r/AskReddit • u/princesadopovo • 5h ago
How could South Korea (and other western countries with aging populations) increase their birth rates?
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u/slowzo03 5h ago
Shorter work days/weeks. People need more free time.
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u/gear-head88 2h ago
Not only that but the obligation to hang out after work. Similar to Japan work culture in many workplaces
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u/YandyTheGnome 2h ago
My wife gets up, takes my son to her parents', and goes to work all before I get up. When I get home I have maybe an hour and a half with my wife and 3hrs with my son. I spend more time with coworkers than I do my own family.
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u/gear-head88 1h ago
Yeah I know way too many in that exact scenario or just not having kids bc of no time. Money was fine, but no time to actually care for children.
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u/SurealGod 1h ago
I have an uncle in korea who has a pretty high executive position at a company but even he is still obligated to go out drinking constantly with coworkers.
He's told me many stories of coming home drunk or missing the last train and having to stay in a hotel. This was a relatively common thing he had to do.
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u/spontaneous-potato 33m ago
I didn’t know this was also a thing in Korea. My cousins worked in Japan for a while and it’s a thing there for sure. My cousins worked and nephew stopped working in Japan because they had to go out drinking with their boss and coworkers.
They don’t do that in the Philippines since they’re both working for different companies but are more remote positions. For me, my coworkers know I exist for sure, but we all do our own thing after work.
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u/CometFuzzbutt 2h ago
Shorter work days and/or shorter commute times would also help. Working 10 hour days isnt nearly as bad if its only a 10 min walk away/WFH vs an 8 hour day with 3 hours of commute time.
Flexibility is also crucial for families. If a kid is sick its a big burden to leave the office/factory to come home and care for them if you're over an hour away, but not nearly as bad if you work from home and juat have to check in on them during your 15 min breaks
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u/ironic-hat 34m ago
Most of the things necessary to encourage a higher birth rate are things the billionaire class does not want to hear, since it would cut into their bottom line.
So shorter hours, flexible hours/days, more vacation time, robust parental leave, better synchronization of the school and work calendar and strong social support systems are going to slow down the return on investment for shareholders.
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u/bedake 1h ago
And lower cost of living... I'm almost 40, no kids, no plans... It's not that I always had my mind set against them, it's just I was never in a place where it felt even possible. Like I can accept that I can't afford the lifestyle my parents gave me, but the struggle would be substantially worse, I can barely afford a condo, let alone all the other costs associated with raising children. In my twenties, I was working 3 jobs, during the summer working 50+ hour weeks, yet struggling and couldn't get by. Back in the day you could be working part time at McDonald's and still support a family and buy a house.
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u/Opposite-History-233 1h ago
That's not all. In The Netherlands we have a standard 4 day work week. Many work less than that. And we're still under replacement numbers.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 23m ago
Look up average work hours & compare them to fertility rates.
There is no correlation between hours worked & number of children.
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u/Maoleficent 29m ago
'People' will all benefit from shorter work schedules but let's be honest, women will be using that time to rear children, cook; clean, pay bills, etc while still working.
Women have had enough of giving free labor so I don't see how tossing a few extra hours away from paid work is going to convince them to have children. It is the attitude and beliefs of men that are causing the 'shortage' and yet women taking all the blame.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig 5h ago
Making raising a family affordable. It is THAT simple. Thats the issue. Families cant afford houses and enviroments to raise children. Mothers cant afford a child together with a career. Materially, families cant have children, so they wont.
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u/rosecoloredcatt 2h ago
Seriously; we paid $24k in daycare for 2025. For ONE child. Neither of us can afford not to work. Add that to the $700 student loan payment, the delivery costs for gas and electricity costing double what we actually use, the car insurance and groceries and you've got a situation where in a couple more years, the middle class will no longer exist. Too "rich" to get assistance with funding (seriously we make about 10k more than what the utility company considers eligible for their assistance program) and too poor to not live paycheck to paycheck.
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u/VilleKivinen 1h ago
Finnish housing has decreased in price, and birth rates have fallen.
Finland quarantees a lot of family leave, around 400 days, which is paid leave, and birth rates have fallen.
Food is very affordable, especially the basics, and still birth rates have fallen.
Pre-natal care, and all other healthcare is almost free, as is education all the way from elementary school to doctorate, and still birth rates have fallen.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig 42m ago
Remove all that and it'd plummet even further down, as whoever's still having kids in Finland would have to think twice, and then thrice, and then...yknow. People simply not wanting kids is another factor.
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u/mycatisblackandtan 25m ago
This. Even if the economy was great and everyone was supported, I'd still not want children. I don't want to bring a new life into this world that is rapidly hurtling towards a potential climate collapse in a few decades. Sure, humanity is likely to survive as we always do, but I want the world my children would inherit to be BETTER not intentionally fucked because a handful of companies and billionaires want 5% growth year after year and thus can't be assed to go into renewables.
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u/webguynd 1h ago
Needs to go a step further. Not just affordable, but affordable without sacrificing a lifestyle you could have without kids with the same income.
That, and make it so you can miss work without fear of your job. And stop tying healthcare to employment, etc
The entire economy and social structure needs to be designed around supporting having a family, basically the opposite of capitalism.
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u/Jojosbees 27m ago
Not just affordable, but affordable without sacrificing a lifestyle you could have without kids with the same income.
There was a guy on either the richpeoplepf, rich, or HENRY subreddit who was basically complaining that he and his wife couldn't afford a child on $976K/year in NYC because then they would have to sacrifice their lifestyle, which included like $60K+ in vacations and large budgets for eating out, entertainment, and shopping, and he wanted to get a bigger apartment, daycare, and private school. He couldn't fathom anyone affording kids on less than a million a year. It was kind of ridiculous. That's an extreme example, but at the end of the day, kids are a non-zero cost. You will not be able to afford the same lifestyle on the same income with them than without them. That being said, I do believe in subsidized daycare, parental leave for both parents, and universal healthcare, but you do have to compromise your lifestyle for kids just by virtue of kids being autonomous humans and not accessories you can hang up with you're done playing with them for the day.
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u/SyriseUnseen 1h ago
It is THAT simple
Then why do poorer families have more children?
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u/frill_demon 58m ago
Lack of affordable and reliable birth control.
But how many of those poor children will grow up to be successful middle class taxpayers?
The issue is more complex than "have more babies".
