Weird. I have absolutely no idea what could cause this.
Global warming perhaps?
Global warming perhaps?
- culture that prioritizes "status" heavily. this manifests as a consumerist/materialist society. everybody wanting designer clothes, live in a nice apt complex, go to the best colleges, drive a nice car, kids go to the best schools and after school programs, etc. this is present elsewhere but it's amped up to another level here.
- housing prices are crazy. huge increases over the last decade (and it was already running hot before that). failed gov't policy and covid pushed this to the extreme. at one point you needed something like 60% down (purpose was to reduce speculation) but all this did was empower the cash buyers to snatch up everything. salaries are not keeping pace at all.
- women feeling more empowered in the work place, not having to follow the typical path of getting married and stay at home and take care of your kids.
basically all the pressure of even making it here WITHOUT kids... OFC nobody is going to prioritize it. people have had enough.
Korean society is highly paternalistic and there's a lot of pressure on women. A novel by Kim Jiyeong called Born 1982 goes into details.
Online you'll find many accounts of people not wanting kids because it's too painful/will ruin your body, it's too expensive, it won't let you live your lifestyle, the future will be shit anyways, &c.
Global warming will play a role later but for now it's probably more about our modern lifestyle and individualism. Obesity &co are mechanically reducing fertility but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the fact that people don't want (as many) kids anymore
Some say that it's not possible and it's just what happens in developed nations, but if you look closely to the stats, you'll find out that for eg. in sweeden, the birthrates increase to >=2 when families reach certain income lvl.
Others say that we must become poor again to increase brates, but I don't think it's that simple, if we look closely at different countries, basically brates are high when having more children increases the wealth/quality of life (v poor countries) or where having more children doesn't impact current lifestyle that much (if you have money you can afford nannies/childcare/school/bigger apt). Where it drops is when ppl achieved some lvl of wealth/good qol but it will be heavily impacted by having a child, aka the middle class.
But in general poor people have more kids, and as unpopular it will be to say, they can have more kids because the government subsidizes it. One parent doesn't work and gets all the benefits, so: no daycare costs, free medical care, welfare income, and food stamps/WIC.
Not saying we shouldn't have those things, but when only poor people get the government assistance when it comes to having kids, they'll be the ones who have the most kids.
Working class and above it costs a fortune to raise kids, not so for the non-working class. Now people will probably come say how wrong I am, but I live in a poor area and see this play out on a daily basis.
I should have mentioned income instead of wealth, but my point holds
But really I'm sure it's choice. Having a child is like having a pet now. You can either choose to have one or not. You don't need kids for survival and contraception is cheap and effective at preventing pregnancy.
What aged care will look like when most people are old is a different story, I guess they'll except my kids to wipe their ass but that's a deferred problem for young people with money and a bunch of entertainment and no incentive to have kids.
The mental health problems are propably effecting lower wages more. And i guess work hours and alienation effect birth rate.
Things like gratitude are really tough - I'm unhappy that a shop doesn't have the exact thing I like, whereas undernourished comrades in Communist Russia had to queue for bread for hours, and might feel gratitude if on one day they only have to queue for one hour. What you're used to radically changes how you feel about a situation.
It's tricky, but it's also not.
The cognitive ability to reason about large scale problems is also in decline, in a society that sees no alternative, like whatabout socialism. Could you tell?
If tou cannot adress the problem, maybe you are part of it!
Also, "perversly true to be bored in an imcredible economy"? Sounds like GDP is more important than happiness to you. Maybe take your time and rethink that in the light of sociatal contracts and mortality too.
Such things are even more pronuncied in communist societies where efficiency, political ortodoxy, collective needs are placed well above personal social needs.
I should have clarified that alienation is not the only source of unhappines, having no perpesctive in robotic labour is another important part, which i just scratched by mentioning low wage workers. There are very repetitive tasks that can still fullfill you, eg. simply by having contact to customers.
Raising wages, lowering work hours or extending worker protections would help the depressed workforce but these things threaten capital income and so, have somehow less political momemtum until it explodes in a revolution.