Is There Any Practical Way to Increase the Birthrate?

[TokyoBayer]

I’m just finishing up a move so I didn’t have time for a careful reply.

I had a few thoughts and can finally reply now.

@asterion

My understanding of Japan’s problems is more that the salaryman expectation is still toxic as hell, that to the degree women work too many companies are still expecting that most women are still only in it for a husband at which point they will leave (heck, that was still a driving plot of the first season of Aggretsuko), and that rural areas are hollowing out (obviously not just a Japanese problem) as the youth move to the cities.

My bolding.

No. No. No. That’s easily 30 years out of date.

It’s not your fault, but a pet peeve of mine is that news reports about Japan are really poorly done and people wind up thinking they understand Japan and Japanese better than they really do.

Japan has its own complex society. Not all companies are toxic, not all companies require insane amounts of overtime, not all men feel forced to work late, and not all women are unhappy.

It’s every bit as complex of a problem as in the West with no easy solutions.

Some industries are more women friendly than others. Back when I was in one particular field, there were few female managers, but my friend is in another field and she is a manager with considerable responsibilities.

@DSeid

If [South Koreas] want to emulate to EU levels they need to rapidly change the expected roles of fathers and mothers in their society.

No one participating in this thread has sufficient knowledge and familiarity with South Korean culture to even begin to understand the complexities involved, let along make suggestions of what are viable solutions for their culture.

It’s always a lot easier to propose radical solutions for other cultures. Without wanting to get sidetracked into a completely unrelated debate, I can’t tell you how many Japanese have told me over the years that the US should just “get rid of guns.” Just wave your hands and make the problem go away.

One problem with reporting about other countries is that they tend to be really shallow and ignore a whole slate of complicating factors. I’m not going to pre

And of course, solving other people’s or cultures’ problems is infinitely easier than solving one’s one.

@DemonTree

@DSeid, you’re insistent that nothing works, but for Japan and South Korea, they know there are things that help, since European countries have higher birth rates. It’s just a challenge to implement the necessary changes

I first moved to Japan in the early 80s and then came to Asia for good in 1990. The Japanese government and media have been talking about the problem of low birthrate forever.

It’s complex. Solutions that work in one culture may not work in another. Let’s just assume the @DSeid ‘s proposed “solution” would actually work, how would it be implemented? How does a society radically change itself of a dime?

How would we get a critical mass of MAGAs to become liberals? How would we convince the majority of liberals to support Trump?

There is a significant number of adults who are opting out of marriage and / or children often for reasons as complicated as, say, political philosophies.

I’ve seen one report that showed that the average number of kids for Japanese women who are having kids hasn’t changed that much. The number of childless women has grown and that is a large factor in the overall declining rates.

You make it sound like there are simple solutions that if East Asian countries were to just do then the problem would disappear.

That’s not the case. Every country that has too low of a birthrate knows the solution. Just make more babies! The difficulty is how to actually get that to happen.

For those in the thread who argue that declining population isn’t a problem, I agree. It’s true as long as you are living in an area where it’s not a problem.

Living here in Japan, there are real issues which actually cause problems or are a cause for concern.

For example, the price of housing is decreasing which then adds to the cycle of the depopulation of everywhere but Tokyo and a few other large cities. Why invest in a house that will lose value because no one is going to buy? Property values are rising in Tokyo and a select number of other cities and falling everywhere else.

Another issue is rising health costs and not enough funding for the national pension system. A while back, one city issued bonds. The purpose? To meet the requirements for funding current pensions of current retirees. How are tomorrow’s retirees going to get their pensions?

When the population is rising or not declining so rapidly, then you can have social security and national healthcare. There are even problems with maintaining infrastructures, let alone replacing or build new.

Finally, another problem here in Asia (and I suspect it’s the same in the West) is that the people making policies are boomers or Gen X and the people who are supposed to be making babies are Millennials or Gen Z (?).

The various solutions proposed by the Japanese governments are being generated by a generation (or two) removed from those being targeted.