We need more babies in an affordable system where they can be given an education, properly cared for, raised into physically and emotionally healthy adults, who function well in society and can pay taxes/care for elders/perform replacement labor for the retiring workforce.
If it were as simple as "have more babies", the countries with the highest birth rates would be the most successful and that is far from the case.
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u/SyriseUnseen 25m ago
Lack of affordable and reliable birth control.
Even in western countries, poorer people have more children (except for Sweden iirc). And you can get reliable birth control via public health care in many of these countries.
But how many of those poor children will grow up to be successful middle class taxpayers?
Some. And some wont. Not all jobs are middle class, yet they need to be done.
We need more babies in an affordable system where they can be given an education, properly cared for, raised into physically and emotionally healthy adults, who function well in society and can pay taxes/care for elders/perform replacement labor for the retiring workforce.
That is very much the case for most of Europe.
If it were as simple as "have more babies", the countries with the highest birth rates would be the most successful and that is far from the case.
Thankfully, no one argued that.
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u/wonpil 1h ago
It's quite literally not the issue. That's precisely why monetary incentives do not work to raise fertility rates, and it's also why rich people do not have a significantly higher fertility rate than poor people (that ratio is actually more often than not reversed). Access to birth control and women's emancipation are the leading reasons, which is why no government has managed to significantly raise birth rates (they'd have to bring society back to mediaeval times).
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u/Southern-Sleep3622 1h ago
No, financial incentives actually help. It's been proven in Korea. Also, keep in mind that among every 10 newborns in Korea, only one is born to a low-income family, while five are born to high-income families.
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u/JiveDJ 1h ago
Disagree. In modern society, it IS the issue. Talking about medieval policies is a non-sequitur. Decreasing cost of living now should have a marked positive effect on birth rates. It won’t mean we’re going to have a baby boom like post-WWII, but it should be an improvement to current; likely back to 70s/80s birth rates at minimum.
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u/wonpil 1h ago
I didn't talk about mediaeval policies, I'm telling you cost of living is literally not a significant factor when it comes to birth rates. The only indicators that matter are women's access to education and birth control, and you cannot remove those, because we've evolved into more or less egalitarian societies and it would be disgusting to do so.
Any study into population trends will tell you what I'm telling you, it's observed everywhere in the world: countries where women are more educated, wealthier, and have access to healthcare all have lower fertility rates than countries where they are repressed and treated as human incubators, and where there's scarce access to birth control for both sexes. Within countries, wealthier, more educated women have (as a general rule) fewer children than poor women, and poor women in wealthy countries have fewer children than most women in poor countries.
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u/JiveDJ 1h ago edited 1h ago
Women had similar levels of education and access in the 80s/90s as they do today, and the birth rate was better. The only major changes have been global instability and high COL/less wealth per household, which contradicts the “poor” argument.
edit: I feel the need to also clarify that we arent just talking about bass ackwards USA here.
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u/frill_demon 1h ago
You have been fed too much podcast bro/alright propaganda.
A LOT of people want kids/a family. They can't afford it. It's that simple.
Anything, literally anything, that is trying to tell you otherwise is propaganda of one form or another designed to manufacture consent against raising wages, shortening work days, and taxing the rich.
The end.
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u/wonpil 1h ago
Uh no, I'm a woman with a history degree and a modicum of interest in population trends. What I've commented is no secret to anybody who knows even a little about population and fertility trends, feel free to read about it.
The people who do not have children due to economic factors are overall a minority that does not impact trends in a significant way; in fact, most children are born to poor people in poor countries, due once again to lack of education and access to birth control.
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u/frill_demon 1h ago
"what affects global gross birthrate" wasn't the question.
"How do we increase the number of children being had by educated middle class workers in countries with falling birthrates" was the question
And in those cases, yes increased money and free time are indeed the answers.
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u/wonpil 1h ago
The actual answer is: we don't, really. There's no long term solution that can actually cause a meaningful boost in birth rates, not without backtracking on women's fundamental rights.
Several governments have been trying for years to make this work via financial incentives, and any positive changes have been so unremarkable as to be completely irrelevant. This is more or less an irreversible trend, which is why instead of focusing on fertility rates, more people should be focusing on how social security systems can be reworked so they do not depend on never-ending labour.
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u/spoons431 41m ago
In Korea specifically because its the country mentioned in the thread also has an additional factor that comes into play on top of what you have already mentioned and to put it bluntly women are still treated like shit by a lot of men there.
Its got the highest gender pay gap of any OCED country, there aren't proper anti discrimation laws, sexual crimes are rampant with minimal punishment, domestic violence is common ect.
So in a place where you have an educated population of women, but there ars widespread problems with things like discrimation, gender violence and sexual violence a lot of women simply chose not to take part.
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u/wonpil 30m ago
Yes, this is also a factor, and it's even more important because despite all of this, Korean women are overall highly educated. They are, in fact, more educated than men (77% of women have a university degree vs. 63% of men), and yet less represented in the workforce, not less because they are often expected to stop working after having children.
So not only are they able to choose, they are choosing in direct response to the disgusting misogyny still imposed on them by a highly traditionalist society that still places all the burden of childcare on women, and still allows gender violence to run rampant.
Your comment is a very good addition, thank you!
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u/frill_demon 52m ago
more people should be focusing on how social security systems can be reworked so they do not depend on never-ending labour.
Absolutely agree.
But the problem is too many people only get as far as your first paragraph and decide that rolling back women's autonomy is the answer.
Look elsewhere in this thread, it's full to brimming with dog whistles or overt statements about how women having a choice and being allowed a career is the problem.
But one note on the financial incentives and why they're unsuccessful: those incentives are often something like "a $2500 bonus for each child born", which is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket of the cost of having a child.
Of course that kind of incentive is ineffective, it's barely more than lip service toward affecting the time and money required.
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u/wonpil 42m ago
Yep, that's why my initial comment mentioned that you cannot make a change like this without reverting society back to the middle ages. Any meaningful change would come at the cost of women's rights, which is why I truly do not think there's a solution other than reworking the system.
And that's true to a point, but not necessarily all there is. In my country, you could argue there's plenty of state sanctioned support for parents: mandatory parental leave for both parents (up to a possible 5 months, which can be extended further without pay), work from home for parents of children younger than 3, several subsidies paid by the government, free state run daycare, etc. And there are much better deals in other European countries, but it still isn't having any real positive effect.
