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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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I saw a thread om twitter explaining that low fertility in South Korea is due to parental investment competion:

It's amazing how far people go not to point out every Korean born requires >9k hours of costly test prep for a chance at "good" college otherwise you sweep floors or fold boxes at the Gwangyang Steel Works until you die.

I have to wonder if there's a taboo.

In high fertility countries, slightly older kids raise their siblings.

That's the answer. It's not a hard mystery.

17 y/o Koreans can't help raise their 15 y/o siblings, because Korean teens are preparing for college exams, which only expensive adults can help with.

That's it.

Do people even bother asking Koreans?

Surely any married Korean couple, if you ask them why they don't have four kids, will surely bring up the nightmarish prospect of ensuring that all of them are "properly placed"?

"Have the older kids tutor the younger ones" yeah, right!

https://x.com/anarchyinblack/status/1817684593908080960

otherwise you sweep floors or fold boxes at the Gwangyang Steel Works until you die.

I know this is indeed the root of the problem, but if this is indeed the social reality, it's baffling how a society can end up with norms such as this.

This sort of norm can only be sustained when there is plenty of human potential to waste in the first place. So it causing low fertility is probably a feature, not a bug: if success above the very lowest level is a high-cost tournament, there's probably too many people.

I'm not sure that really explains the phenomenon. Singapore has much higher population density than Korea, but parental investment seems much smaller. It's also not clear why there should be so much human potential to waste, especially in the era of globalization.

The TFR in Singapore and South Korea are roughly equal though.

Singapore is like 40% higher.

I've seen worldwide data online 5-10 years ago. Singapore was shown with the lowest TFR in the entire world while S Korea was the 3rd lowest or so, tied with Hongkong and Taiwan, roughly.

That was true 5-10 years ago and is no longer true.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=2002..latest&country=SGPKORTWNMACHKG

Thanks. I checked the graphs. Am I supposed to see a big difference between the TFRs of SK and Singapore? Because I don't.

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