South Korea's population faces point of no return | Hacker News Reader

South Korea's population faces point of no return

newsweek.com

26 pointsGeoAtreides53 comments

South Korea spent $200 billion over 10+ years to try to get young people to have more babies while the reasons for the low birth rate (housing costs, etc.) remain unaddressed.

Sounds like something the USA would do. Hilarious. What a waste of money lol. They could have easily fixed their housing crisis and ensured a better standard of living for young people.

People are not having kids because they don't want kids. This is a global trend, in places of all levels of housing affordability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7XchzjMtcw

Housing affordability, to a large degree, is a major issue in some specific areas. Heck, you go an hour outside of a city like Boston and real estate is priced fairly reasonably relative to typical income levels. People get a very distorted view because of SF/South Bay, Manhattan, Central London, etc. Good housing has always been a significant expense for a household. But most people actually can afford housing.

Exactly. While "Hell Joseon", https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Joseon, may be one factor as to why South Korea has such a low birth rate, Finland, which famously provides great support for new parents and is a much more egalitarian society than South Korea, had its fertility rate hit an all time low in 2023 of about 1.3 (better than SK, but still way below replacement rate).

Reliable birth control essentially "broke" millennia of evolution. Our evolutionary drive to have sex is as strong as it ever was, but now that drive can be fulfilled without the occasional outcome of children, which has been the case for only about the past 60 years. And children, at least in economic terms, are much more of a burden than a benefit in modern times.

For this reason, I have been pretty convinced that the only way this is solved is via culture and I am skeptical it's worth the cultural change.

For starters, Money and Macro looked into this and a lot of the fertility decline is the result of less unplanned pregnancy. Teenager's are far less likely to give birth. This is seen as a good thing.

In many places of the world, woman not having children is seen as bad (see China's shengnu dialog), but that's also immediately also recognized as misogynistic by liberal minded people. So I'm not sure it's worth solving either.

So it's basically a classic case of societal values bumping up against personal autonomy. In my mind, the best option is to prepare for population decline and mitigate against the downsides.

> lot of the fertility decline is the result of less unplanned pregnancy. Teenager's are far less likely to give birth. This is seen as a good thing.

When I consider the notion that impregnated 16(?)-19yo's were a primary driver of population growth, I find evidence for and against it.

Pro isn't about the number of births per se - it's about the number of child producing relationships that began after our school age daughters got knocked up.

Against is that the earliest (and latest!) birthing ages are historically highest for stillbirths and other life-ending birth issues. And youngest parents are (historically) the most likely to experience a first child death (that commonly ends young relationships).

Mitigating the 'Against' column is that modern medicine reduces those deaths.

Mitigating the mitigation is that the ability to access to modern medicine is in decline for young+poor parents - at the same time a war on kid-saving vaccines is heating up.

Just a clarification to my comment.

If I remember correctly, I don't think the claim was teen pregnancy was the "primary driver of population growth" but one of the variables that has a large impact on fertility rates. Most people see the reduction in teen moms as a positive development.

I also think the reduction in unplanned pregnancy to be a net positive. So 20 somethings finishing school before starting a family is good, but it's also probably resposible for fewer large families. I believe polling shows most woman want more children than they actually end up having. I'm sure part of that explanation is that people are starting families later in life.

> I don't think the claim was teen pregnancy was the "primary driver of population growth" but one of the variables

When I restated your original argument, I was careful to say "a" primary driver.

My own counter argument is based on worthwhile data but is submitted without the evidence thereof. Given that last, I'm inclined to frame your assertions in reasonable light.

> a lot of the fertility decline is the result of less unplanned pregnancy. Teenager's are far less likely to give birth.

I do genealogy and have created 10s of 1000s of profiles, mostly of people in the US from 1850-1950. Much of what I see aligns with common knowledge of historical birth rates and parenting stats.

But not everything. One exception is that (Adult-Reaching) First-Born kids of moms <18 is a significantly smaller demographic than I would have expected. Families that start with moms in early-mid-late 20s are all better represented.

This isn't to throw shade on common knowledge. I suspect our CK is missing some nuances in the data (data from the groups I work on).

  To give another example of missing nuance: We know historical lifespan averages were strongly shaped by infant mortality but they were also shaped by labor-related deaths (ex:black lung).

> People are not having kids because they don't want kids.

The US currently faces an inability to support a household on 1-2 typical incomes. This pressure pushes away from parenthood.

I believe a stronger reason(s) is that the demands on parents have massively increased while kids simultaneously lost most of their nutrients for social and internal growth.

Between my parents generation (silent) and mine (genx), parenting time sharply rose. My mom's peers parented a few hours a week; I parented ~ceaselessly. Modern kids face 24/7 adulting.

At the same time, kids access to 1) safe [from cars,adults] free range area and 2) adult-free social time went from sq miles to sq ft and from hrs/day to n/a.

I argue that stripping critical resources from kids and parents gives us fewer kids and parents.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp...

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...

> Stunning stat: 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.