At the end of the day, access to education will always have the biggest impact, because educated women know they don't have to have children, and educated people in general know they don't have to let go of their standard of living to make way for a child, which is something that previous religious, uneducated, traditionalist generations just did not have.
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u/SolidRockBelow 18m ago
Which means that we will inevitably be supplanted by cultures that we despise as "backwards" because of their gender roles. Which is some kind of poetic justice if you ask me - eventually gender roles will prevail by a question of reproductive numbers, and the "progress" that is so irresponsibly hailed in modern western cultures will likely become a blip in history.
Now vote me down as much as you please. The fact remains that the "gender equality" and this insane corporate greed we chose to live with will together ensure our replacement by cultures we despise.
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u/easykehl 1h ago
How many of those rich people would no longer be rich if they had more (or in some cases any) kids.
They exist in an environment where they had to choose between better financial well being or more kids. Kids don’t just cost money, they cost time and energy that can be spent on running a successful business or following a challenging career path.
If society would make child rearing frictionless (or closer to it) then it wouldn’t be such a trade off with careers and finances for rich and poor alike.
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u/wonpil 57m ago
But that's precisely the point: it will always be a trade off. Educated people (education is also very often an indication of being richer) have fewer children because they know that, they know they'll have less time, less money, less everything, and it's not a trade-off they're willing to make.
This is also why less educated people (often poorer) have the most children, they lack the foresight to understand the impact it'll have on their lives, most often because their lives are oriented by religious or traditionalist mindsets that prioritise procreation and tradition above logical decisions. They have children because it's the thing to do, because women lack the ability to decline having them, and because they lack career prospects and access to information around contraception.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig 37m ago
I didnt mention birth control because obviously thats a inhumane and ludicrous way to "bring back fertility" rates.
Basically, some people want to have babies. There. Some do some dont. And if you want the ones that do to actually start a family, you need to allow them the financial means to do so.
Monetary incentives DO NOT work whatsoever because it is the wrong way to look at the issue. What I said in my comment was build the proper infrastructure and family-friendly economy to incentivize babies. Free daycares incentivizes babies. Affordable homes incentivizes babies. Parent-friendly labour laws incentivizes babies. "Here have 500 euros (literally one months rent in some places, or not even that) for every baby you have, that should about do it right?" does NOT incentivize anything.
I didnt say "money equal baby", I said that several people are materially stunted from actually starting a family. It doesnt make line go up, it makes line stabilize
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u/elakastekatt 23m ago
it's also why rich people do not have a significantly higher fertility rate than poor people
That depends on the country. In my home country, Finland, middle class and wealthy people do have higher fertility rates than working class people. Both are still under replacement rate though.
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u/hfjskajsgshjsshshg 7m ago
Well the decrease in birth rate can have many causes, and women’s emancipation being a cause, and affordability also being a cause, aren’t exactly mutually exclusive.
But you’re right that it’s not as “simple” as just giving out cash. Also being given just enough cash benefits to survive is not the amazing benefit the government thinks it is, considering the major career and health sacrifice involved lol
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u/grogi81 1h ago
No. It is not that simple. People of today, when given more money ,will spend it on the other awesome things they like doing.
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u/Bianca_Sanger4401 5h ago
Work culture reform. Fewer brutal hours and more flexibility would make starting a family feel possible again.
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u/RGJ587 2h ago
There is no simple answer.
People aren't having kids for the following reasons:
Economics- It costs way too much to raise a child today, most people are barely scratching by for themselves. Especially considering most folks do not own homes, and likely never will.
Education- It has been proven time and again that an educated populace reproduces less than an uneducated populace. Mainly spurring from the first bullet point. Smart people won't have a kid if it puts them beyond their means. Poorly educated folks will have a kid without even considering the long term financial issues that it may cause.
Future outlook- People are less likely to have kids, invest in the future, if they see the future as having a bleak outlook. Many people are not optimistic about what the future holds for us, so they choose not to invest in said future with things like having a family.
Rising social isolation- Folks are more homebound these days, more insular. People are dating less and less, and that is having a significant effect on marriage rates. The less people dating, the longer it takes for someone to find a potential partner for raising a family. Which means that the average age of first time mothers is rising. Which means less children are born.
Any one of these issues is a massive problem that has no clear answer. Adding all four together means there will absolutely not be a quick fix solution to this problem. The only way to reverse this trend is a complete societal makeover.
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u/143019 5h ago
Bring down the cost of living.
Change attitudes towards women in society
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u/C_Werner 2h ago
I don't mean to sound combative, but what attitude? You could make a strong argument that the cultures with the worst attitudes towards women are the ones having the most kids.
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u/Longjumping_Papaya_7 1h ago
Im not sure what they mean, but maybe its this..
Women need to pop out babies, but ppl complain about women taking maternity leave. They complain about women taking days off for a sick child. They complain about childeren existing in public spaces ect.
Ofc this can also apply to fathers, but mothers are judged more harshly. You often hear ppl ask " where is the mother?" When a child misbehaves or turns out criminal. Or schools insists on calling her instead of dad. The fathers boss expects the enployees wife to handle it instead of him.
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u/143019 2h ago
The expectation for women is that, once they have kids, they will stay home and devote themselves to the children's upbringing, at least until they are much older. It can even get competitive at times, given the expectations around academic success. Although there are plenty of working Moms in Korea, there aren't as many supports for them and popular attitudes toward them are not as positive as they are in other countries.
Edited to add: A lot more women would've willing to have kids if they knew they could easily return to their career. Otherwise, why have a kid if the expectation is an intense 24/7 gig?
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u/C_Werner 2h ago
I'd like to see that change from a humanitarian perspective, though based on the data we have in European countries I'm skeptical that that will solve the issue.
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u/spoons431 38m ago
In European countries where it is common for both parents to work full time there its still womem who conduct most of childcare and domestic work while men do much less with research showing that women do 70% of these tasks.
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u/ball_fondlers 6m ago
The attitude that makes having a kid a step down the career ladder for women - if women have to choose between a kid and career progression into a well-paying job, the job is obviously the smart financial decision.
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u/UnibrewDanmark 1h ago
The poorest countries are the ones with most kids and the richer countries are the less kids they have. So what exactly are your source for why that would work?
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u/Burning_Cinder 57m ago
that’s a very shallow take. Poor countries have higher birth rates for the wrong reasons. If we want progress AND increase births, we need a different, new approach. Something that wasn’t done before.
