Asia’s advanced economies now have lower birth rates than Japan
economist.com
economist.com
People are so different and have a hard time agreeing on things they find it hard to get married. Then those who do find it hard to stay married. Those who marry and have kids have a hard time finding families to be friends with. The world is changing at such a rapid pace, If you have no shared values you will just have too large a range to find points of commonality.
Also in large cities the the density is a problem. Abundance of choice creates paralysis. Choice of partners and lifestyle. Creates more ways to cheat on your spouse without being caught. Life in general is more complex. I believe that there is a lag between rural people moving to cities and low birthrates. They may have more kids due to their families being large but their kids will most likely have less kids. Also large cities seem lonely because you become a replaceable part of it.
Sure I making child care more accessible is great and should be done but I don't think that's the one thing holding people back.
It's not that people in Asia don't want to get family and all that, it just simply coming down to:
1. The economy has not been adjusted with families in mind (we in the west have barely started).
2. Said traditional 'values' and norms were encouraged at a time when democracy nor universal human rights was a thing, which in the past did cost the country some social cohesion but it endured state stability, today however it just puts obstacles for people to try something new and different.
3. Because of 2 people find easier alternatives to family:
Want a patrner with no consequences? Simply order a partner as a service.
Want to be sexually fulfilled? Online porn or sex worker.
Etc.
Thinking “hard to agree on the value” is the most laughable reason that I ever heard and just how out of touch that some IT dudes can be. No offense but this is just how far you are from the reality.
Poor people are ironically some of the hardest-working in Western societies, and they also reproduce the most (for lack of alternatives provided by higher education). They also abort pregnancies a lot, though.
Strong disagree. People are quite hard wired to have kids.
> Poor people are ironically some of the hardest-working in Western societies, and they also reproduce the most
Poor people also very not much in control of their lives, practically no health care and poor access to affordable birth control. Partnering up quick gives poor young women at least a dual income household.
We're definitely hard wired to have sex, which used to be the same thing, but now there's birth control. Maybe evolution needs a little more time to dial up our cultural or genetic aversion to birth control...
If people could safely get kids at any point in life without any influence from age I'm pretty convinced most would do it much much. Right now from my experience maybe do it because they feel "it's now or never" and "never" is scary because you could be missing out on something great.
In 1976, 90% of women between 40-44 have ever given birth. In 2016, it's 86% (up since a low of 80% in 2006).
[1]https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/18/theyre-...
We’re failing as a society if not having kids is the best option for most young adults.
Condoms, the pill, and the spiral are quite affordable, compared to the costs and mayhem on personal life an unplanned pregnancy causes.
In fact, you might be surprised by how many people agree with your first sentence, taken literally. One thing I think is generally misunderstood about this is that the result of the revolution wasn't, "all women should work" (this is usually an uncharitable characterisation made in anger), it was "women should be allowed to work without being shamed". However, there was of course no mirror movement, where men wanted to leave the working world. So, over decades, this naturally caused the market to shift, making life financially harder and harder for those families with only one worker. That's what caused women to have to work. It wasn't an idea.
This repurposed human beings towards factory like production machines. Now we have a world with social and capitalistic services for those who are unmarried and in their prime times. That is what we sell on billboards and on tv. Old people with family life and a minivan is not the life we talk about anymore.
https://www.afrugaldoctor.com/home/japans-lost-decades-30-ye...
If we look to Japan as the model and forerunner for what is happening to the rest of the world, what investments worked there the past few decades if any?
If you read the latest Charles Goodhart's book ageing population would bring period of permanent high inflation. And during high inflation periods trend following (macro) strategies work well [I don't have a link to the paper at the moment]... So this should be rather simple...
Japan seems to be an exception to the rule, there are probably other factors that resulted in deflation during falling population era [I am fan of Richard C. Koo here - 2].
However it is not established yet - there is active discussion going on the topic - falling populations vs inflation/deflation. It is quite interesting actually.
Try Dimitri Kofinas's discussion with Charles Goodhart in this podcast [3] if you can spare an hour...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Great-Demographic-Reversal-Societies-...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Grail-Macroeconomics-Lessons-Rec...
[3] https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/charles-goodhart-demographi...