(US statistics, contextualize accordingly)

Certainly, there are potential parents ("fence sitters") who are opting out due to the economics, but the opportunity cost cohort is substantial and is important to recognize, as they will not be swayed with economic policy changes. The population boom and "demographic dividend" (the economic growth that can occur when a country's population age structure shifts) occurred because women were not empowered. Being empowered now, the neutral fertility rate is simply not near replacement (based on all available evidence).

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet... (“Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children, and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them, and has them later.”)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2 ("Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come.")

So does that mean future will belong to societies where woman are not empowered? Because only they will produce kids who shall inherit the Earth.

Sadly, I am not even sure if I am kidding or not. S Korea can be an interesting case study over the next few decades.

> So does that mean future will belong to societies where woman are not empowered? Because only they will produce kids who shall inherit the Earth.

I assume this is a function of the ability to project force from nation states that observe and respect human rights. If might makes right (historically speaking), you should be prepared to exert force (or offer asylum at scale to women from countries where human rights are at risk or not observed).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_through_strength

Huh what? A nation may not even need to exert force if it's one of the few ones producing babies.

Ability to defend oneself is a given for any nation state, babies or not.

Well, there are two ways to get population - babies and immigration.

> Stunning stat: 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men. (US statistics, contextualize accordingly)

I did read the context you offered and I offer this.

The causes I suggest can be a primary driver while being fully uncredited. The reason is our new child-raising dystopia is our assumed reality. It goes unconsidered because there is low awareness of what historical parenting actually looked like.

Stated differently, people correctly understand how massively taxing raising kids is. However they consider that taxation as if it were the ever-existant reality. They don't consider that [compared to now] raising kids used to be a trivial task most of the time.

Historical kids amped up critical life-skills with their peers and away from adults. During those same hours, their parents worked and maintained their own social lives.

Conversely, modern kids are ever-attached to modern parents and this severely limits everyone's opportunities for natural social interaction.

I don’t disagree, but it’s unlikely we go back to a time where kids became self sufficient and useful rapidly instead of the high resource utilization luxury good they are today.

> it’s unlikely we go back to a time where kids became self sufficient

Well, yeah. To keep my assertion simple, I didn't want to add that I see no path to restoring kids' social ecosystems - and their mental health. I see no path to unwinding/overcoming the damage done by automobile culture.

I think there is a potential, limited path to success here (depending on what "success" looks like), and it’s likely assisting parents in clustering (via subsidizing moving expenses and affordable family housing) around schools that remain (because many are closing due to funding cuts and the demographic cliff) to maintain walkability for both school commute and socialization. It’s a bandaid, but the only option I see viable considering the cost of re-engineering urban planning to fix decades of car centric policy. Those costs are enormous, and I think in a lot of cases, it’ll be cheaper to allow some places to go terminal/fallow as their population declines.

This doesn’t juice the fertility rate (because it doesn't appear anything will), but it will make childhoods suck less for kids already here and those on the way for the foreseeable future (as well as improve parental experience). Barcelona Superblocks is my mental model on this topic.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/9/18273894...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZORzsubQA_M

That's just a generic argument that does not really address why South Korea is uniquely horrible in terms of fertility rate. Someone mentioned Finland: it has fertility rate of ~1.3, which is almost double of South Korea (around 0.7). The SK government would be ecstatic to be in Finland's position.

Whenever fertility rate is mentioned on HN, I find that a lot of comments just rehash the same talking points, which could apply to any economically developed countries. Rather uninteresting.

You cannot use a global trend to explain a specific situation and then explain that global trend as wanting to have kids or not, and then think that you have seriously offered a better hypothesis than OP.

As an analogy, I started playing Minecraft because my friendsand I were compelled at the idea of building stuff on our server, not "because" (to use the word you used, though there is no causal connection) people all over the world start playing Minecraft.

Yep. Peoples do not want kids becouse they do not want life long family. Paying for kids without families is not only stupidity but society degeneration.

Change laws to pro-family. Do not allow scams on "single-mum with kid send more money".

Affordability is one reason I’m not having children. Also, if I was a child and grew up into a ravaged world and knew my parents KNEW they purposefully birthed me into a dying ecosystem where the ruling class and dear corporations treat us as disposable slave labor I’d loathe my parents. My partner and I don’t want that for ourselves or for any offspring. The generation being born now is going to have a rough, maybe unsurvivable, time.

$200 billion is only about $30K per woman (about 6 million women in the right age bracket)--that's chump change. No woman who isn't already planning on having a child is going to change her mind over a single $30K payout when it's obvious that raising a child is in the multiple $100K range.

It's going to take multiple $million+ per woman to change the calculation.

(And this doesn't even take into account taking care of elderly. Marriage tends to be a prerequisite for children and women often wind up being the caretakers for both sets of elderly parents. And that often never ends. Yet more money required.)

My wife and I were saying the other day if the korean gov wanted to pay us to start popping out kids, it would be starting at $1.5MM per kid they would have to pay us. Heck we'd have 10 then!

