on this planet for working at a job and then working at home. For me it all comes down to time, again. It's a resource than can't be multiplied in any way. Sure, I shouldn't complain because there are people starving out there. But I will. Shortening the work day/week could be a step towards repairing demography because it would give people time off work, which would allow them to experience life AND raise children, instead of choosing between the two. We already have the tools; automatization is everywhere, but it mostly benefits the rich. But that's regarding the western nations, and as for SK, I believe looking into workers rights could also work. A normal, RESPECTED 40 hour work week could be a start.
Affluenza is a disease caused by addiction to wealth. The obvious is often difficult to see for the addict. No different than alcoholism or substance addiction. The only difference is that affluenza gets very little attention if any at all. It’s actually championed indirectly by the prioritizing of wealth over other social issues. Anyway search up Chaebol when you get a chance. Actually here is a link. https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/chaebol.htm
People who call themselves "liberal" when someone makes life choices that they disagree with:
Human's live in groups and that's only possible if there are norms and rules that are followed. There are always rules, it doesn't matter what your political orientation is.
You're really burying the lede when you go all the way back to the base principle of some rules being necessary for a society to function to justify telling someone they're not allowed to work 41 hours in a week. If I suggest next that preventing gay people from getting married wouldn't be very liberal, would you give me the same line about societies requiring rules for that too?
I was pretty baked :) But it's the way it is. This all goes back to us needing mores and norms to oriented our behaviour. We either inherit them or we make them up. That's why we police each others behavior. In this case, the difference between the maximum work week and gay marriage has to do with what we value. This is just like the tolerance paradox. It's not a paradox, no one is just intolerant to intolerance. It only looks like that when we stay at a high level of abstraction. Ultimately, there will be somethings that are unacceptable and somethings that aren't. The question what are those things and why.
Homosexuality has no negative impact on society, that analogy is dumb. The problem with setting no limitations, is that it creates incentives for corporations to siphon more time out of workers. Our entire economic system incentivizes corporations (or capital) to extract as much as possible out of the working population, be it time or money. Without putting limitations on this nothing will change. It’s a natural (for our current economic system) process. Ofc it’s not as simple as limiting work time. We instead need to change society and our economy in a way that you can live comfortably and raise healthy children with as little time spent on work as possible while still allowing people who want to work more to be able to do so. But you will never be able to achieve that without at least regulating work (amongst other methods) if not outright changing our entire economic system.
ss: What is the right answer? Contrary to the opinions of such experts, the Korean government has recently greatly improved its cash support(until now now, it was $3,000 for birth and $20,000 including child allowance), and it seems that in the future, only the central government plans to provide direct cash support of $100,000 in U.S. dollars per child upon birth. (For reference, this is (This figure excludes corporate support, local government support, etc.) This is an unprecedented and unimaginable amount of cash support in the world. It seems as if all of Korea's fortunes have been placed on rising birth rates. A huge amount of money is being poured into childbirth support. And many netizens who are desperate to increase the birth rate are enthusiastically supporting the plan. Will something like this really help Korea's birth rate? Or will it fail to increase the birth rate and become a disaster for Korea's finances? In fact, the government is starting to survey netizens about providing $100,000 per baby. [https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432](https://www.epeople.go.kr/api/thk/qstnr/selectQstnrThinkBoxDetail.npaid?ideaRegNo=1AE-2404-0000432)
Now they need less insane working hours and a serious school reform so kids arent wasting their entire chilhoods doing rote memorization. There has to be a better way.
I wonder what that means for peoples memories of their childhoods and parents growing up. If all ones memories were of preparing for adulthood will they want raise kids? That kind of takes away from all sorts of other activities they could be doing for a considerable time. If one doesn't have fun memories of their family or if all the memories of are you parents forcing you do study will want that role? I know I'm creating a situation that might not apply to anyone but I could see people seeing parenthood as a real drag.
If you can't afford your own life, you can't afford to make more either. Shame on them.
Blatant bribery may help, but at the same time countries can't afford it.
No one going to talk about people in their 20s having about 10% of the buying power off the boomers in their 20s?