That is illogical. Aging populations save more because the money needs to last throughout retirement and these old people's bodies are no longer in a state where they can enjoy spending their money. Old people also have already fulfilled most of their wishes and have gotten used to their specific standard of living.
A young society of under 20 year olds is more likely to cause inflation because every child is a pure consumer that does not produce what they consume for the first 18 years of their life. So the demand for labor is relatively high.
Perhaps it would be wiser to read Goodhart's argument first.
[1] skynet or extreme centralization of power
https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/data-and-analytics/publicat...
>The greatest economic gains from AI will be in China (26% boost to GDP in 2030) and North America (14.5% boost)
I think of this article when I hear about decades of incredible growth on top of the already many decades of incredible growth.
I don't know what is going to happen, but less young people and an ever-increasing age in the general population requiring services doesn't sound so good of a combination. Even if your metric "how many hours does a person need to trade to get a particular product or service" goes down.
Also, with your 0 coefficient you are assuming infinite wealth? That seems...unreasonable.
Ultimately the author makes a good case if the assumption is that we never make it off Earth. Growth could probably be sustained at an exponential pace if we become interplanetary but it certainly won't happen overnight.
If we do ever reach "AI/robo summer" I certainly hope we appreciate it. If we don't, we deserve AI winter.
For the owners of the robots, yes. People who are de-skilled and pushed out of the workforce not so much.
Unless of course all those people starve to death. Then the average person is an owner of robots.
Need some food:
$ robo make garden
The comments above are right that investing makes much less sense in a world without economic growth. Even if companies continue to pay dividends, the US stock market has had 7% real annual growth over the past hundred years and that drives a huge amount of investment.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-ea...
The competition starts from kindergarten, parents are competing with each other for things like:
1. How many English words your kid know already?
2. How many classic poetries they can recite?
3. Mathematics above requirement
etc.
It is a rat race and it is suffocating. And in East Asian system, one failed academic assessment is pretty much a failure and deemed useless, you will be discriminated in so many aspects of your life.
And it is curve based system, so no matter how hard you try, 50% will never go to college anyway.
And ofc, this system will accompany you all they way through your career as well.
People are always looking for something they can compare against, pick the winner and loser, and judge you upon it.
As a result, having kids and raising them up to societal standard costs big money, people choose to have none or one and invest everything they can to that one kid.
But this is 100% to other Asia's advanced economies, those with Chinese ethnicity majority or heavily influenced by Confucianism historically.
China/HK/Taiwan/Singapore/Korea
No one can escape this.
Japan is actually an oddball here, I think Japan had never imported the 科举 system from China, that might be the key
I would say becoming advanced economy, then quickly aging and losing vitality is the critical flaw with East Asia model.
They exploit their populace so much they don’t want to reproduce anymore
Find me an environmentalist who is worried about there being less people because frankly, I doubt they exist.
Yes, having less people in a relatively short amount of time won't be without issue, but I do feel like the people who seemed most worried about low birth rates are politicians and economists.
We need to keep the consumers coming right?
I'm optimistic because while there is obviously going to be issues with there being less people on earth, it feels like the planet could do with a rest.
One of the manifestations of the phenomenon of representatives working for the old generation where I live is housing. You see old people living in big houses for free, while the younger generation only has shared housing for crazy prices as a solution. Also with mobility: this old generation won’t let go of their cars although they move around only for leisure, but the city has become too dense for car-centric mobility. The elders don’t care, as they stay at home during peak hour.
How about medical care? Do environmentalists like advances in cancer care? And a system where the population has the money to access them?
Or social security? Paying money to retirees so they can live in relative comfort?
Population declines are a major issue. In some Asian countries the number of workers per retiree is going from 20 to 1, down to 2 to 1 if the population declines continues.
Growth means more money. Not just for things like consumer items you so distain, but also social programs that keep people healthy and in relative comfort.
I mean we can have technological advancement with fewer people. But it’s likely going to be slower and fewer people can afford it.
That or your private pension holder might go for some risky investment.
2. common sense. Nomadic tribes are nomadic for survival. How are they going to take them along? Carry them on their backs? They have no choice but leave them behind.
The US hasn’t. Almost all of our social programs are aimed at the elderly; they’re the ones who vote!
