How to fix Korea's birthrate? Put girls in school earlier, controversial report argues
How to fix Korea's birthrate? Put girls in school earlier, controversial report argues
A report suggesting girls begin school a year earlier than boys in order to raise Korea's birthrate has faced strong backlash.
"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."
"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."
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.
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 😂
They have done some but it’s not been enough to fix their issues
And then you plan to force people to have kids too? Because otherwise it's not going up.
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.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, how about you propose an actual realistic solution? It's not 1850 anymore, people have goals other than making sure their family name lives on, no matter how easy you make it to have kids, more and more people just don't want to have them because it's socially acceptable and they don't want the burden. What then? Let the population go down until the average age is over 70? There's not a single birth policy that respects people's freedom of choice that has achieved the objective of making the local population have its birthrate go back over 2.1, none.
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
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.
South Korea, are you ok?
It can't possibly be the crushing weight of capitalism that is impacting young people's lifestyles.
No. And neither is its education system.
check the authors' browser history
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
What country are you from?
Fuck that, I'm not paying for breeders to ruin the planet more.
Right?
It’s that easy in most countries (though really just making it not a financial detriment to reproduce is better), but in South Korea it’s more than the money. A lot of South Korean women are withholding reproductive labor due to the intensity of the cultural misogyny
No government can afford giving large enough baby bounties to move the needle. Kids are really, really expensive.
what is it now, $200k+ from 0-18? (depending on where you live)
Maybe try dealing with the massive reactionary anti-feminist incel movements that continue to victimize Korean women and girls daily? Just a thought.
Being this out of touch with reality is the problem with countries right now. The elites and politicians don’t know what’s going on because they are staying in power long past their usefulness.
the elites and politicians never once in their life had the life of a normal person. that's what. they born into their wealth and power and just think the rest of us are lazy for not being born into it.
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.
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.
They do anything before they pay people more.
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
Jumping through hoops after Hoops after hoops all to avoid admitting that the problem is capitalism. Classic
Capitalism? How about people just might not want kids enough for birthrate to be higher than 2?
Even North European countries with all their social programs and safety nets are way under 2.
"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.
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.
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.
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
Our men need a handicap or they can't succeed
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.
The sience on development in male female is correct. It obviously won't fix birth rates, like just fix your privatisation of housing. But I think it would be good to do regardless, maybe female 1 year sooner and male 1 year later or just male 2 year later. That way being in the same class they actually are able to study the same topics without any gender development impairments holding them back. Some studies are required.