[DSeid]

@TokyoBayer

Just wave your hands

Let me be very clear: I see that as the only solution that could actually make a difference on fertility rates; I do not see it as one that actually has much of a chance of happening on any short time line. And I certainly do not claim to understand the culture enough to have any suggestions as to how to even attempt to facilitate that cultural shift. That said other cultures have shifted, so I submit that it may at least be possible.

[puzzlegal]

@Babale

@DSeid

Food supply as the constraint has been true at fairly large populations levels though - famines in the Soviet Union and China for example. Parts of Africa.

None of these famines occur because the places experiencing famine have surpassed the population that the area can support. They occurred due to mismanagement and even intentional neglect (in the cases of the Soviet Union and China) or due to outside factors, like war.

They have also happened due to agricultural catastrophes. The introduction of potato blight to Europe suddenly and rapidly decreased the available food supply. (Although the British taking Irish crops to be eaten elsewhere is why so many Irish starved, so yes, there was an element of mismanagement, as well.) Similarly, a lot of starvation in “near to Sahara” Africa is caused by a combination of climate change increasing the desert and suddenly decreasing the food supply, and also aggravated by violent bands taking food. But in both cases, the agricultural catastrophe was part of the motive for violent removal of food from people. Drought inspires warfare. It wasn’t just “mismanagement”, or underlying conflict.

But yes, i don’t think we’ve ever seen a massive population decrease due to starvation from an underlying limit in the capacity to produce food. A few people starve. A lot of people go hungry. A lot of babies aren’t born, or die in infancy. The population might shrink a bit. A war or epidemic erupt that further reduces population. But i don’t think people really outbreed their food supply, and then all starve over the winter, like rabbits sometimes do.

[DSeid]

@puzzlegal

A few people starve.

A few?

Deccan famine estimated 7.4 million

Great Bengal famine up to 10 million estimated dead, cut population of Bengal by a third.

Chalisa famine estimated 11 million deaths.

Norther Chinese famine. At least 9.5 million.

The Great Chinese Famine up to 55 million.

There’s more.

A few?

Yes with modern and possibly future techniques, and barring droughts, floods, blights, wars, and poor human decisions, the world can theoretically produce enough. And it often in reality has not.

[Der_Trihs]

@Babale

Modern agricultural techniques are more than capable of feeding everyone on the planet many times over; and if we adopt advanced agricultural techniques on a more massive scale, like greenhouses or aquaponics, we could increase that capacity by another order of magnitude.

Modern agricultural techniques depend on non-renewable resources that are running out. Increasing the output would just make the eventual end of those resources come quicker.

[DSeid]

It’s the same sort of error that Mathus made, an assumption that the current curve will continue indefinitely. And there could be solutions for a reliance on non-renewable sources of agricultural inputs … some Solyent maybe for a new Green revolution … or not.

@Babale I do think you’d agree that theoretically there is some maximum carrying capacity for humans on this planet? My own suspicion is that we are closer to it than you think, but closer on the limit imposed for the planet to handle our efflux than by direct limits on food supply. Theoretically we could find technological solutions for that, but meanwhile the planet’s buffering capacity is decreasing. Maybe the famines that result would get classified as human mismanagement created so they wouldn’t count in your mind?

[Babale]

@DSeid

@Babale I do think you’d agree that theoretically there is some maximum carrying capacity for humans on this planet?

Sure; the limiting factor would be heat dissipation, at large enough numbers. But we are multiple orders of magnitude off of that point.

[DemonTree]

@TokyoBayer

Living here in Japan, there are real issues which actually cause problems or are a cause for concern.

For example, the price of housing is decreasing which then adds to the cycle of the depopulation of everywhere but Tokyo and a few other large cities. Why invest in a house that will lose value because no one is going to buy? Property values are rising in Tokyo and a select number of other cities and falling everywhere else.

This is something I hadn’t considered. Here in the UK the problem is rising house prices, and rents that swallow up income and make it extremely hard for young people to buy. Hard in London to even rent a home of their own where they could start a family.

I had thought more empty houses would be a boon - and it probably would be if the population had fallen due to some natural disaster, because in that case it would almost immediately start rising again and houses would not be losing value. But a continually falling population creates a lot of problems.

