“Notably, Chang’s report claims that biological females develop earlier than males do, so requiring girls to enter school at younger ages will create classes in which the two sexes are of more equal maturity as they age. This, the author posits, makes it more likely that those classmates will be attracted to each other, and marry and have children further down the line.”
(…)
“The report does not include evidence of any correlation between female students’ early enrollment and the success rate of their romantic relationships with men. The author also does not detail specific mechanisms by which his proposed policy would increase romantic attraction or birthrates.”
Maybe try dealing with the massive reactionary anti-feminist incel movements that continue to victimize Korean women and girls daily? Just a thought.
I would like to see a large scaled research on that statement, like I know women hit puberty sooner but does that really mean mentally they do as well. Is it more of how woman are rear vs men. I do wonder if we thought me about emotions/feelings and teaching them younger how to deal with emotions and to be more if that would even the gap. Does anyone have any good research I could parse?
According to my experience , girls start acting more imature when they hit puberty while boys acts more imature before they hit puberty in comparison to each other.
Our men need a handicap or they can’t succeed
They do anything before they pay people more.
I’m of the opinion we just need to stop focusing so hard on raising the birthrate and focus more on taking care of the people and population we have. We don’t need more people on the planet - 8 billion humans is plenty. We need to figure out successful economic strategies that don’t require perpetual population growth rather than trying to breed our way into economic security.
It’s really easy, and I’ll explain it once again for the idiot governments in the back.
GIVE LARGE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR HAVING CHILDREN AND RAISING FAMILIES.
This concludes my Ted Talk.
People don’t need large incentives. They need help with daycare/eldercare, education, and healthcare. They need to be able to afford places to live that can fit a family. These are things that everyone needs, it’s just more critical to having a family
Doesn’t work. My country gave around 15% of minimal pay per kiddo. People who shouldn’t have children had lots of them. People who should…had the same amount as before that. Slightly better finances tho, but they still waited till they were able to provide for child.
Fuck that, I’m not paying for breeders to ruin the planet more.
Right?
No government can afford giving large enough baby bounties to move the needle. Kids are really, really expensive.
South Korea, are you ok?
No. And neither is its education system.
I can’t possibly be the crushing weight of capitalism that is impacting young people’s lifestyles.
Is there something similar to national service in Korea? Just wondering how the guys keep up in the job market when the girls have a 2 year head start.
Wait, are you joking?
i think he mean how korean males are at a disadvantage because mandatory military service. singapore has something similar but the rift is not as extreme as korea. korean males really despise feminism movement both because of that and cultural hierarchy. moon channel discussed this topic in length if youre interested
I was going to post this video. I highly recommend it (and don’t stop at its title, it covers a large amount of subjects).
I’m surprised, this is a surprise. Living in the US, Mexico has forced conscription just south of us for a while. We’ve also had a draft. All that being said, you made a lot of good points. We should probably credit the people who came up with this a LONG time ago.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
moon channel discussed this topic in length if youre interested
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
All South Korean male citizens are required to perform 18-21 months of military service.
All it really amounts to is a small headstart. It seems like a big gap initially because you’re comparing 0 years of experience vs 2 years of experience.
But across a 30 year career its a mere 7% difference. Frankly after 5 to 10 years of experience it becomes a lot less about how long you’ve worked, it instead becomes more about how you’ve spent those years and how that translates into benefitting the company. When a company is hiring for mid level and above, it doesn’t really matter to them that someone has 8 years vs 10 years. An extreme example would be someone with 5 years at Google vs someone who spent 10 years jumping between small start ups.
This idea is a complete non-starter from a practical standpoint. Parents would complain about it either way. Either they wouldn’t want girls in school early or they’d want boys in school early, too.
It’s just much easier to treat children all the same.
Also, I personally think this plan would backfire. Girls graduating wouldn’t want to have to be adults earlier than boys, so they’d stay in school longer. And from what I’ve heard, the most reliable way to reduce birth rates is to educate women more.
I think everyone also knows how to ethically increase the birth rate. Make having children easy and affordable. Lots of government assistance. Make sure everybody has access to cheap or free childcare.
And there’s also the generational problems. Young adults can see the problems that the previous generations caused. You can’t go back in time to fix those. It will be expensive to change this sort of thing.
But quick fixes aren’t going to change the underlying problems.
“cheap or free childcare” No
“stay at home parent” Yes
Lower the work hours per week with same wage so both parents can be there for their children: inconceivable
Why has birthrate been lower than 2 in most developed countries starting in the 60s/70s even if there were social programs and people were able to afford to have a family with a single salary?
Maybe people who don’t have access to birth control have accidents and they need to deal with the consequences and in fact, when given the choice, people don’t have enough kids to renew the population? Crazy, right?
Really, there’s nothing specifically wrong with having a low birth rate. On a large scale, we have an overpopulation problem, and there’s not really a negative for each person having fewer children. Of course, smarter people will decide to have fewer kids. But eventually, it will all balance out.
Exactly my point in another message, there are people desperate to get out of their overpopulated country and countries where they need new people yet leaders can’t do the math.
