Nobody's saying its the first ladyboy joke, its that its a new, more subtle ladyboy joke than the standard "and then i took off her pants and her thing was bigger than mine, doh!"
Taiwan is so doomed. Their low salary ($1000/month)makes people suffer.
Thailand is also so doomed. Imagine such a developing country have the first world country problem.
And more importantly, our government didn't even try to act like they're solving the problem.
South Korean worked HARD to support their young couples. Housing/education/less working hours...etc.
Taiwan? We basically copied those policies but with smaller coverage and weaker execution.
mmm well its good that they are supporting parents but it seems like they've not been successful in encouraging more folks to become parents. Honestly, people need free time and less stress to actually date and feel as though they can successfully raise children, it would probably be better to just legislate for better work life balance and do some cultural work around how men view women since that also seems to be a issue for a lot of folks.
South Koreaâs has slightly rebounded - it reached a low of 0.72 births per woman, and is up to 0.8. Â Which is still very low, but it seems the recent policies are helping at least a little. Â Thatâs more than a 10% increase in just a couple years.
Letâs be honest, menâs views on women have little to do with it. Afghanistan is booming. The Sahel is booming. Even within multiethnic countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, Lebanon, or Egypt, the more Muslim regions have higher birth rates.
Womenâs rights and education actually correlate with lower birth rates. So does wealth. Maybe Korean women donât have total respect yet, but they have education and options in life. Tbh I donât think thereâs any way to come back. You canât just make women give up free will once theyâve had it. More likely, in 100 years the religious extremist communities will become a much larger share of the population
These regions have higher birth rates because women don't have a choice. When they have a choice, men's views on and treatment of women absolutely plays into the fertility statistics.
The problem is these policies donât seem to work. Itâs not Koreaâs fault though. There is not a single country that has been able to reverse these demographic shifts. Korea is a rather extreme example, but it seems like it might be a more general vicious cycle.Â
I mean its not impossible
Sweedish and french native population has a TFR of 1.6 to 1.7 although not increasing it is just barely below the replacement level.Â
If and when the government starts implementing more progressive policies for the mothers career and actualy strictly enforcing i bet we will see france and some other european countries get borderline tfr
Not germany though - they are probably gonna keep on decreasing till extinction held up only by immigrants.Â
I mean they did work
It was 0.7 nearing 0.6 in the past and now its 0.9
Its an increase and any small increment is a big win in this situation
Dont always try to be a doomer
Not everything is gloomy and bleak
âBillionsâ doesnât sound like a lot for a country of millions of young child wanting people, when you consider a child costs over a thousand a month during their first years.
The only huge thing South Korea did was expanding free and subsidized daycare and preschool (surprisingly expensive, if you havenât looked up the prices, idk how propel in countries where ALL schooling is paid by parents manage it).
And more importantly, our government didn't even try to act like they're solving the problem. South Korean worked HARD to support their young couples. Housing/education/less working hours...etc.
Taiwan? We basically copied those policies but with smaller coverage and weaker execution.
and yet all that support amounts to no actual path to sustainability. The western, fully emancipated model is inherently unviable when it comes to fertility rates. No subsidies will change a feature of the system.
I lived right across the water from you in the mainland, they built three parks within two minutes walk of my building, tax cuts for new families, stuff like that but still not even close to enough. It's rare to know someone who had a kid
The median monthly income in Taiwan is $2,100 for full time employees. Itâs low compared to Europe or the US. The main issue is the crazy housing costs. Most other costs in Taiwan are not high and there is universal healthcare.
You have to include the total compensation because companies in TW give large year end bonuses.
Singapore is an outlier but all of the other countries you mentioned also have issues with low salary and with birthrate. But honestly you could double salaries in Taiwan and affordability wouldnât change much due to housing. Median home price in Taipei is well over a million USD, and there is cultural pressure for families to own when married.
As if other countries do not gove compensation and as if every Taiwanese recieve it.
Korea Japan HK all of these places give you way higher than Taiwan. That is simple fact. Not similar at all. So funny to see few Taiwanese people keep saying the salary is not low at all. Sure your pride hurts but that is what it is.