Not even family might protect you: There is a German "Robin Hood" type that really existed whose biography I read. His children refused to let him in when he was old, they did not want to or could not share.
Living with family requires that they had the space, that the family had enough income, that they actually lived together (women especially were married off, if you only had surviving daughters you depended on their husbands).
Modern societies (especially the so called "ponzi scheme capitalist culture" ones) tend to go far beyond pretty much all past societies to support such people.
I think the more telling numbers will be over the next few years. Will there be a post-covid bump and then normalize back to pre-covid levels? Will things just stay the same with incredibly low covid-level birth rates?
Only time will tell, but this article is sloppy. The economist can do better.
Sure. But the response to covid in the US and the response to covid in the Asian countries mentioned was quite different both in an administrative way as well as a cultural way.
Covid was at least worth a mention if not more.
Out of these housing, childcare and distance from parents could be solved simply by companies offering full remote work as an option. Even better if also educational institutions followed. Forcing people to move into cities for work sucks.
I know, I know. Less growth, less innovations and all the things the economists say. But the innovation per capita would be the same. And probably purchasing power parity would be better.
IMO urbanisation and modern tech are a big factor here. If you lived off land in a manner requiring heavy manual labour, then children could really help and provided continuity. Lack of old people’s care was a big encouragement too, and really different generations living together helped with childcare.
Actually this is not so much a problem for the amount of population but of excessive centralization around big cities. The earth, even if we only consider the places with reasonable climate, water and food supply and decent enough orography is pretty much empty.
Everyone agrees that as big cities grow the housing prices increase, but I don't see this happening in small towns far from big cities. Every country is different and obviously there are very good reasons to have some regions not very populated (I'm not saying Lapland should have the same population density as the coast of the Mediterraneum) but in plenty of cases places are unnecessarly crowded.
Spain is a good example of this, Madrid in particular is a city far too expensive for the salaries due to the excessive amount of population. The weather or the land aren't particularly good, it's not that it has massive water supply or anything like that, it's just that there have been centuries of centralization efforts by governments.
Right now we still need warm young bodies to stack shelves, care for old people, reap crops and so on.
With ageing populations you have no less old people but far less young uns to do the work. Also less surplus to do novel stuff too.
Oh and Japan is not keen on immigration either.
Young people mostly just play Nintendo and drink high-balls in Tokyo.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2020/04/04/food/urban-agri...
Birth control is not a standard practice everywhere. (And its history is ancient, with "social acceptability" involving some cultures and times - as opposed to being some "general state of things".)
The fertility rate in Niger is over 6.5 children per women; that of South Korea is near 1; the rounded quintiles are 1.5 .. 4.0 .
I am happily married - largely driven by personal values religiously influenced moral principle. For most my friends, the question they pose is what is the benefit of marriage? You tie yourself down to monogamy, give up your personal life and risk losing half of it plus a life of child support and alimony in a divorce.
I don’t have an answer but I think the root cause may be different than increasing access to child care (which certainly helps) on the margin.
Edit for another random anecdote: almost all my Jewish friends in their mid 30s who are well to do are married. Can’t think of one that isn’t. I believe there are cultural correlations that can be drawn.
I’ll bite: If you do it right, you get to spend every night with the person you love the most in the world.
I’ve been with my wife for 20 years and we still stay up too late at least once a week because we don’t want to stop our conversation. It is the richest, most fulfilling relationship I can imagine.
Beyond companionship, she is the ultimate ally. If I tell her I need her help, she is there for me 100%.
No matter my ups or downs, successes or failures, I have someone I can trust for advice and lean on whenever I need it.
Of course, this reliance goes both ways, but I feel great when I can help her back. My identity has stretched to include being part of this amazing team.
Obviously, there’s a trade off, but for me it was minor. Dating always felt like the worst kind of interviewing to me. I’ll happily take 20 years of shared memories over a rotating cast of fresh faces.
> Beyond companionship, she is the ultimate ally. If I tell her I need her help, she is there for me 100%.
Congratulations and may it never change for you. I do however have to say that that is not the case for most marriages/ long term monogamous relationships.
If you could somehow set aside social pressure, shared financial burdens, guilt over messing up the kids etc. I think most existing marriages would break down. Few people actually share deep love, friendship and real, freely accepted commitment.