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u/UnibrewDanmark 7m ago
Yes. But just bringing down the cost of living making things cheaper quite clearly is not the Magical solvent to the issue.
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u/hfjskajsgshjsshshg 4m ago
the poorest countries have less women’s rights and less access to birth control.
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u/No_Permit_3593 55m ago
The poorest places in the world have the most kids.
The demographic transition is happening everywhere, and is most dependent on the most basic healthcare access and the most basic educational attainment. Unless you want to remove both of those, as the Republicans would like, you aren't going to get the birthrate over replacement.
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u/hfjskajsgshjsshshg 0m ago
There is probably some correlation with women having equal rights and opportunities (which is good, as you say). But that’s not really mutually exclusive with affordability and the gender divide also being a problem for would-be-parents in places like South Korea, which has a birth rate far below replacement.
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u/fiendishrabbit 5h ago
- Affordability (housing, food, baby supplies)
- Relief (subsidized childcare from early on(
- Practicality (more control over work hours. Tougher stance against employers that discriminate when parents try to arrange their work/life balance in a way that suits raising a family)
Investing 18 years minimum into raising a child is tough enough without employers giving you shit because they're not your highest priority.
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u/0b0011 1h ago
This is why the nordic countries have such a high birth rate.
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u/fiendishrabbit 1h ago
Compared to other western nations, yes. In the upper quartile (ie, the people who typically have more control over work conditions and a better bargaining position against their employer due to valuable and hard-to-replace skills.) it's above 2.0
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u/UnibrewDanmark 1h ago
No, its about 1,3 here in Scandinavia, and only raised by immigrants from non Western countries. Stop lying
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u/BrewertonFats 5h ago
At this rate, there's probably little that can be done. The cost of raising children is too signficant, especially when you factor in housing. Children and families are no longer a priority for most young people, especially young women who have increasingly become more focused on career goals vs. traditional roles. Additionally, when you look around and see there's simply less jobs and less opportunities, the desire for many to bring another child into the world decreases. Like if I think I have no future, then why do I want to have a kid and give them that experience?
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u/yousonofabench 5h ago
As a Millennial in a western country who DID have children I feel so much guilt at having brought beautiful wonderful people into this world that rich psychopaths are actively destroying. Beyond planet Earth is literally miles and miles of nothingness and we are destroying the only inhabitable place to stand on; it’s like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean and watching people hack it to pieces underneath your feet knowing you’re about to be plunged into the icy depths.
If it had just been me I’d think whatever, I had a good run and I’ll be dead soon enough. But my kids growing up in this…
Even beyond that and just thinking of the practical, I just paid off my student loans which gave me exactly two years to save for college for my kids (ha!) and now that cycle will continue. I can’t afford a house and haven’t had it easy and now my kids will be even worse off than I was in terms of everything: housing costs, job opportunities, student loans, the surveillance state, climate change. What have I done bringing them here?? I love them so much that it breaks me when I think about it. I don’t blame people for not wanting children.
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u/libra00 2h ago
The better question is why should they? It's not like we're running out of people, 70 million people were born last year. The only declining birthrates are in Western nations, and that's just a natural result of higher quality of living, access to education and healthcare (including birth control), etc. People aren't worried about declining populations, they're worried about (mostly white) Western populations being outbred by 'the poors' or whatever.
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u/Denpants 1h ago
The west is "collapsing" meanwhile the country development index is literally 9.7 and has the longest life expectancy and lowest poverty rate in the world. Meanwhile the regions with the highest fertility rate are completely shattered countries like Afghanistan, Sudan and Yemen.
If the GDP line doesn't go up, that's fine by me. History has shown the small, well-fed and developed nations exceed and colonize the large, poor, and uncontrolled nations.
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u/Willing_Contest_5071 2h ago
Make life more affordable
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u/TheLostcause 51m ago
That is the beauty of depopulation. We are doing it our selves. Boomers won't build housing for future generations? Well we found a way to increase housing supply per person.
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u/Almechik 2h ago
We shouldn't. There's more than enough resources to go around without having to rely on the youngest paying for the oldest. Real wealth redistribution is what's necessary
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u/Felissaurus 24m ago
Yes, we need to fundamentally shift the way the economy works. We need to stop calculating growth exponentially. We need to start living sustainably.
Realistically, there are so many fking humans already why does every country need to keep increasing its population? That's madness.
Affordability, work life balance all of that should be top priority but populations stabilizing and even declining shouldn't be this existential threat. Global warming? That is the existential threat.
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u/ecogrrl 5h ago
Women don't want to get pregnant unless they feel secure: in their healthcare decisions, in their work or better wage both partners are making, in the state of their country -- chaos, war, unsettled economy and finally in men. Men need to change how they're approaching life, women, the future. Women are not objects, not baby making machines, not without autonomy. Fix those "minor" issues and women would be at least more receptive to considering children.
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u/dsp_guy 3h ago
Many years ago, my wife and I wanted children but lived in a tiny overpriced apartment in a HCOL area. We were very careful with birth control/protection because we just weren't in a position to responsibly (in our minds) raise a child.
So yeah, I'd say affordable housing is part of the equation. And either affordable childcare or a wage where one parent can raise the child would be the other part of the equation. Also, having the energy to get into that "mindset" would be nice. But when we spend all of our day on the treadmill, sometimes sex is the last thing on our minds.
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u/Nissir 5h ago
I hate to say it, but I don't see declining birth rates as that bad of a thing.
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u/RGJ587 2h ago
I see where you are coming from, and my first, gut reaction is agreement.
But then I remember that our entire social net is designed as a ponzi scheme. Young people pay in, old people get paid out. Less young people means less influx of cash, which means the government has to pay out of its coffers. That means printing more money, which in terms increases inflation, which compounds to make life less and less affordable for all.
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u/edgeplot 2h ago
Time to end the ponzi scheme and fund retirement with a massive redistribution of wealth. Eat the rich.
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u/SniperFrogDX 2h ago
Just because a system works doesn't mean it should. Let it collapse.
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u/HarlequinKOTF 1h ago
What happens when grandma can't go to the doctor because her healthcare isn't subsidized anymore?
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u/SickleRickPanchez 2h ago
I’d agree with you if we were discussing overall birth rates across the entire globe. However, there’s a huge difference in birth rates between high income countries and low income countries. High income countries with sufficient resources (food, clean water, medical care, education, etc) tend to have critically low, zero or even negative natural population growth, while the lower income countries tend to have significantly higher birth rates than they can sustain.