I generally agree with you. However, I would look at the $30k as a get started fund. Stroller, baby clothes, diapers, crib, etc. I think it would go a long ways if it was spent wisely.

This is something the US should do. US would probably tax the $30k though.

It still doesn't really change the equation though. For people that want to have children, it's a nice bonus. But for people that don't want to have kids, it isn't changing anyone's mind, so if the purpose is actually to raise the birth rate, it's a failure on its face.

Might nudge families to have another child, though. And of course the US pays $36,000 per child (tax free) via the child tax credit.

A good start would be tying retirement benefits to the # of kids you raised. If you dont have kids, you dont get social security and have higher taxes on 401k withdrawals.

That's a really good way to get your young people to leave the country.

People will rightfully oppose attempts to penalize them into having children.

From what I've read the discrimination women face in their careers is a huge contributor to the problem... Which was not discussed at all.

Do countries where women have thriving careers enjoy high birth rates?

"No return" to what?

This whole "demographic panic" is a contrived excuse for how the world's richest people really need much much more.

How could South Korea possibly support an aging population when the chaebols and other major equity holders really need much more of the country's economic product, not less...

Housing being an asset class will tank births everywhere.

Without enough kids, then as old people die then we get excess housing and housing asset prices tank.

The counterforce is that popular/desirable locations will still have inflow. Desirable locations will be fought over to show high status and housing becomes a Veblen good in those locations.

It may not be a complete solution, but if they enforce remote work in both the public and private sectors and switch to a four-day workweek, the situation will be better a lot. Research shows that even doing that won't decrease productivity; in fact, it might even increase it, so there's no sacrifice involved. What do you think?

In America a lot of people meet their spouse at work, and I’m guessing remote work doesn’t work the same way. Not sure if the same applies in SK tho.

Only ~10% of American heterosexual couples meet as coworkers. This data is from 2021, so it’s probably lower now.

https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_how_hetero_coup...

Times a changing I guess! I swear I remember it being around 30% which doesn’t show on your chart but that doesn’t change the narrative. Online dominating.

(Deleted)

Stein's Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

Eventually S.K. population is going to find a level.

related: Germany joins EU’s ‘ultra-low’ fertility club

https://www.ft.com/content/1b139d1a-07ea-4612-9c2b-62c430119...

"point of no return" oh come on!

probably taking this way too seriously given the source (news|that's so|week) however, despite what self-declared apex predators donning sheep's clothing would have you believe:

fewer now != never more again

Good. Maybe the rest of the world can follow suit and we can finally see the extinction of the Human species!

We don’t need extinction, but we could use a reduction in dominating the earth and extinct-ing other animals.

Maybe someone could recommend them to take in a lot of immigrants? That's what we did in Europe.

You kid, but I foresee a future where stagnant countries fight over the immigrants from the last few countries that are reproducing. This is not just a problem in Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Blue on the map indicates negative fertility rates. The economic systems we have will be destroyed by not having new entrants to the ponzi for the old to retire on. We will realize that expecting the economic growth forever we are used to without population growth forever is folly.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...

Productive immigrants, not those who you would pay to go home (as Sweden is doing). Economic drag would not help the situation.

Sweden to pay immigrants $34,000 for voluntary return home - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549199 - Sep 2024 (9 comments)

Sweden will offer migrants $34k to go home - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41548399 - Sep 2024 (214 comments)

Sweden to pay refugees up to 341,00 USD to return - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41541481 - Sep 2024 (9 comments)

Right, countries will be launching blockades and wars over the invaluable contribution that for example Sub-Saharan Africans can give to a country.

In New Zealand we encourage immigration: 30% of the population was born overseas (very few refugees).

Personally it feels like we are just delaying demographic problems because those immigrants also become elderly and costly in time.

The main problem is that we have a serious outflow of 20-30 year olds leaving for other countries, so just encouraging more kids is not the answer here. I suspect the outflow is caused because 20-30 year olds can't get ahead financially or buy a house. They often move to Australia to earn more in a warmer clime where housing is more accessible.

I'm married to a Korean and have lived in Korea for a fair amount of time. I'd say for this to work well, Korea would somehow need to change a very deeply ingrained idea that watering down Korea would be the end of Korea. There are many times over the years that have had me in situations I've thought "These people would really rather run the population to zero than make it more welcoming and hospitable for foreigners." I can never get involved in politics here, naturalize requires a strong proficiency in the Korean language, etc. Then just the inter-personal cultural aspects, it's really a lot to think about changing. This year I came to realize that it's so deeply rooted in many ways, that I think often they don't even know it's there.

I'm not as familiar Korean intellectual trends as I was in Japan, but I think there is enough similarity for a comparison to be informative. In the 1970s-80s, Japan was faced with the anticipation that they would need to accommodate massive immigration in the future to ensure their economic future. There was extensive public debate in the media and the consensus that emerged by the 1990s was against immigration. I suspect Korea will go similarly.

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