The best way to increase birth rates in advanced countries is: Work life balance. Restore the traditional tax rates on the rich.
For real man. We were so overworked when both of us had a full time job and no kids. Now we have one kid and one full time job. It is easier, hard in another way but somehow easier. Soon I’ll have to go back to work and I don’t even know how we will survive. We would love to have another kid but we either can’t afford it or we will go insane trying to afford it.
The other part is that stupid part time career pit. Ideally we would both work half jobs, but this will mean none of us can have a well paid job (per hour). But this also means that if my husband is laid off while I am at home, were fucked. Job security is a huge factor in work life balance.
But also, we are the “risky” ones. Most of my friends from school wanted to wait until they are “settled” financially. I don’t have one mom friend from school/university. They are either still settling in their careers or have given up on feeling settled and now have fertility issues.
Just for context, our kid arrived shortly before I turned 30. My friends are in their 30s and 40s. None of them is really “financially secure” since job security is just not a thing anymore.
Work life balance meaning one parent can stay home and raise the children without needing that second income to put food on the table.
If both parents work, the birth rate is always going to be lower, even with better work life balance.
Even with a parent at home people weren’t having enough kids to renew the population from the moment they had access to birth control methods.
Not just work life balance, but also the cost of living. I can barely afford to take care of myself, so I’m completely disinclined to go and create a whole new person that will be absolutely dependent on me to provide for it for years. If people can afford to live reasonably comfortably and conditions give them confidence that conditions will remain stable for the next 10-20 years, I bet you’ll see them start having kids. When they’re worried they could be homeless next year if things worsen and their retirement plan is advocating for the right to end one’s life on their own terms, it shouldn’t be a shocker that people don’t want to add kids into the mix.
Also, perhaps decades of social stigma that said having a bunch of kids is something only poor, ignorant people do that represents a moral failing amongst the upstanding daughters of decent society is a bad thing to maintain when you want folks to keep cranking out more kids to feed into the meat grinder of the workforce.
“We’ve got a birthrate crisis, maybe we should make it so a single income of someone working 40 hours a week can support a family of 4?”
“… Or we could explore literally every other option no matter how ridiculous and not do anything which would impact corporate profits even a single penny.”
And then you plan to force people to have kids too? Because otherwise it’s not going up.
Any sensible country will think about providing more incentives to women & couples to have more children and fix financial stressors that’s scaring people away from parenthood.
But no let’s try some nutjob theories 😂
I mean, after all, their problem is that they want more workers, so they can make more money. Letting people work less defeats the point.
It’s our fault for ever thing they would try to fix their problem by making their own problem worse.
They have a problem with patriarchy and not with birth rates. Birth rates are just the symptom.
Seeing that there is a big trend in young Korean women to abstain from men, marriage and family, I’d say starting to treat women like actual people could very well make a difference.
But yeah, getting them into school earlier and probably indoctrinate them earlier into good obedient wives could work too.
Do you have sources for the statistic you’re using to drive your conclusion? Such as the trends of abstinence.
I wouldn’t call this a “source”, but it’s an interesting explanation of the 4B movement.
https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html
This report imparts the image of a sweaty old man with steepled fingers tapping against each other panting heavily and grunting “little girls…develop faster…” And then letting that statement hang in the air, festering.
check the authors’ browser history
“My source is I made it the fuck up”
TBF, it’s possible this guy knows it’s crap, but had to deliver an original idea.
Actual answer: stop overworking your fucking population.
Won’t fix it, unless women want to stop working and stay at home, couples aren’t having more kids.
The solution is better population distribution, we’ve got overpopulated countries and countries where the birthrate isn’t high enough, no need to be a genius to get it.
Rebalancing is only a temporary solution. Birthdate in developing countries is also dropping: they may still be in the “good” part of the stop, but there’s no reason to expect it won’t keep dropping. Predictions vary widely but in about half a century, the overall population will start dropping, regardless whether you rebalance.
The thing that really hasn’t been tried is to value parenthood, value children. Sure, we may culturally and may even give a few incentives, but it has always been a huge burden on parents. Very few countries with the possible exception of a couple Scandinavian ones, do much to help make this easier
US is particularly bad at this
- parental leave is minimal
- healthcare is expensive
- childcare is even more expensive
- many jobs don’t give flexibility to take care of kids (especially since schools insist on you going there during their business day)
- pre-school is mostly not public, expensive
- college is extremely expensive
- housing is extremely expensive, especially trying to fit more people
- if a child has special needs, now all of these are even more expensive, and may be needed for their entire life
I’ve read estimates that parents spend on average $250,000 to raise a kid, and that’s an old number so I don’t see how it’s anywhere near that low. Who can afford that?
And that’s not counting the work, the attention, the hardship of raising kids. I always wanted kids and regret not having more than 2, but raising them is neither easy nor cheap, and society does very little to help
How come Scandinavian countries don’t have a higher birthrate then?
How come you can see birthrate fall at an alarming rate the second birth control becomes easily available even in the 60s when traditional families were still the norm?
How come millionaires don’t have bigger families than poor people if they don’t have the financial burden or the need for both parents to work?