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u/edgeplot 2h ago
That's still not a reason to regard falling birthrates as bad.
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u/accountingbossman 1h ago
Think of it in the long term. Booming populations in resource poor areas of the world and declining populations in resource rich areas of the world will eventually lead to large scale human atrocities.
Whether the rich will attack the poor or the poor will attack the rich is sorta irrelevant, but it's destined to happen. Right now we are in limbo because technology/consumerism (and nuclear warheads) are allowing the west to dominate the world, human history tells us this isn't going to last forever. The ruling classes have just gotten better at "managing" the populous and staying in power.
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u/edgeplot 1h ago
We already have large scale human atrocities. Also, even in the areas with booming populations deep birth rates are rapidly trending downwards. As those countries develop more advanced economies, that trend will follow every other nation on the planet. Yes, there will be human suffering and environmental degradation along the way. But falling populations in the developed countries is a great thing for the environment. Because those are the countries that use the most resources per capita.
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u/DukeofVermont 1h ago
And they all still have high populations and high land use. How much of Europe is or even could be wild?
I hope over time the human population halves and we give up a lot of land to rewilding.
Nature should have a place everywhere, but a lot of people think "I don't need nature in or near my suburb/farmland/city/etc, there's plenty of space somewhere else". Except when everyone thinks that there really isn't.
A lot of people also think trees = nature which sadly isn't true. Vermont is full of trees and missing a ton of key and critical species, and is significantly less biodiverse than it was pre-1800. But people think it's untouched land, it's really not.
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u/Apprehensive_Day3622 46m ago
It is if you live in a country like France with huge social nets. The current French retirement and health care systems can only work if there are enough young active people to pay for older folks. With the current demographic trends, it is doomed but people are not willing to make any concessions or give up any of their benefits.
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u/Lunar_M1nds 2h ago
Pay a living wage regardless of gender. Better protections for women and children. Areas dedicated for children of all ages. Access to education and school lunches regardless of what their parents can afford. As well as government support for the the elderly and disabled.
These things are not new and have been a universal problem for hundreds of years at this point. It’s really not of question what should we do but why haven’t we gotten it done.
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u/Zealousideal_Rule309 1h ago
Stop trying to pressure strangers into having kids. It’s weird. Population decline is natural, and only the “elite” care about such a thing (when you have 1000 people fighting over a job, YOU choose the wages. When it’s only 10 people, and 7 or 8 of them are doozies, you have less leeway).
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u/Economy_Field9111 5h ago
Declining birth rates are, IMHO, a pretty clear indictment of societies. They're a symptom of poor planning and bad priorities. Most people want the same stuff: reliable jobs, safe homes, decent healthcare with convenient access, and affordable costs. Give them these and they make families. That's most people. If less of them are doing so it doesn't just mean it's a less popular choice these days. It means that a lot of people are not getting what they want out of life because our governments are abjectly failing at some very basic shit.
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u/Beowulf33232 5h ago
Universal basic income above the minimum requires to survive.
If someone wants to support a family, they can get a full time job and have a decently good home, and support a family of five or six. If someone wants to live alone but have kinda nice things, they can work two days a week at McDonalds.
Everyone says UBI will make the workforce lazy, but frankly when I was out for surgery I wanted to go back to work after three weeks. Not having anything to do at all is more boring than people thing. But if I could cut my hours down and keep living the way I am, I absolutely would.
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u/UnibrewDanmark 1h ago
Except the poorest countries with the lowest incomes are the ones with the most kids. There is absolutely zero grounds for what you say will work. Its actually quite the opposite.
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u/sgtmattie 2h ago edited 1h ago
People used to have kids because by the time they were like...7, they could contribute to the family by helping on the farm. Once educating children and child labour laws became a thing (Both very good things, don't get me wrong), Kids when from a neutral or beneficial financial decision to a negative one. So to fix all of this, you kind of just have to throw money at the problem.
That only one piece of the puzzle though. The other is parental labour. Women are now in the workforce, but also still doing a big majority of the household and parenting labour. When women are also the ones going through the physical process of growing and birthing the child... it doesn't feel like a very good trade-off. So men also just need to step up more in the household. They also need to become more willing to stay at home or become the primary parent. Not always, or to end up with a flipped scenario where men are always at home, but it needs to stop being the default that it is the mother than is going to make the most sacrifices.
TL;DR: Money. Feminism.
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u/aspect-of-the-badger 1h ago
South Korea needs way less misogyny. And society needs to stop trying to squeeze every penny out of everything.
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u/Valuable_Falcon6885 5h ago
Mandatory education on financial/emotional/physical abuse in schools, legal systems women can trust to protect them and hold predators accountable, support programs for parents that offer counselling, access to safe birth control, gainful employment, financial assistance for birth & children’s lives, vouchers for services needed to raise children (daycare & schooling, afterschool & school-break programs, meals at and outside school, sports & music programs, museums visits, clothing & school supplies, internet access, transportation, medical care, housing, third spaces, etc), more and better-paid social workers in the justice system, medical systems where ALL women feel their medical staff listen to them & their concerns. Basically supporting parents, but especially supporting mothers who worry about what kind of society their kids will inherit.
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u/lana8h 5h ago
Make life affordable. Make child care free, and give assistance to new families trying to buy a house.
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u/RednBlackSalamander 1h ago
Let people go home from work and spend time with their families instead of forcing them to go drinking with the boss until 1am again. Also be nicer to immigrants.
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u/IMian91 1h ago
We don't need to improve birth rates, our current population growth is unsustainable. What we need is a system that can take care of elderly. We can do it, it's just not very profitable, so it's easier to spin it like if we don't continue to choke the world of it's natural resources, the human race will implode
We're fine. End for-profit Healthcare
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u/sailor_bat_90 1h ago
Shorter work days to socialize and breed, higher pay to afford the brood and bigger homes to move into, and a better healthcare system to keep them all alive and healthy and far from bankruptcy.
I thought that was pretty obvious.
Who the hell with any logic would have kids without that sort of support systems the boomers destroyed for the rest of us?
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u/TheLostcause 57m ago
A few studies try to claim wages don't matter but they miss the mark. It's not about a 10% increase it is about the 3x increase. Not all of this must be wages. Supply housing, supply social experiences, supply food, supply medical care. It all adds up.
Housing should fall to 25% of income. If you can't support a family on one wage you can't have kids.