I hope this isn’t true (I don’t know any statistics that support or disprove this), that’d be incredibly sad.
Luckily, I’m happily married and childless.
Tinder says otherwise. Seems like women are rejecting droves of men who aren't in the top 10%-20% of good looks or height (this comes from Tinder's own data as far as I know). Another problem is there are now more female college graduates than men (in the U.S), and they prefer someone educated.
You are right in your observation that women reject droves of men who aren't in the top 20%, not only in Tinder but in real life too. But OP is also right in his observation. The few males that are at the top have so many choices of women that staying with just one doesn't make too much rational sense.
In the end, we have 80% of males not being able to catch the interest of women, and the remainder 20% that do get female attention are not interested in long term relationships.
My conclusion: Low birth rates are being driven by the 20% of men as a result of the sexual preferences of 95% of women.
This is a ridiculously one side POV. I don't see marriage as giving up personal life. I see it as starting a personal live. There are so many things in my life I wanted to do "with someone" and by someone I mean someone I was in love with and who was in love with me. I see couples traveling the world, working abroad, supporting each other, having twice as many friends since both side bring in people, having twice as many activities to choose from ("should we go to party A or party B?") etc...
On top of that playing with kids is awesome fun.
Maybe your experience has been having a partner who's not a fit for you and so you wanted out?
There is some truth to this though. It's just you personally don't see it that way.
A number of my single friends, 35+, love their life - exactly the way it is. They want a relationship but not bad enough to give up specific aspects that are called 'freedoms'. One of them being able to hook up and many others.
I'm married with children and wouldn't want it any other way, but that's me.
My personal take, yes please do not get married if you don't want to.
What's more, you can also have kids without being married on paper!
So I do understand people who don't see the point of getting the government involved and making it a thing that's very complicated to end if it doesn't work out.
I lived in New York for many years and can confirm your experience. However, what interests me more is where all these ideas and decisions are coming from. Is it because it's trendy (Joe is not coming to the party tonight.. he is now, you know, married), which down the line means fear of losing status, or because people are free to choose what they want. I lean towards thinking it's the former (edit: I would rather say it's not the later). When the world is driven by TikTok and Instagram, I believe many people are measuring themselves up to the other people's standards rather than defining their own.
Don't think you can so easily pin one of the two as the drivers.
NYC is well known for having more women than men.
No-fault divorce basically destroyed that institution for the working classes, with divorce rates sky-rocketing in a decade.
Children living with both biological parents:
Affluent families in 1960: 95%
Working class families in 1960: 95%
Affluent families in 2005: 85%
Working class families in 2005: 30%
[1]
> Most of my well to do friends are uninterested in marriage and are just churning through girls.
This is cruel and sad, but I'm not sure falling marriage rates are even the fundamental factor in the overall decline. The problem goes deeper.
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/theres-a-time-for-ever...
[1] https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1178310819332984832
Marriage helps to raise kids … isn’t that the answer ?
Here’s my take.
Stuff is expensive. Marriage is a lot of responsibility. It’s not 1950 anymore. Shit changes.
It is not a material problem. It is cultural. Society is feeling like a less good joyful place for children. "It takes a village to raise a child". There have never been fewer villages.
Sure, in raw numbers, maybe that's true
Compared to previous decades where you could get on the housing ladder reasonably easily and support a family with only one full time income, not so much
It is really quite blatantly clear: as societies get wealthier, the fertility falls instead of rising.
I'm curious what you think makes a 1950s quality of life? I agree that people expect more material things today, but many of those things e.g. computers are de facto requirements to be a member of society. It seems to me that it is significantly more expensive to afford a good meal or a decent sized apartment.
Qualitatively, I know a large number of people who grew up in the 50s and their experiences of the time are different qualitatively. None of them ever struggled to meet their housing needs as long as they were able-bodied, and then generally only needed 20-40 hours of work (this include lower end work: construction, landscaping, retail).
While I don't have the stats handy* materially we know that during the mid 1900s the bottom 50% of americans owned a higher percentage of private property than in any time in history. Since then, we have reverted to a much more unequal distribution. It's hard to imagine this does not impact the current feeling of people feeling they can barely afford a place to live.
