This data, while making Korea seem like the most rapidly growing population disaster on earth, is actually better than the latest data. Korea is now at 0.78 and falling. [1] I really have to wonder what the lower limit is and when (or if) it’ll ever trend up within our lifetimes.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-22/south-kor...
Through her and some Korean friends, I've got a glimpse at the level of stress around all aspects of life in Korea. Education and work are obvious ones, but there seems to be a lot of stress about many other aspects of life, like money, prestige, and personal appearance.
Interestingly though, I think it's not difficult to see why this is all the case from a macro-economic and geographic standpoint. Korea is effectively an island surrounded on all three sides by relatively unfriendly countries. It's so small, and quite devoid of important resources.
It's biggest asset is by far its population and what they managed to build and sell abroad; phones, cars, chips, appliances, music, TV— if Korea's economy wasn't super-charged like it is now it's easy to imagine it getting lost in the sphere of influence of China, Japan, or finding more trouble via North Korea.
I can only assume all this stress and pressures in life has to do with the low birth rates. Pushing themselves this hard is not without their consequences, it seems.
Maybe it’s bad for our current economic systems, but as we reduce birth rates we also need to be looking for economic systems that don’t simply rely on an ever-increasing population of worker bees.
Apart from a robotic class of workers, forcing older people to produce, or forcing down living standards, this isn’t a problem different economic systems can solve. It’s fundamental to input/output.
Also, stable populations aren’t super problematic. 0.78 is way below replacement, however.
Reversing population growth means having an ever increasing population of elderly people and increased burden on the young to support those elderly. It's hard to see solutions to this that aren't dystopian and downright cruel.
Wealth-wise, the global bottom 50% emit on average 1.4 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) per year. The top 10% emits 28.7 tCO2e [1].
We're not talking about billionaires when we mention "the top 10%. This was a 2019 study, so 10% of the population was about 770 million people— that's roughly the population of the whole of Europe [2].
That bottom 50% deserve their living standards to be elevated. They deserve and should get sewage, home appliances, water pipes, electricity, cars, meat, video games, disposable income, etc etc. When that happens, half of the population could be producing one or two orders of magnitude more tCO2e. Someone in that 10% right now is producing 205x more tCO2e than someone in that bottom 50%, and it isn't because they own private jets, it's because they can afford a washer and dryer.
[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00955-z#:~:text=G...).
This assumes that technology remains constant.
As it stands now, technology is not catching up and a smaller percentage of them will have access to those amenities.
We can't just create more oil out of thin air. Progress on batteries is too slow and renewables and electric cars are too expensive. We're already over-fishing and over-farming the earth with our current population. We are missing all of our climate targets, and that's on an earth where most don't live in developed countries yet.
We could replace those needs with technology like VR experiences and processed food for example, but I have a hard time seeing how that will be enough.
Industry that serves a number of individuals, so the relationship is direct.
considered good by who??? Can you quote some sources? Bloomberg article from above:
> The lack of babies carries long-term risks for the economy by reducing the size of the workforce that underpins its growth and vitality. Welfare spending for an aging population also drains national coffers that could otherwise be utilized to promote businesses, research and other enterprises that are key to prosperity.
( Assuming productive age is 20-80 and all people die at 100 )
Once you enter a low birthrate of 1 that would mean at some point your workforce could be cut in half and your elderly population could be doubled. Now, 40% of the workforce will end up needing to sustain a 50% elderly population and 10% would be minors. If you're not carefull the loss of capital in the workforce could mean less people desire to have kids in a world that cannot sustain their needs. Leading to a feedback loop that is very hard to get out of.
One way of improving the situation is by cutting back on all non-essential programs for decades in order to stabilise the population at the magical 2.1 number.
Bizarre that North Korea would be the only Koreans left on the peninsula.
Why? Because they are the "bad" ones?
Living in a brand new mall is not what humans strive for : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Wouldn’t it be better for a country like the UK to have a population of about 30 million? More space for everyone, self sufficient in food and renewable energy, less pollution and resource depletion, … Why not order society to maximise average quality of life instead of GDP?