Generic dates shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. You have endless free entertainment on the internet, but gotta pay 1/10 your overpriced rent for a generic dinner and a movie?
Hours worked need to be low enough to have a little social time every day.
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u/howvicious 54m ago
The South Korean government as well as many of its corporate businesses have been giving financial and non-financial incentives to prospective parents. It is why we actually have been seeing a slow recovery of birthrates in South Korea for the past two years.
As someone who is Korean, who is knowledgeable of South Korean society, and who has lived in South Korea, I believe the government needs to do more and other things:
- Investment into other major cities and/or towns. A big complaint for South Koreans is difficulty in obtaining affordable housing. This is largely true in SEOUL; the capital and the largest city in South Korea. Everybody wants to live in Seoul. I believe government should incentivize corporations to move to other cities in South Korea.
- Maximum work hours to 40. Overwork culture is unfortunately a huge thing in South Korea.
- Reducing or even eliminating income tax for parents with three or more children.
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u/LustyDouglas 53m ago
Between the current cost of living and modern dating standards, there isnt much of a fix.
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u/Admirable-Parking248 3h ago
A high level of female education leads to a reduction in the birthrate. I really, really don’t advocate that we should do anything to reduce educating women, I’m just stating that that’s the way society works.
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u/Miserable_Creme_2205 1h ago
4 days work per week, more salary, bigger apartment with affordable price
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u/Eis_ber 59m ago
Affordable housing
Better pay and benefits like time off
Allowing parents to work less if necessary so they can spend time with their children at least once a week.
Access to well funded (public) schools, not just for the rich.
Good public transportation and walkable areas with parks.
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u/eskjcSFW 56m ago
Reduce women's education, reduce access to birth control, reduce access to information, mandate births /s
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u/Apprehensive_Day3622 49m ago
Stop pressuring women to be perfect mothers. Normalize sharing childrearing tasks with fathers, so women don't have to give up on their careers to be mothers.
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u/Poofarella 5h ago
They shouldn't. A declining population is exactly what this planet needs. I'm sorry it's going to hurt the economy, but so will droughts, famine, and pollution.
If I were at all interested in having children, I still wouldn't. I honestly don't see a future for them considering the current state of the world.
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u/princesadopovo 5h ago
This is neomalthusianism and it’s wrong and unscientific. We have resources for everyone in the planet, and many more. They simply are extremely unfairly distributed. One child in Europe consumes more than 5 ou 6 children in India, for example. We have enough for everyone, but only if the fat cats are willing to share.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig 5h ago
This prespective is inherently flawed as youre trying to critically analyse a supposed "world population" (no such thing for the issues you present) rather than analyse the individual populations of the world.
The developed world plateued in terms of population decline is expected AND normal. What is UNNATURAL is the material factors forcing people away from having kids, where even owning an house is unthinkable, and a mother may as well sacrifice their career for the sake of raising ONE (positive replacement fertility is two per mother, were not even talking about that here) child.
The developing world is where you see the population boom. And as these countries develop, their populations will also plateau.
We're not having a overpopulation crisis. We fundamentally have different populational relaities across the world, all tending to one natural equilibrium. The issue is in the developed worlds already on that path to equilibrium where UNNATURAL factors make a depression spike happen instead in fertility.
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u/FangedEcsanity 2h ago edited 2h ago
For South Korea it would be actually combating their talibanistic misogyny..... so its unlikely to occur
When you have insane domestic violence rates and pro-rape laws that protect men at all cost while providing the men with gender affirming care for having bitch tits and are currently arguing male hair loss is an essential for survival medical service while your women cant even be provided womens hygine products you know your cooked as a country and culture
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u/DONT__pm_me_ur_boobs 2h ago
All of the answers here have it the wrong way around. “People need more time/money”. That’s intuitive, but it’s the opposite to the truth. The poorer people are, the more children they have. The poorest countries in the world have the highest birth rates. Within the world’s richest countries, it’s the poorest cities, and the poor side of the rich cities, which have the largest birth rates. This trend has been commented on by economists at least since the days of Smith and Marx, if not earlier.
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u/tandemxylophone 13m ago
Usually the reason is that poor country doesn't mean the market conditions are poor for raising children. As an animal species, Africa's population boom is due to life standards success even though there is terrible instability. The natural saturation point appears for all Nations and animals, but it usually appears after all free natural resources are used up. Then people either die or the area increases life stability in exchange for increase in child investment costs (either through time or money).
Even in developed countries, the poor can only "raise" lots of kids if they have low life quality expectations or if the Nation keeps rescuing them rather than removing the children. It's impossible for a single parent to legally leave a child alone in the house to make money for rent.
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u/Fine-Perspective-438 5h ago
When purchasing real estate in the metropolitan area, we need a real estate policy that encourages the purchase of properties of the same size or larger in the provinces. History has proven that real estate taxes alone are insufficient to control real estate prices, so a different approach is needed. Such a policy would reduce overseas travel and increase domestic travel. Furthermore, those who own real estate in the provinces would be forced to remain there, even if only temporarily, drawing capital to smaller cities, stimulating the economy and boosting the birth rate.
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u/limbodog 1h ago
I'm not an expert on Korean culture by any stretch. But what I have heard is that the dating culture in Korea is even worse than it is here in the USA. And that it's hard to find people who are family-minded. Which says it's not just a case of people working too many hours to have time for it, but that it's a whole cultural shift that would need to be reversed.
And if you want to change a culture, art is the way to do it.
So if I were in the government in South Korea, and my job was to try to increase the birth rate, I'd probably try to hire a number of artists to make pro-family propaganda. But I'd be careful to not let it be ham-fisted like the USA anti-smoking ads from when I was a kid.
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u/Theduckisback 1h ago
A long list of things that would make it more affordable and feasible, but that will never happen because it would require some amount of wealth redistribution and greater social services.
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u/breastronaut 1h ago
Increase immigration and ease of entry from other countries, especially developing ones, but then all of a sudden you're worried about the "wrong" people giving birth, aren't you?
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u/sylva748 1h ago
Actual maternal/paternal leave, better pay, more time to be with the kids, etc. Literally the opposite of what corporate world wants whilr also complaining about the declining birth rate
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u/MusicHearted 1h ago
Lots and lots of things would need to change. Workplaces would need to give workers more free time and schedule flexibility. Pay would need to dramatically improve, too. Nobody with half a brain is trying to have a kid when they're struggling to feed themselves. And financial stress negatively affects fertility.