Valuing children also means educating them and you know what happens the more people are educated? That’s right, birthrate drops.
The truth is, we’re not going back to numbers over 2.1 unless we take away women’s freedom and I’m sure no one with half a brain wants that.
I disagree. I think more people actually do want to have families but the systems in place just aren’t set up to enable that. This is anecdotal, of course.
But the system has changed quite a lot during the last century yet birth rate has been going down even when things were going better.
Hell, you see it extremely well in Canada, the second the pill becomes available, fertility starts dropping. That’s in the 60s, people were still able to afford to raise a family with a single income.
It’s extremely short-sighted to just look at today to make an opinion.
Give women AND men the opportunity and means to stay at home for childcare and stop putting the burden solely on the women might actually help.
But I guess treating women like actual people and with equity is way too much to expect.
South Korea has a huge misogyny problem to the point where young women choose celibacy and staying single over marriage and family to escape their bad situation under the current patriarchy. They actively choosing not to have children, because men treat them like shit.
Data shows it’s not the case otherwise rich people would have way more kids instead of being poor people that have the higher fertility rate.
Also birth rate goes down with improvement to women rights, not up. If there was less misogyny in South Korea people wouldn’t have more kids than they do at the moment.
You think the world wasn’t misogynistic when people were having 10+ kids in the 18th and 19th century?
My main argument wasnt about money, but if you stop putting the burden of hild rearing soley on women and share these responsibilities equally they will be more willing to have children. In most cases, more rights for women meant they are paying for the privilige with double the work. Still doing all the work at home and all the work of having children in addition to the job they can now have and gives them a choice.
Yes of course Birthrate goes up, if you take away women’s agency and give them no choice. Take away the means to control family planing and make being a wife and mother the only survivable option. As it was for women in those centuries.
You want to live in a world, were women are again slaves and property of the men in the family and forced to be birthing machines and maids to their husbands?
How does that fix anything? You keep some parts of the world as human breeding mills and send them to the places where quality of work/life balance is so bad that they can’t have kids there either?
No, at some point the human population won’t be able to increase forever and as conditions are improving in poorer nations their birthrate is decreasing, I’m just pointing out the obvious, immigration is the solution to birthrate problems in some parts of the world and it’s the solution to overpopulation in other parts.
the human population won’t be able to increase forever
Just gonna point out that this isn’t a problem.
Never said it was, but it’s ridiculous to think it’s normal to let certain territories become empty out of nationalistic pride when other are suffering out of lack of resources in other territories.
I would argue it is a problem in a capitalist society where constant and eternal economic growth is necessary.
Then again, I would also argue that capitalism is the problem.
Correct. If the masses benefitted from industrialization rather than just the corporations, we could have a high quality of life for everyone, population growth be damned.
Just to chime in. I was interested to randomly see in my feed the other day about how divorce between an American husband and Japanese wife, is at a lower rate than is between Japanese citizens.
I found it interesting that some cultures might be slightly more compatible with each other.
Anyway.
Not surprising, Americans living in Japan don’t tend to adopt the crazy work schedule that’s considered normal over there.
Raise the price of labor to the point that a working family can afford to have children at the standard they consider socially acceptable.
That would devalue investment accounts though, so it won’t happen until there is suffering on a scale not seen outside of major wars.
It won’t make people have enough kids to renew the population though otherwise birthrate would have been higher than it was in the 70s and 80s
In what country?
I’m talking about raising wages by 40-70% in the US.
Pipe dream, but if it happened the fertility rate would increase.
It’s the same story in all countries as they become developed, access to birth control and people having other more interesting shit to do means they don’t want to have kids, no matter how easy it is for them.
Finland: 1910 to 1930 4.7 to 2.4, 1950 to 1975 3.4 to 1.6, between 1.5 and 1.9 since then.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033730/fertility-rate-finland-1800-2020/
Look at Canada’s numbers the second the pill becomes available in the 60s (years before Reaganomics and at a time where people were still able to make it on a single income)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm
UK, going down since the industrial revolution
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
People just don’t want enough kids to renew the population when they’re given the choice to do something else, it’s that simple.
Heck, increased income is associated with decreased fertility, it’s been known for decades at this point! How come the rich don’t have tons of kids? They don’t have to stress about money, right? How come poor people have more kids than the middle class? It’s not as if they have a surplus of cash or can afford to only have one parent working, right?
France made childcare and education free and relatively high quality and look at that! They have just under replacement level fertility!
Some people do want children. Not everyone, but lots of people do. It’s true that wealth depresses fertility, but you can have a sustainable society if you give people financial security.
I’m willing to believe there are some cultural issues at play, not just the economics, but that is for demographers to tease out.
The American congressional representatives have an average of 2 children. Replacement rate. Get our standard of living up to that and you will see fertility go up.
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/472322/natalite-france/
Downward trend
Longer term
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033137/fertility-rate-france-1800-2020/
Downward trend
Replacement rate is 2.1, not 2
Nice for congressional representatives, did you take a look at their age? Average is 58 and 64 in the Senate, median is 58 and 65 respectively from what I’m finding. They’re not people who are making the choice to have or not have kids right now.