The problem is a falling population exacerbates those stresses. The economy crunches, anti-immigrant and right-wing forces gain power; the older population won’t vote to nix their benefits in favour of younger people, so either the system veers towards collapse or someone takes away their votes.
Right wing anti-immigration parties sell an enemy (immigrants) as cause of all problems (they are stealing all our jobs!). In addition they sell tax breaks which also sound very appealing to people that struggle to get by on their current income. Of course all history shows that these "solutions" are lies, but history tend to repeat itself. The problem in a democracy is that the solutions that political parties present does not always have to be grounded in reality to be popular. Especially in these modern times with disinformation and conspiratorial thinking running rampant online (it's all Soros fault!).
I don’t think it’s a general rule. But the countries in a demographic bind are in one because they’re not getting immigrants. So as the vice tightens, we see those preëxisting tendencies amplified. This is more observational than prescriptive, mine you.
As a counterexample, an skilled American white collar worker who earns about 200k per year could buy about ten thousand avocado's per month. But does the skilled, say, programmer do more "work" than multiple Avocado farmers? So, economic output is not a result of work done, it's a matter of value created (US industry creates lots of value) and how much of that is captured.
So on the one hand, a shrinking population might reduce purchasing power by producing less work. On the other hand, as long as the value of the produced work increases, the implosion might not be so bad.
how can a country such as South Korea, when it gets to over 50% retirement-age people, produce "high value", let alone "increasing value"? who will be taking care of their health and doing physical labor?
> long as the value of the produced work increases
Assuming that this is only a problem for "high-value" societies is incorrect - Indonesia, for example, while still not as bad, is almost below replacement rate, so who is going to take care of 273 million non-high-value people there once they get old?
> Bizarre that North Korea would be the only Koreans left on the peninsula.
It is indeed. They seem to be doing slightly better by the numbers but not looking too promising either.
Plus, declining population doesn’t inherently provide a big dramatic marker to put in the history books like a natural disaster or battle.
Asia just isn’t as popular of a destination because of 1) huge language barriers, 2) wages are lower than the west, and 3) visas are contingent upon stable employment, and gaps in employment plus zero tolerance policies towards visa overstays/illegal immigration make that risky to a large proportion of people.
But if you stay at a company or only job hop with offers in-hand, East Asia as a whole is insanely easy to move to, get permanent residence, or even citizenship. Anyone who’s gone through the process, doubly so those who’ve dealt with processes in the west, can readily verify this. The conditions for Japan are literally just: college degree or 10 years experience, job offer, no criminal record. Then stay a few years, don’t have a major criminal record, and you can get citizenship in as little as 5 years with a 95% acceptance rate. Permanent residence is a similar process.
I felt zero obstacles the entire way. It felt like renewing an ID card and nothing more.
There are millions of children of immigrants in Germany who speak German just as natively as anyone else in the country, just to give you one example.
> National identity and culture is heavily influenced by genes.
Citation very much needed.
I'm sure that there are studies but let's be honest. This is just common sense. I'm sure that if you replace Japanese people with Berbers from North Africa, Japan will look very different.
If you're saying the latter: what role is genetics playing in that scenario?
If you're saying the former: no, culture is not a genetic trait. Obviously.
In particular, in the given hypothetical, one might predict a change in the dairy culture in Japan if suddenly the population was significantly more tolerant of lactose.
(I assume the usual example of lactose intolerant is chosen because it appears some people are otherwise religiously opposed to considering the relationship between culture and genetics.)
It might change or it might not. Just because a dietary option is open to you doesn't mean you're going to take it. Nothing prevents me from eating sushi, and I still don't, and the reason is obvious: I didn't grow up eating it, so it isn't part of my normal diet.
It's one thing to say that culture and genetics are not completely independent. It's another to say that culture is heavily influenced by genetics, to the extent that it's a hereditary trait.
There government should be in full on emergency road. Anyone that has more than 1 kid should get a reverse tax rate, the government gives them money.
They should get a 10% discount on all things. Cars. Houses. Hotel rates. Anything.
In seriousness though what are the economic incentives (I assume) that could be done as a carrot to encourage the rate to go up?
Don't quote me on this but I'm pretty sure there is no way to increase fertility. Cash and better care only work so far.