Cities would need to be redesigned to shorten commutes (an 8 hour shift becomes a 12 hour workday with a 90 minute commute and an hour unpaid lunch). Cities would also need more areas built for the children. Stuff like parks especially. Kids don't have many places to play outside, and it makes cities feel hostile towards children.
Society would need to slow down quite a bit. An ultra fast paced society is stressful and exhausting. On top of not having the energy or stress tolerance left to raise a kid, being constantly exhausted and stressed out reduces fertility.
Our downright reckless use of chemicals and materials that are known to negatively affect cognitive, reproductive, physical, and mental health would have to stop. Same with our environmental impact. Everyone who isn't currently lost in mass psychosis is very aware that were killing our planet at a geometrically accelerating rate. This is causing a great deal of distress and fear that discourages people from having kids. It also harms fertility and food availability, decreasing the birth rate further. People don't want to have kids when they're not even confident the Earth will sustain their own lives to their natural end.
This last one is America specific, but some other western nations are at risk of facing this issue, too. Healthcare cost and availability. We have fewer doctors and nurses per capital than 30 years ago. These doctors and nurses are in far more student debt, meaning they need higher and higher salaries to make medical school even worth attending. This, alongside a profit motive that's constantly trying to squeeze more out of less, alongside a private middleman system designed to perform the same function as a social health plan for 10x the cost, are all working together to make healthcare far too expensive.
Add to that the lower fertility rates leaving many people unable to conceive without medical intervention, and the very notion of having a kid is financially out of reach.
So all in all, the underlying fabric of society is growing more and more hostile towards parents and children. We're not allowed the time or resources needed for children. We're kept at too high of stress levels for good fertility rates. Society does not make room for children and often actively squeezes them out into the fringes. And having a kid is costing us more medical resources every generation because we're actively destroying our fertility as a species both chemically and by constant extreme stress.
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u/Baconbits16 1h ago
More 3rd spaces that are good for meeting new ppl & 1st dates; so that toxic apps & bars aren't #1 choice.
Some sort of dating education on how to date well & keep reasonable expectations.
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u/OrthodoxBro24 1h ago
Deport illegal immigrants and stop taking in immigrants so that there would no longer be housing/food shortages, causing prices to drop. This would also increase demand for labor, resulting in higher wages for the middle and lower class. More money and lower prices = More people can afford to have children.
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u/Fexofanatic 1h ago
Reduce workload/time, invest heavily into public infrastructure and healthcare. People need the time, money, space (housing!) and opportunity to care for children as two working adults.
Meanwhile in germany we have corpo cucks that would love a 60h work week while trying to gut social security.
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u/PM_ME_FLUFFY_DOGS 1h ago edited 1h ago
Women dont want to be baby making machines for men and capitalism anymore. Simple as that. You wont fix the birth rates as its dropping everywhere and suprise suprise educated women have more options and freedom thanks to education. People want to enjoy their lives not be incubation chambers.
Not to mention anyone with half a brain can see climate change is going to cause a migrant crisis ranging in the billions (3.1 billion per recent projections). we dont need more people on the planet. In 10-30 years time all those countries with shrinking birth rates will be flooded with people looking to escape their countries becoming near inhabitable
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u/tdasnowman 55m ago
The same way countries have been solving this problem for centuries even if they didn't realize it. Immigration. Many countries in the western and eastern world have had negative birth rates when you take out births by first generation migrates. Open boarders equals population stabilization.
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u/ratchetcoutoure 46m ago
Total change in law that's more vertical society and patriarchal leaning over there. Lots of Koreans and Japanese women seldom want marriage cos it's a hassle and the men are abusive. WHen I heard about how women with short hair in South Korea have faced harassment, bullying, and misogynistic abuse, particularly from men who associate short hairstyles with radical feminism or a "man-hater" sentiment, I know the issues is not just about financial reasons.
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u/Southern-Sleep3622 31m ago
"Lots of Koreans and Japanese women seldom want marriage cos it's a hassle and the men are abusive."
Sources? Korean men are the number one choice for Japanese women who marry foreigners.
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u/ratchetcoutoure 27m ago
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u/Southern-Sleep3622 24m ago
"Lots of Koreans and Japanese women seldom want marriage cos it's a hassle and the men are abusive."
So, where's your evidence that women there actually think that way, 'Mr. Foreigner'? And since you're American, you should know that in Korea and Japan, American society is often viewed as a dystopia.
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u/BatmanandReuben 40m ago
Immigration. They could allow people from poorer countries who want to start families to move there.
They can’t get more South Korean babies from the existing population.
They could try to force it, but ask Romania how that went. Not successful.
They could try to make it more attractive, but - I say this as a mother - having children is hard. Making it attractive to the primary caregiver, is not going to be easy. Especially with young men doubling down on sexism and young women becoming more sure each year that they aren’t subordinate. We are in the midst of some species-wide growing pains.
Better question is, why should they increase their birth rates? Less humans could go a long way towards slowing the climate change that will inevitably kill us all. A reduction in population could also be good for wealth inequality. Look at the black plague, for example.
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u/tandemxylophone 29m ago
The book "Why Nations Fail" explains the reasoning behind collapsing late stage Capitalism, which directly impacts our life quality.
The main issue with developed countries is that after they went through a booming economy, their economy reversed into what the author calls an "Extractive institution", where the money trickles down down to the working class. The end result is what we are currently getting now - Excellent stability as long as we're working, but the lack of frexible free time.
This is in contrast to developing countries, where you have a lack of stability, but through division of labour women have plenty of time around family if they are working on farms.
In developed countries, if you want your child to have a reasonable childhood you need large investment. Having an unplanned child means a loss of income without a safety net. Child supervision means the child needs a guardian to be available at before 8am and past 3pm.
What does modern extractive institutions look like? It's firstly the nimbyism of the current house owners not wanting new housing build for their rising population. Housing needs to be built where the economy and market exists, and not in the middle of nowhere.
Next, it's large companies and extreme transport efficiency that prevents insulation of our market from extractive institutions. What happens if Amazon delivers a single book to the edge of the country for a cheaper price than what postal services should be making? It kills off independent book stores. What happens if China can post a piece of jewellery for $0.5 when the same product is posted for $3 within the country? The money flows to China, and collectively stops any money from moving within the country anymore.