@TokyoBayer

Finally, another problem here in Asia (and I suspect it’s the same in the West) is that the people making policies are boomers or Gen X and the people who are supposed to be making babies are Millennials or Gen Z (?).

Yes, absolutely. Compounded by the fact that younger people are less likely to vote. I think this is one reason NIMBYism is such a problem in the UK: benefits of new development disproportionately go to young people, while older people are more likely to suffer the downsides. But it skews policies in other ways, too.

I agree no solutions are really simple. Culture seems to be the biggest issue, and the ability of governments to change that is very limited, especially in modern democracies.

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@DSeid

@Babale I do think you’d agree that theoretically there is some maximum carrying capacity for humans on this planet? My own suspicion is that we are closer to it than you think, but closer on the limit imposed for the planet to handle our efflux than by direct limits on food supply. Theoretically we could find technological solutions for that, but meanwhile the planet’s buffering capacity is decreasing.

Not @Babale , but I don’t think we’ll be strictly limited to this planet for either energy or resources for very much longer. Solar arrays in space, asteroid mining etc. As long we don’t suffer some sort of collapse or regression of civilization, I think we can get to those before reaching any near-term limits on carrying capacity.

[Babale]

@DemonTree

Not @Babale , but I don’t think we’ll be strictly limited to this planet for either energy or resources for very much longer. Solar arrays in space, asteroid mining etc

The math works out such that heat dissipation is the first problem we run into even if we don’t tap into spaceborne resources; but that’s yet another reason why this is the chief problem.

It’s easy, once you have some spaceborne infrastructure (which we are right on the cusp of) to harvest raw materials or energy from space. But dumping heat into space is always difficult.

[LSLGuy]

@DemonTree

This is something I hadn’t considered. Here in the UK the problem is rising house prices, and rents that swallow up income and make it extremely hard for young people to buy. Hard in London to even rent a home of their own where they could start a family.

The USA has been suffering shrinkage and hollowing out in rural towns for 75 years now. House prices in big cities and 'burbs go nowhere but up, while prices in Nowheresville, North Dakota (population 100) are effectively zero.

A house in a place no one wants to live is a useless wreck, not part of a country’s actual functional housing stock.

I suspect there’s a lot of that going on in rural Scotland and northern England as well. The UK’s smaller distances make the contrast less stark. But good bet there are still nondescript dying villages far from any jobs, commerce, or desirable scenery. The current residents can’t sell since no one will buy. As they die off, so does the village.

[Babale]

It can certainly cause problems, but is this a problem in and of itself?

[DemonTree]

@Babale

It’s easy, once you have some spaceborne infrastructure (which we are right on the cusp of) to harvest raw materials or energy from space. But dumping heat into space is always difficult.

That’s true. But we’re a long way from off having that problem, AFAIK.

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@LSLGuy

I suspect there’s a lot of that going on in rural Scotland and northern England as well. The UK’s smaller distances make the contrast less stark. But good bet there are still nondescript dying villages far from any jobs, commerce, or desirable scenery. The current residents can’t sell since no one will buy. As they die off, so does the village.

Very little I think, since the total population and number of households have both risen very fast over the last 20 years (population has gone up almost as much in percentage terms as in the US). Plus, as you say, almost nowhere is really far from population centres in the UK. It’s a very overcrowded country.

[Babale]

@DemonTree

That’s true. But we’re a long way from off having that problem, AFAIK.

Multiple orders of magnitude away, yes. And by the time the population gets that large, many people will probably be living in space habitats anyways (where heat dissipation will be their biggest problem, too).

[DSeid]

Just to be clear: you see no significant risk that our waste products will foul the tank and cause a die off at some point before that?

That’s usually the limit in my fish tanks. Enough food is easy. Die offs happen from too much waste produced for the system to handle.

Just faith in both technology to the rescue and in the wisdom of cooperative world leadership to implement those solutions effectively?

[Babale]

@DSeid

Just to be clear: you see no significant risk that our waste products will foul the tank and cause a die off at some point before that?

Can you be more specific as to what sort of issue you’re referring to here? Is this about global warming, or some other form of pollution?