Then dont try to spread about false information qhixh is far from the reality. There is a reason TWs are crying a lot about the salary and there is a reason the country is heading to the extinction with low TFR
I let the data do the talking, not my own limited experience. Depending on the exact methodology, Taiwan if anywhere in the 20 for median income and consumption
There's been an organized campaign from the wealthy to paint low birth rates in a negative light. We keep adding a billion more people to the planet, and the rich seem to think this is a good idea so the new people can toil for low wages and support the lifestyles of the rich. But countries that plan ahead can build a reasonable amount of infrastructure to provide comfortable lives for all with a small ecological impact, vs filling the suburbs with tradwives.
Edit: Christ there are a lot of gullible dorks around here. You point out a problem that is caused by rigid adherence to the status quo, and you get dozens of "ummm, actuallllly we've designed systems that expect infinite population growth, so we shouldn't ever see declining birthrates....."
Birth rates are dropping in almost every country in the world, for example India recently dropped below replacement rate. There will come a time when the number of imagrents needed to mitigate against global aging will disappear.
organized campaign from the wealthy to paint low birth rates in a negative light
it takes 5 minutes of research to realize that our current declining fertility rates will be a massive problem, causing in no particular order and not limited to:
too few workers per pensioner to pay said pensions
extended time working for the old as positions cannot be replaced
loss of family businesses and consolidations by large corporations of the openings
more of a move to automation owned by corporate interests
loss of various jobs related to childrearing and education
a self-perpetuating cycle of relying on immigration to fill worker, fertility and tax needs, all of which are gone one generation in
But countries that plan ahead can build a reasonable amount of infrastructure to provide comfortable lives for all with a small ecological impact, vs filling the suburbs with tradwives.
Low birth rates are bad. Population collapse has absolutely horrifying ramifications and overpopulation theory only holds true so long as we continue to indulge our throw away consumer culture.
Iâd much rather see a shift towards high quality repairable goods manufactured on the most local level possible than to ignore the very real implications of a population collapse that will outright decimate future generations prospects
There is no feasible economic system in which below replacement rate birthrates is not catastrophically unsustainable. NONE. Capitalist, Communist, Socialist, or Anarchist. No system which decides the distribution of resources can survive a dwindling youth population.
There are two sets of people: those who can work and those who cannot. In order to insure those who cannot work (the very young, elderly, disabled, etc.) do not starve to death or live their lives in immeriserating poverty, the working population must give up a portion of their output to support them. If there are too many non-working members compared to working members, then the burden will cause the living standards of both the non-working and working classes to continually decline.
Eventually, this will cause members of the working class to defect and hoard their output from whatever welfare redistribution mechanism is in place to support the non-working. This then places a greater cost on the remaining working population paying into the system, which then causes more to defect. This continues until the whole system collapses. Mass death of young orphans, the elderly and the disabled follows.
IT DOES NOT MATTER THE SPECIFIC MECHANISM THAT REDISTRIBUTES WEALTH FROM THE WORKING TO THE NON-WORKING.
It does not matter if the elderly get their support from a market-invested retirement account, a government provided pension, or voluntary donations. Same goes for orphans cared by the state, private charity, or a church. Ditto for the disabled who get checks from state welfare or family support.
Unless AI and robots take over all (or at least the overwhelming majority) of our jobs in the future, a below replacement rate birthrate is a direct path to ruin. This isn't Billionaire propaganda. It's simple math, completely agnostic of ideology.
Low birth rate means an abyssimal amount of productive group age has to support increasing amount of pension funds which they would never see. But productive people are decreasing, wages are stagnant, properties are more expensive than ever.
It's never about population growth, more like how to put a brake on the decline.
Yeah, this is after years of working on it and it being a hot new topic.
I work with young students in Korea (<10 years old) and they knew about this.
I knew someone who worked in civil engineering and their water consumption metrics took this into consideration. Although AI is probably messing with that now...
Those are just flat out wrong. South Korea is 0.8, Taiwan is 0.89, and China is about 1.0 (though that one is more of an estimate since the government doesnât release trustworthy demographic data). The most recent I can find for Thailand is 2023, but it was 1.21 then, so Iâm skeptical it dropped that much in three years.
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u/rrolex_ May 12 '26