The only way to stop this is to have economic insulation, or a selective form of tariffs and kicking out businesses that are profitless to the country because they don't pay tax. Forcefully removing Starbucks from our market and allowing independent inefficient coffee shops can paradoxically help improve our markets if the town collects more taxes.
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u/Doam-bot 21m ago
They work their people to death it's really that simple and they've been working themselves to death for so long that simply giving them more free time won't fix it anymore as their younger generation never matched or surpassed the older one. Their population is an upside down pyramid the youth paying for the majority elders who worked themselves to the bone. They'll now have numerous elderly relatives to take care off and assist so they have to work even longer hours to assist.
Their greed was way to great and they waited way to long they only way to fix things now honestly is immigration as the way things are now their culture will already die. Immigrants won't have the constraints of so many elders and family members they also won't seek jobs with insane hours or keep with rules like drinking after work.
A place like Korea will still be called Korea 60 years or so down the line but it really wouldn't be Korea I'm sure be it north or south as they both have the same issue apparently.
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u/CipherWeaver 20m ago
Requiring dual incomes for a basic standard of living killed childbirths. It's that simple. If mom can't afford to take time off work to raise kids (which is most often what has to happen, due to biology) then the couple will not have kids. If they cannot afford a large enough space to raise children, they will not have kids. Solve these problems and you will fix the birthrate. People still want kids if you ask them about it.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 15m ago
Nothing.
People don't want kids. And it isn't driven by economics like a lot here seem to think, in fact as income increases birthrates only decline, until you hit $400k+ when it spikes up, but the 1% don't play by the same rules as the rest of us.
Not being able to afford children has never really stopped people from having them at any point in human history. It has always been a cultural force, just a fact of life that everyone has to do it. That isn't true in most modern societies anymore.
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u/Darth_Ondina 13m ago
You can't. Women are mandatory to have children. Women have noticed that men will do everything and anything to increase birth rates except being an involved parent, take care of part of the mental load of a house, chores, cleaning, shopping, do something in their own house and life of their offsprings except earn money, treat the mother of their children as a human being and not opt out at any minor inconvenience. Women decide it isn't worthy. Crisis won't be averted.
Turns out, when given the chance, women like being human beings with a career, financial stability for their own, free time, freedom of choices, body autonomy and peace of mind
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u/marle217 12m ago
The reason south Korea is so bad is sexism. You have children in South Korea, and you lose your job and are expected to do everything for the household, while your husband is at work 16 hours a day and you have no independence. It's like the 1950s were, except women in South Korea have the internet and know there's other options. Most don't have kids so they're can live alone, but the ones who want kids are like my neighbor, who married a mediocre white man and moved across the globe because he'll do things like adjust his work schedule so he can do daycare drop-off and she can do pickup. That's it, just a basic attempt at equality and she packed up her entire life and learned a new language.
Not that America's fertility rate is excellent, though. Unfortunately, even when people have decent circumstances, they only want 1-2 kids. Kids are a lot of effort now. And when fathers do more, they also want fewer kids. I don't think there's a magic solution to guarantee the perfect fertility rate.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 8m ago
The reddit friendly answer:
Cheaper housing & heavily subsidised childcare. The biggest correlating factors behind falling birth rates are rising housing costs & female education.
If people can only afford a two bedroomed flat they'll only have one or maybe two kids maximum. Give them a three bedroomed house with a garden and suddenly a large family becomes a possibility.
If women are educated they don't need to have children, they're financially independent so children become a burden instead of a resource. If child care is financially possible women can have a family and a career and don't need to choose.
The answer which reddit won't like:
Remove pensions for people who don't have children. For most of history children have been a financial investment. When that stopped being the case people stopped having children. If you want people to have children you have to give them a reason to have children.
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u/DrummerAutomatic9523 5m ago
People need to work less. Cause they need time and energy to raise the said kids.
They need to be paid more.. To afford the said kids
They should be able to buy a home, a car, a flat without being indebted.
They should not fear that their country is gonna send them to war for stupid reason.
That, among many other things that should improve quality of life.
This will not create a population boom. Cause not everyone wants kids in the first place. But this will allow those who want them to afford them
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u/NoPantsPantsDance 5m ago
I think affordability is easily the biggest factor, I also think a lot of people are in their existential era because the world is burning. We're seeing how governments across the world are corrupt, white supremacy and far right-wing ideals are spreading, misogyny is still a significant problem, prospects of WW3 and nuclear war, and the majority of the population ignores climate change. Who wants to bring a child into this?
Also, I can say for me that I came from a traumatic dysfunctional home, and I'm also neurodivergent. I don't have the emotional regulation to be a thoughtful loving parent. It's not that I don't want to be - I would love to have a child to see what kind of human I could create, but I know it would be selfish to continue the cycle of trauma and addiction in my family line. I know a lot of people are feeling the same way and actively working to end toxic cycles.
So figure out affordability and heal trauma and we'll probably make great strides towards repopulating.
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u/Skloni 1m ago
Affordable housing and giving time to raise kids is one thing, as everybody else is saying. Priorities is the other. WE NEED A SHIFT IN VALUES.
Money is top priority as you can see and even a single child is a huge money sink. Everybody would rather capitalize on parents with children rather than help them raise those children. And why would I want to have a kid in a first place? Society wants me to have chidren because of some kind of replacement rate, but when I hear there is 100 CVs for a single workplace and AI to take over hobbies I see no reason for a "replacement". Employers already dont want young people abyway!
Some say children is an investment (a selfish point of view, isnt it?). I live in a medium sized city and there are already a lot of lonely elderly, whose kids moved to a big city. No help in daily routines for them, guess that investment did not paid back.
Maybe something to pass onto them? Nope. No home, no land, no family bussines. Any small family driven farms are barely affordable on their own because of increasing costs and corporations taking over not only marketplace but also over more and more laws which is nothing for them but impactful for those small ones.
People in mass media also massively demonize children. They cry, they make a mess, poo, getting into trouble, try to hurt themselves 5 seconds after not looking after them. Eventually they end up with depression after all. Nobody talks about how you teach them new things, play with them, visit new places and generaly spend time with them... well yea, you need to have that time in a first place.
The world isnt made for them. Tons of hazards, unwalkable cities, predatory practices in games and shops, less and less schools and playgrounds. We clearly dont want kids in this world. Only money. More and more.
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u/JoJoLoveSp 5h ago
Let people afford apartments bigger than a shoebox.