Either way, I don’t think that the answer is “have fewer people and lower tech”. Look up the damage the Romans did to Iberia some time. And even hunter gatherers changed entire ecosystems irrevocably.

Fewer people and lower tech means fewer resources being harvested. But it also means that people take exponentially less care in how they go about extracting those resources. These kinds of societies are much closer to the knife’s edge between survival and oblivion, so it makes sense they don’t have a lot of bandwidth for sustainability.

@DSeid

That’s usually the limit in my fish tanks. Enough food is easy. Die offs happen from too much waste produced for the system to handle.

I don’t know about your fish tanks, but all of mine are orders of magnitude more densely populated than any natural ecosystem.

[Wendell_Wagner]

@LSLGuy

A house in a place no one wants to live is a useless wreck

Unless there are people who have a job that allows them to work at home. They could be the person who answers telephone calls from people trying to ask something of a company. They could the person who does internet research and sends in the things they find by E-mail. They could also be someone who has decided to buy a second home where they go on vacation each year. They could be retired and not liking to socialize in person.

[Kimstu]

@Wendell_Wagner

@LSLGuy

A house in a place no one wants to live is a useless wreck

Unless there are people who have a job that allows them to work at home.

Except that “not being able to commute to work from here” isn’t the only reason for not wanting to live in a particular place.

I agree that if access to employment is the limiting factor in residential choice, then giving people more work-from-home options can be a solution, as can focusing on residents who don’t need employment access, such as vacationers and retirees.

But if there are other major reasons why a particular location is unattractive, work-from-home isn’t going to change much.

And one of those major reasons is depopulation itself. There’s a huge network-externalities aspect of community dwelling, meaning that municipalities need some critical mass of residents just to be able to perform their functions. Nobody wants to end up stuck in a town that’s bleeding out due to depopulation, no matter how flexible their work-from-home arrangements are.

[DSeid]

@Babale

Is this about global warming, or some other form of pollution?

Climate change, of which global warming is one major but not only aspect, is a result of some of our pollution. The most pressing to be sure but not the only identified one, and I include the probability of anthropogenic threats not yet identified.

@Babale

I don’t think that the answer is “have fewer people and lower tech”.

We were discussing your apparent claim that there isn’t a problem that needs addressing associated with more and more and more humans living in fishbowl earth.

But I am happy to move on to a discussion of possible answers!

I certainly do NOT think less tech is a wise approach. Intelligent use of tech will be a part of survival. Some of this tech already exists but many still deny its need.

And I have not proposed fewer people globally. There may be some reshuffling of where people are required though. And a slight gradual decrease might make for less stress for technology to have to fix without human induced famines culling population for us.

[Babale]

@DSeid

Climate change, of which global warming is one major but not only aspect, is a result of some of our pollution. The most pressing to be sure but not the only identified one, and I include the probability of anthropogenic threats not yet identified.

So, when it comes to climate change, there’s no way for us to stop it just by using less fossil fuels. Even if we cut our carbon use drastically tomorrow, it is likely too late for that method to work. And anyways, there’s no way to provide a modern, satisfying standard of living to even the people who enjoy that now, much less everyone, while completely cutting out carbon releasing fuels.

Regardless of whether the population falls or not, the only way we can stop global warming is with large scale geoengineering. And the best chance for us to possess that capacity as a species is to advance and develop, not try (and fail) to shrink our footprint.

@DSeid

We were discussing your apparent claim that there isn’t a problem that needs addressing associated with more and more and more humans living in fishbowl earth.

Of course there’s a problem that needs addressing. But it’s an engineering problem, and one that will require immense amounts of technology and resources to solve. So we need more of those things, not less; and a prosperous, growing population is part of how we accomplish that.

[Ulfreida]

@DemonTree

No one is advocating for reducing population in developed countries, though, so it’s kind of a moot point.

I sure am. Contrary to the tech-will-save-us crowd overrepresented here, I think reducing the human population to less than a billion would be the very best thing that could ever happen in the life of this planet, and yes, that means having few children. Among other things.

My vision does not require any new tech or engineering at all, although it sure would ease the transition. We could just wait until climate change did most of us in, which it is fixing to do imminently. Presto.