South Korea’s fertility rate sinks to record low despite $270bn in incentives

I love reading about how Korea and Japan are both having this problem and in each it boils down to: people are struggling to survive under capitalist oppression and refuse to bring children into the life of oppression

But changing that would mean change, and that's no good.
I wonder if everyone else feels as tired as I.
- I’m laying here in bed until the last minute required for me to great ready to rush into work to attend meetings for 7 hours then come home and do actual work for another 5 to keep up with workload. Yes I’m as tired as you
- They're really going for "Better to have the country fail with men in power than give more importance to women and children."
Added: and are also so racist that will not let in immigrants who will help replace the population that is aging.
- At this point, even if either wasn’t so racist, I don’t think they’re in a position to suddenly receive millions of immigrants and properly integrate them into their societies.
When I read stories like this, I think about another story about a bear whose bile was extracted for industrial use. The extraction is extremely painful for the animal. They're kept harnessed to the extraction machinery. This particular bear managed to escape its harness. And the first thing it did was to kill its own cub. So that it wouldn't have to suffer anymore. This happened in China by the way.
- extreme self-decommodification
and refuse to bring children into the life of oppression
Close. It's their inherent racism that is causing their nations to fail.
- I'm not sure why people took exception to this. The Korean government literally makes it impossible for foreigners to access certain services. Japan allows landlords and businesses to reject serving any foreigners, and will arrest any non-citizen for the crime of being outside of their dwelling without their passport in their pocket.
- For South Korea this is unlikely to be the case. If you actually listen to the women, you'll learn that starting a family means becoming second class citizens, dogged by oppressive institutions and terrible mother-in-laws (which is a cultural problem too). It's common in many places. The men aren't better off either, the insane competition is stressful, alienating, and prevents them from actually experiencing family. Yes, this is also common in many places.
  The problem is capitalism and conservatism, two sides of the same coin.

15 years in Korea, I saw before, and I see it now.

When I first got there, Korea was still a bit like the past in North America. It was still completely viable to have a 1 income household, and in fact most working women would say, at the time, they couldn't wait to get married and have a kid so that they could retire and take care of their kid full time. The husband made more than enough money to support them, and how many people actually really want to work right?

Now, it's a requirement that both work full time at very good paying jobs or you're going to struggle significantly. The government thinks this is solely a money issue but it isn't. It's an everything issue.

Housing - Housing prices shot up 3-4x in a span of 10 years. Wages did not. It's still a money issue, but it's a pretty extreme one. Korea has a house 'ladder' type system with their jeonse deposit. It's not as common now that interest rates are gone, but in the past, if you put down a big enough deposit you lived without any month to month rent. The landlord would invest the money you paid as deposit for 2 years and give you back the whole thing, you could turn around and save your money over those 2 years to then have an even bigger deposit and either keep moving to bigger and better houses or eventually saving up enough to buy your own house. This is now broken, but they didn't exactly switch to a more worldly system. Many houses still require a massive deposit (maybe not quite as high) but also a high monthly rent. Be prepared to put down $100-$200k and still spend $1,500-3,000 a month for a good place. This is very bad in a place where wages have stagnated. The government has done nothing to really alleviate this situation.
Working hours - Working hours are still very long there, despite some shifts. Your standard work day is typically 9-6 or 7. And then you need to get home. Most people wouldn't get home until close to 8 pm depending on what they do and how far away they live. The government has done nothing to address this. The most they've done is actually make a couple statutory holidays in lieu. In the past most holidays that fell on a weekend you just lost. Now about half of them you will actually get the Monday or Friday off.
Vacation time - most companies do not give extensive vacation time as you see in western countries. You might get a couple of days here and there, but for the most part a lot of companies all take some set time off during the summer and good luck booking any kind of reasonably priced recreation with you and 20 million of your closest friends all within the same few week period. The government has done nothing of note to address this.
Recreation and leisure - Spend a little time on google checking out things like water parks, beaches, fireworks, parks, science museums for kids, the cherry blossoms in the spring. What's the first thing you'll notice? The fact that you'd have to put western fire marshals on suicide watch over the amount of people at each of these events. The itaewon crush disaster could probably happen at several different activities each year in many different places. I went to Ikea once and it was a mess. Shoulder to shoulder through the entire store. An hour long lineup to get into the restaurant. It is very difficult to enjoy your life outside of the house there because everyone else in the country is trying to do that at the same time in the same limited venues. The government has done nothing to address this.
day to day cost of living - in the mid 2000s this was dirt cheap compared to western countries. This was the trade off. You went there, made less money, but the cost of living was so cheap you could still save quite a bit. Now it's on par with western countries but wages haven't kept up. Quality of life has taken a nosedive. Fewer leisure activities, fewer enjoyable things like ordering out, less money to spend on what little hobby and free time you have. The government has done nothing of note that has alleviated any of this.