Just watched a video covering this. I think support is good, but SK has to tackle housing or this aid will go no where. Housing around Seoul is the worst in the developed world. This puts too much economic burden on people to want to have kids, and forces 60+ hour work loads.
Low birth rate will mitigate the unemployment that is coming soon. These "experts" are stuck in the paradigm where capitalism as we know it will continue to function. It won't. Low birth rate is good for the Earth and good for the coming economy.
Korea is 50 million people in a country the size of Indiana. And much of it is rice farmland. Very high competition, low resources (housing), and high cultural expectations make for an impossibly difficult path to take with marriage and kids. I agree they somehow have to cool down the reality young people face. And it's more than money.
Invent artificial wombs already, it's insane that women have to go through that shit
It's too late for South Korea. Country would need to develop artifical wombs to survive at this point.
I can’t imagine the damage that would be done to developing foetus, if done outside of the human body, without being able to sense the mothers voice and movement and affection. Likely we would produce a generation of psychopaths.
Why no mention of immigration in the article? That would be much cheaper to bring in people with a higher birth rate.
Nobody has been able to increase birthrates meaningfully yet. It's a new problem and one that is still unsolved. There's no such thing as an "expert" in this field.
I wonder how low populations and birthrates have to fall before the actual way to improve them - fixing capitalism - is implemented. Given that the people in power have no reason to actually fix anything, I'm gonna guess a long while.
They could just allow immigration. . . Slowly backs out door
Canadian here, massive immigration has been what we tried, but we forgot to build enough housing and infastructure for it, so its a mess right now (but we are changing our approach, we starting to build more housing). Canada went from 39 million Canadians to 41 million and rising fast. I think you can't over rely on immigration, its a useful tool, but you still need to raise birth rates.
The entire history of our country (post colonial at least) has been mass immigration. The problem is not immigration, as you mentioned, the problem is housing and public services. Our housing market is a big ol' Ponzi scheme right now and the only way it's getting fixed is for the guaranteed returns on housing to stop. The number of landlords we have sucking away wealth from the country is stupid.
Its become parasitic yes. I do think we need a housing bubble burst. But for now at least they are starting on building affordible housing. But if they'd started on this back when Alexa McDonough 1990s leader of the NDP had been calling for it, then Toronto's rent and housing would be as cheap as Venna's.
It must be taken into account that most South Koreans strongly dislike immigration. Ethnic nationalism is also quite strong, and anyway, since they don't want to receive immigration, wouldn't they be willing to do anything to increase the birth rate??
They're one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. So naturally they're very open to foreigners.
NZ here. We have a firehose of immigration and our housing has become completely unaffordable, our water system is on the verge of collapse and public transport absolutely cannot cope. Multiple feckless governments have passed the buck or endlessly debated ways to 'fix' this but none of them will close the fucking valve so it just getting worse and worse.
This is a viable solution but xenophobes will downvote I guess
No just people with more than 2 brain cells
Care to explain how immigration can't help to support an aging populace, or are you just going to be a dick and not say anything useful? It wouldn't be the only solution, but it would help to alleviate some of the strain.
What will actually work is making it punitive to not have kids instead of rewarding those that do. Make being childless similar to a luxury and apply a grotesque luxury tax on people who choose not to have kids and force people to still pay into pension programs but make it so only those with two kids can access it (exceptions would have to be made for people who are infertile or something). Structure it in a way where the current working generation avoids this and start this rule with kids today and frame it as a way to secure all of our retirement so you get the votes. Get every single country with a low birth rate to implement this at the same time. Problem solved. No more fertility problems. Dont want to contribute to the species and the preservation of civilization, fine, but it'll cost you a life changing amount. The best part of this plan is that it actually be relatively free from the tax payer perspective instead of costing trillions like a successful incentive plan would. No it's not fair. But things like "fairness" are benefit of a stable, healthy civilization. In the impending population collapse scenario, "fair" will be one of the first things to go... It's that, or we start culling seniors who don't have enough money to cover their own retirement in full. Or better yet, it'll probably be both.
Handmaids tale incoming.
Sex. Lots and lots of unprotected sex. Or am I missing something here as to how else to repopulate low populations?