*if you have access to a copy of Capital and Ideology I believe you can find references in chapters 9 and 10
Larry Page's grandpa was an autoworker, and had to carry around a pipe with a hunk of lead on it to avoid getting beaten up by his employer.
https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-pages-grandfather-kept...
I live Washington, and frequently travel around the rural areas here. The state is littered with coal mining towns abandoned a century ago, with lumber mills closed before WWII, with towns like Index, WA, which was established in late 19th century, and had its population and industry peak in 1920s-1930s.
Our history is history of dynamism and change, and while some fraction of Americans lived and retired working for the same big factory in Detroit, this has by no means been an universal experience of our ancestors. In fact, if you look at the data, people today move for work less than our ancestors had. Our past was indeed glorious, but it was not a past of wealth and stability.
Indeed it depends how far you go back. I mostly talk about the baby boomer generation (who are "our" parents in many cases as many people here are 25-50 years old). In general they experienced more financial and occupational stability than us since they had much stronger unions and globalization was only starting.
When boomers started entering job market en masse in 1970s, they entered the economy of prolonged stagnation and high inflation, saw rationing of fuel, and by no means enjoyed significant stability. When they were buying houses, the nominal price was low, but mortgage rates were 8% at best times, 16% at the worst, making the mortgage payments scarcely more affordable than they are today. When they were entering job markets, the unions were already declining for two decades, and only something like a quarter of people were in a union in 1970.
Really, the boomers only made a killing in last decade or two, resulting from the low interest rates pumping values of assets. They certainly did not have it easy or stable in their youths, when they were forming families. I think your understanding of economic history needs more research.
So you might be happy with having little, but it's not going to be easy to send your kids to school and tell them they shouldn't have an iPad or an international holiday so mummy doesn't have to work.
My grandma (still alive today) grew up in the US without plumbing. She had to use an outhouse.
There's an inverse relationship between wealth and fertility. Wealthy countries are less fertile than poor countries. Within wealthy countries the wealthier people are less fertile than the poorer people.[2]
Not like life in America today is better than 99% of the rest of the world past and present. Spoiled people.
>> When looking into the Maya world of Yucatán, we find that during the 18th century and beginnings of the 19th century, it was the custom for males to marry at age 17 or 18, and females at age 14 or 15.
>> The parents preferred, for their sons, girls from the same social class and town. As well, it was considered petty if the male looked for a companion for himself or his children, rather than obtaining the servces of a professional matchmaker (ah atanzah).
>> Once the matchmaker was selected, the ceremony and the amount of the dowry were discussed. This usually consisted of dresses and other items of little value, which were paid by the father of the groom to the father of the bride as a marriage pledge; for her part, the groom’s mother prepared the clothing for her son and for her future daughter-in-law.
What drives you to have children, as a human male, is the desire for sex. Once you remove that, many will pick to not have kids anymore.
I would say your example of the Maya shows more that many old societies had extremely powerful marriage pressure put on what we would consider children or at best adolsecents, who would have been far less able to resist such pressures than today.
I don't see any agency about sex in the citation you give.
I’d be happy to trade my cheap plastic crap from Walmart for a $45000 house and a $1200/y tuition
Not to mention the time commitment. My friends lives were never the same after they had a kid.
It’s a no for me dog. At least rn.
I have known that when I start, it will be the smallest of homes with the cheapest of foods and reduced living which means no internet, no cell phone service, no tv. For the simplest of things, I would go to the library or the nearest cafe or use some known Wi-Fi point. And I am ok with starting life like that. How many other people are ok with that?
And we are still talking about a cheap 500€ per month apartment with only one bedroom here. In practice you would pay more. Products made in Asia are a drop in the bucket compared to rent in even the cheapest parts of Germany.
I don't think 500€ is an excessively high rental price, I just disagree that anyone would have to do without these products.
Human evolution is biology btw, but evolution doesn't necessarily mean that humans have to reproduce like rabbits until everyone starves to death from overpopulation. There is a reason that the birth rate is generally lower the wealthier and better educated a population is.
It’s a really weird experience to go to the emergency ward of one of the most famous childrens hospitals in Japan and have the guy say ‘your bill comes to $0’ after.
Both parents can take up to 1 year of combined childcare leave after a birth (part of that at 60% salary).
