The government and the media keep freaking out about birth rate declining but made no attempts in fixing the poor working conditions in Japan.
Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life?
Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life?
I did find instances of working condition reforms and incentives.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Five-things-to-know-about-Ja...
https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%...
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf...
As to your question: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birt... The current birth rate for U.S. in 2022 is 12.012 births per 1000 people https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate The current birth rate for Japan in 2022 is 7.109 births per 1000 people
I'd say the number of people who date, marry or have kids is not so different from other countries.
Approx ~10k~ 1k USD per year is ~probably~ deffo not going to be enough, though.
>Approx 10k USD per year
100k JPY is 742 dollars. Which of the two numbers did you fuddle?
[1] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220420/p2a/00m/0na/00... [2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/11/national/politi... [3] https://wagaya-japan.com/en/journal_detail.php?id=5866
Apparently most of humanity for most of recorded history.
20-something males (in Japan and, to an increasing degree in the US) are not foregoing dating and marriage due to ‘working conditions.’ The reasons are, regrettably, more complex. Indeed, in the current state we’re in, giving young men more leisure time and money would undoubtedly result in more hours spent playing with their new phones.
In poorer SE Asian countries, such as the Philippines, you don't have these same expectations. That country is still a place where people barely surviving off a farm have large families. There is also the factor where the Catholic Church resists the idea of birth control.
Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.
I think the next century revelation will be that you should focus on individual growth rather than population growth. In our tech-oriented economy, it matters more that you have quality technology rather than quantitative production.
> Who wants to date, marry, or have kids if you can barely live your life?
Apparently, most of Africa.
The biggest country in Africa is still showing high birth rates: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-popul... Although it's slightly declining, but still a long way from reducing population sizes.
Niger for example is population-booming: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/niger-populat...
All of Africa: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-popula...
My guess is that in pre-modern times, a lot of child care would happen by various neighbors so everyone would have some experience being around small kids. Now childcare is largely a business where specific people spend everyday, all day caring for kids (daycare, pre-K, kindergarten, etc).
One side doesn't want to admit that a lot of poor people have a good bit of free time available to them, particularly those who receive social services.
The other side doesn't want to admit that middle class and up folks have been working long hours at a cost to their personal lives and development, that isn't new, but now both mom and dad are doing it and households aren't really any better off.
This results in poor people with the time to make and raise children, doing so and receiving government subsidies to provide for them. The problem is the government can't give you time or your youth back so the well off just stopped having kids.
The narrative changes when people grow older, nearing the end of a woman's viable productive years. All of a sudden it is "Why don't you have kids yet? You're not getting any younger. The clock is ticking." Once one overcomes dealing with the conflicting messaging and the emotional toil in that, this leaves time for one, occasionally two in the best case, children and no more. For others it is simply too late.
You don’t see any issue with people who haven’t even completed high school having children?
For example, my mother in law had children as a young teen. She advised her daughters against doing that, but she also had a bad family that didn't support her. She had five kids, the youngest, now 30, cumulatively, have fewer kids than she did. One example, of a benefit to having kids young, is fecundity.
My mother in law is also younger and can help with the grandkids more and can spend more time with them. Your late teens and twenties you're better about to function on low or interrupted sleep and keep up with a rambunctious little one. A young parent will likely be closer, in an experiential sense, to their children and that may lead to a closer relationship.
The challenges - mainly not being ready emotionally or financially, seem like the kind of thing that having a supportive family would address. If my children were to get pregnant at, say, fifteen, I'd expect to be the one financially responsible (or share the responsibility with the other grandparents) and same for childcare. I would expect to hand that responsibility over to the parents over the course of a decade or so.
Outside of those influences, in hindsight, the high school years would have been the perfect time to have children. They are virtually wasted years anyway, being old enough to be ready to start to spread your wings, but not considered old enough to do so. The time could be used productively to focus on the critical early years of rearing a child. Once you reach your prime, deemed ready to go out into the world and make something of yourself, your children will be starting to become independent. If you are well-off the financial supports are already in place, so that is moot.
However, in practice, it would be a challenge because of how society demonizes it. Humans are social creatures that rely on a stable society to survive. Being ostracized from that society is a complication one logically tries to avoid.
Umm what? Am I offbase in assuming you dont have kids? Its absolutely not a great idea to have children in high school. And I have 2 sisters who did. Without getting into too many details, I think it would have been more stable and much, _much_ easier if they didn't have children that young. Not only are you losing out on so much as a parent, but you are not even equipped to deal with the harshness of life for yourself let alone a completely helpless other person. Whats your plan as a 16/17 year old for your kid having a 105 temperature and having to go to the ER unannounced? Whats your plan to pay for daycare? Are you moving in with your partner at this point or do you play a weird game of parents being "separated" and shuttling between the houses? Do you even own a car?
It makes no sense
Yes. I do have children and in hindsight there would have been a lot of benefits having them much earlier in life.
> Not only are you losing out on so much as a parent
I lose out on so much now as a parent because I have adulting to do. When I was in high school what did I have to do with my time? Not much. Time that could have been put into the child. I also had way more energy to keep up with children, something that is much harder now that I'm older.
> Its absolutely not a great idea to have children in high school.
Yes, we firmly established in the environment where society demonizes having children, going against the grain will not lead to desirable outcomes. Going against society never ends well, no matter the topic. While your concerns are valid, they are the product of the very society that does not welcome children and ostracizes those who have them.
Again, people avoid having children young because it is socially unacceptable to do so. It is entirely logical to want to avoid fighting that given the importance of society to an individual. But, as said before, aside from those factors high school would be a great time to have children for a number of reasons. Indeed, there is never a perfect time to have children.