The government simply refuses to address the core issues that make people unhappy in their day to day life. Even if you immediately tripled everyone's salary, it wouldn't change the fact that they spend too long at work and in what free time they have it's impossible to go out and enjoy themselves.

Meanwhile soju is $1-2/bottle and you can still get $20-30 day rates in motels so getting day hammered and having an affair is still the most affordable fun you can have.

I think this is spot on. Raising a family takes time, and if there are not enough like human hours available in a “standard” schedule/lifestyle for two average people, they just aren’t going to be able to raise a family. I think it’s as simple as that.

Falling birth rates are bad news for economies and billionaires, but good news for the planet.

Climate change is bad for humans. The planet doesn’t care, it can carry on without us.
- Humans aren't the only species on Earth. Mass extinction is bad for everyone living on this planet, mostly the other animals who suffer our destruction. I wish we could just live in equilibrium without killing off every species that isn't worth farming.
  Earth is currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, according to scientists.
- This statement irks me unproportionally strongly compared to how banal it is. It's the equivalent of "it is what it is" in saying nothing, but with some edgy pedantic seasoning. What about if the atmosphere was stripped and the planet was left a barren rock? What about if something knocked it from out of the Solar system and it was sent reeling into the universe on its own? "The planet doesn’t care, it can carry on without us" -- and please, pretend I did the Spongebob random caps thing, because that's what I think of your banality.
I think less of anyone who has this take.
Good news for the planet? Do you think Venus or Mars give a fuck nothing lives there?
- When he says 'planet' he means the living things that live on the planet.
- It's unclear why you decided to be toxic towards this comment.

If I offer you $5 off every sports car you buy, then I say "American's are not interested in the $15 Billion dollar vehicle incentives"... its disingenuous.

The total cost of buying a car needs to be part of the discussion, not just the "incentive".

The same goes for family planning.

$7,000 rebate on a $100,000 electric car? 😍shut up and take my money!!

Surprised to see none of the comments mentioning the 4B movement

went to read up on it and not suprised. Cousins friend of a friend went to Korea for vacation once and was raped on her trip there. Grew androphobia because of the incident.
if youre female in South Korea, please try avoiding going to clubs and parties, especially if you dont have a person to watch over you.
I only recently learned of this and found it fascinating to read about. This shows just how broken a society it is, this is like the mouse utopia experiment all over again.
What is the 4B movement?
- it's a feminist movement, in backlash to misogyny and pro-natalism in South Korea (it's becoming more widespread, though). The 4Bs are the "four no's":
  no dating men
  no sex with men
  no marriage with men
  no childbearing
  It gets a lot of pushback and is called selfish etc. but women are very angry & upset that the government only sees them for their reproductive use, and it's reasonable to not want to date someone who doesn't view you as human.

What sane and educated person is actually deciding to have children?

Depending on the sub, you will either get upvotes (yeah, the world sucks!) or downvotes (how can you hate children you monster!) for a comment like that.
- Yeah, I don't even hate kids...but I'd never have one.
Why did you have him then?
- I'm trying to comprehend what I just saw.
  Is this a pro antinatalist video? The guy does the spiel about how having kids is bad for humanity, and then offers to cut his throat. Is the goal here to demonstrate that antinatalists hate children, or to offer the argument that you shouldn't have children?
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Why did you have him then?
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Plenty of wealthy people have large families, it's only a problem for non-multi-millionaires
To have an anonymous stranger on the internet make a poem for them

Am I the only one who thinks it's stupid to use taxpayer money just to make rich people richer?

This isn't solving the problem, it's making it worse.

Every government in the world does this, sadly. It's almost as if rich people look after themselves when they take positions in government.

Is it a low birth rate (as in fewer children are being born)? Or is it a low fertility rate (as in fewer women are able to get pregnant)?

Did The Guardian really mix up the terminology like that?

Probably a bit of both? It says that women are having their first child at the age of 33.6, the oldest in the OECD. The older you have a child the more difficulty you will have so they also put money into fertility clinics. This means low fertility rates.
It's not necessarily a health issue on a mass scale but an economic issue driving people to delay having children until they feel they can handle the responsibility. This causes low birth rates below 1.
When discussing demographics, fertility simply means the number of children born (TFR- total fertility rate).

Removed, rule 4. 24 hour ban.
"Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced."
- Post is still up for me