There’s “Children’s hall” s scattered across the neighborhoods that are basically a free playroom, toy repository and library for kids up to high school age.
Kindergardens have been sprouting up like trees all over the country. I think the last time I read any stats about it there were like 6000 kids on a waiting list in the entire country. And again, free or mostly free.
Housing is relatively small, but also affordable, even in the 23 wards of Tokyo. If you go outside Tokyo you can find really nice houses for dirt cheap.
At least it’s not for lack of facilities/benefits that Japan isn’t having children.
Having lived in US and in a few countries with completely free healthcare, I'd have to correct you that the really weird experience is going to a hospital and getting a 6 figure bill.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-insurance.htm
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
I didn't mean only going to hospital for labor and birth.
I would guess that’s only weird if you live in a country with only private medical care.
In a LOT of countries free, at the point of service, medical care is the norm.
I mean, I understand on one level that in lots of places medical professionals would refuse to treat a pregnant woman or a child without a source of funds. On another though it’s seems very alien to me.
I’ve tried to state that in plain, unemotional language but it is a “weird” concept here. I guess it’s just what you’re used to.
You can't be turned away for lifesaving or critical procedures.
If you go to the hospital in labor, or with a gunshot wound, or an infected abscess, etc; they'll treat you (they're legally bound to). You get your bill after services rendered.
At least in California, you can also go to a myriad of clinics for free-cheap preventative services so your toothache doesn't turn into an abscess.
As an American, that delivery is comparatively cheap and extravagant, but it's hardly free.
This was more to illustrate that it’s not for lack of governmental intervention.
Also improving the whole idea of what a family is: Want to be unmarried and have a child? Go for it. But have the supports available to make it work.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/21/france-populat...
The recovery for c-section is way longer than natural child birth. They are literally cutting open your abdominal muscles to access the baby.
We did elective C-section for both our kids. Recovery was fine. Wife up and walking at the end of the first day.
So, exactly like a vaginal birth (speaking from my own experience) ;-) I don't understand the big fuss - sure it hurts, but it's endurable. And for the child there are benefits to being born vaginally.
Of course, everyone is free to do as they see fit, but I am very happy and proud of my Klingon birth experience :D
For my wife she was scared of natural birth so we elected for C-section and that was far less scary for her and she smashed through it without complaint. But her friend living in France was forced to do natural. If they have a second she’s flying back to Taiwan for the 2nd because the whole experience of natural and the horrible experience of staff at the hospital put her off wanting to do it there again.
In asia, woman are doled on from the moment they enter the hospital. Natural or surgery they stay for 3-5 days in the hospital. Unlike a lot of the west where people are sent home the next day.
The article states the opposite of your claims:
> The fertility rate is high in European countries where family norms are flexible, women feel free to work, pro-child policies are generous and childcare is well organised – in short, in countries that have come to terms with gender equality.
It seems like being more religious is more effective at changing minds than any of those policies.
"High" is very relative, France is still well below replacement fertility despite all their efforts.
Meanwhile very religious groups like the Amish have much higher fertility rates without any of those interventions.
Maybe a deep belief that god wants you to have kids is just much more effective than any policy?
From the article I quoted:
> Since the early 2000s France has consistently topped European rankings. After two decades of decline, in the 1970s-80s, the fertility rate started picking up again in the late 1990s. Since then the country has registered scores just short of the mythical threshold of 2.1 children per woman, which would secure a steady population. Its fertility rate in 2014 was 2.01.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
The United States has had a higher fertility rate than France and Europe for many years despite having a notoriously porous social safety net.
The stats may change but whereas Europe has been below 2 for a long time, that's a more recent development in the United States.
These demographic crises arguments are no better than the population bomb arguments of the 1960s. You can project forward and get all kinds of results but over the decades things change.
Had a nice population bulge initially.
A country of 100M people will change its birth patterns long long long before it "disappears".
You have no idea of "drives", or you would know how some will make having children paramount; you seem to have no idea of the economic choices involved, which made people marry, have children etc.; you also seem oblivious of the positional (ethical) stances, the convinctions inserted in a world view, that have people take such decisions.
> 100% effective
Not even the procedure of sterilization nullifies the chance of pregnancy. This instance of imprecision looks like a recurrent pattern. You said it that you are lazy, but here you are relating.