> When I was in high school what did I have to do with my time? Not much. Time that could have been put into the child
Where are you getting all this magical time and money to be a responsible parent as a completely naive/inexperienced teenager? It presumes and absolutely requires someone else being able to take up the slack and provide for you as the parent because you are completely incapable of doing it without the help. I'm all for supporting parents who need the help, but I'm nowhere near suggesting "actually its best to have kids when you arent capable of raising them yourself". Not to mention the weird generational gap that then creates where your child now has their own child but is looking to you for guidance on how to raise them but you relied on grandma/grandpa for a lot of that maturity when you had them.
Also this is without considering the strain kids add to a relationship that somehow we think is magically going to be fine for a 16/17 year old.
Your entire "rebuttal" is about the lack of support structures that are missing exactly because society does not condone people having children. Something which was already established throughout the thread, being the core premise raised.
Interesting--I feel the exact opposite: You have much more free time as an adult than you do in high school (or college age). When I was < 22 years old, a huge part of my life was in school, studying, cramming for tests, doing extra-curriculars, applying to colleges. Then once in college, it was 18 credits a year worth of classes, labs, the whole nine yards. Absolutely everything I did was scheduled and accounted for. Class at this time, sports practice at that time, music lessons here, club meetings there, and so on. Ain't no way I had time to raise a kid! Once I became an adult, I had what? Work and maybe set aside some time for bills/chores, but otherwise I needed to get a damn hobby in order to not go insane!
As my (tiger-ish) parents would have put it: If you're bored in High School, you're not spending enough time studying.
Wouldn't you rather spend the time studying when you're older? I have found studying to be much more enjoyable, and useful, the older I get. Having a breadth of experience to relate it to improves things substantially.
It is not so much being unable to find things to spend time at, but often it being a waste. Like cramming for tests. Looking back, who cares? If they are feel-good activities for you, great. Don't discount what you love. But if you are someone who wanted children, I'm sure spending time with children would have been worthwhile too.
Yup... you need to start very young to have a high chance of having more than two kids.
In fact, they could go further: 3 day work week. "What? 3? 4 was nuts, 3 is insane!" Before you balk, note that before bringing women into the workforce a typical couple contributed 5 out of 14 days to the workforce. 3*2 is 6, and 6/14 is more than 5/14. Also, 6/14 is less than 7/14 meaning parents are allowed to raise their children again. Wouldn't that be nice? Perhaps even nice enough to fix this stupid problem we made for ourselves?
Obviously it's not the 50s, and there is the matter of international competition to consider. Just remember: China has the same problem, but worse. Cooperation may be possible.
I don't have high hopes. Capital controls the world. Policy will continue to be "labor get rekt" for the foreseeable future, and in the most shortsighted and cynical way possible, with no allowance for the possibility that healthy balances might wind up being a win for everyone. With AI... it's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse.
Since then we've been on a steady regression to the industrial revolution, where employers hold all the power and can use people as they see fit (i.e. forget working only 40 hours a week), and only the aristocracy can afford leisure and child care.
Yes they have a point that it shouldn't be so hard and they shouldn't have to move across the country to scratch out a living. But I don't see how living in your parents basement is better. You can play the hand you're dealt while fighting to make it better for the next generation.
Unions were a symptom of an abusive employer. As that abuse subsided, union representation waned.
There are two reasons why managers are so scared about this development. First, middle managers get promoted by being noticed by their superiors. Hard to do when nobody is in the office. Secondly, in a world where a manager can dictate whether your retirement is funded and whether you will be able to have your medical bills covered next month, suddenly we have a sense of power arising from the lowly hourly and salaried employees who once again learned that they have the power to say "no."
I don't know how the situation is in the USA, but in Brazil we have the myth of mothers having 10 children just to get more money for each child.
Is this not mostly true? It seems government does pick up the tab for impoverished children. School, school lunch, Medicaid, SNAP/WIC, and easier to get housing as a woman with kids (both through charities and HUD housing and grants).
I'm not against food stamps at all, and at one point came close to being on them myself. I don't judge people for needing assistance. When you see such flagrant abuses of the system, however, it tends to burn a little empathy out of you.
Just handing a man $80 in cash and taking his food stamps means potentially enabling behaviors- alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.- that I don't want to enable. Maybe he just though that less hassle would have been worth having $20 less to spend, I dunno. I've been around enough alcoholics, drug addicts and con artists that I'm not going to just hand money out to people.
Statistics guarantee that there will be a lot of anecdotes like the ones you've told. The question is: how representative they truly are? Again, I can only talk about my own country, but I hear the same speech here as well. Statistically speaking, though, just giving people money was the right way to go: most will spend in what they need and yeah, that's way more than just painstakingly-controlled government-allowed list of items. Birth rates actually dropped even more amongst welfare recipients, etc...
I don't know for Japan. People work long even for lower salary.
It's often a financially comfortable life; but there's 0 flexibility to find an employer that allows a 9-5 workday, even if you're willing to take a pay cut.
Elon is saying that high-paid professionals in the US have fewer children than the lower-middle class, which is absolutely true. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are far below replacement fertility.
(And in fact, of the very few who did, it is always when the husband was a resident and the wife stay-at-home or a different career. In these cases, the finances were not a huge constraint; if nothing else, it is extremely easy to take on cheap debt as a resident.)
I can't speak as confidently to lawyers and interning, but I'd be surprised if the dynamic was different.
If you really want a "fun" way to look at it, find an IQ vs. fertility rate chart. Only IQs of 80 and lower are above replacement.