More than 4,000 elementary, middle and high schools across Korea have shut their doors as the country’s student population shrinks, new data shows.
According to the Ministry of Education’s latest figures, revealed on Sunday by Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, since 1980, 4,008 schools under 17 regional education offices nationwide have closed as of March this year. During the period, the number of enrolled students decreased from 9.9 million to 5.07 million.
No there won’t. The reason their birth rates are low is because they are so wealthy.
Low birth rates are sold to us as bad by neoliberals/capitalists because they believe that growth is the only way out of every problem. Unlimited growth is a terrible blunt instrument that’s basically created the unsustainable and unequal monster we live in today in the west.
Fact is that depopulation is the reality of the future and we should keep and eye on South Korea so we can learn from what they do.
How does being wealthy cause low birth rates? Maybe the other way (less population causes concentration of wealth or maybe I’m so busy making money I don’t have time to make babies) but I don’t see wealth causing low birth.
Are you saying people are thinking “look at this 6 figure bank account, we shouldn’t have any children, we just need to increase it to 7”
Pretty simple actually. When you are impoverished, you need a lot of kids for two main reasons: 1) when you’re too poor to develop a health-care system, you have alot of kids so that your society still functions after a few kids die off due to a lack of affordable and accessible health care; and 2) you need a high population to do all the labor needed for you and your tribe to survive.
True, as I think about it, it may be an inverse parabolic function. Low wealth is lots of kids(need help to survive) , sustainable wealth low kids(I can support myself but no more) , high wealth high kids(I’m so great my genes must be passed on and I have the means to do so) …
This has been a common pattern globally. A lot of other wealthy countries only have stable (desired for economic growth) population numbers/growth only because of large scale immigration. ie. US and Canada. Which countries like South Korea, Japan, or China are still quite strict on.
Doesn’t help that child raring has become exceedingly expensive per child as well in wealthy countries.
In a lot of places a parent working is basically pointless if they pay for childcare. A daycare near me was 600 a week. And that was only from 330(after school got out) to 600. If you work 9-5 but school gets out at 330 about 15 dollars per hour of your pay goes to daycare. If you make less than 20 an hour is that even worth working?
On top of that there are expensive academic tutors and extracurricular activities that are seen as necessary in competitive countries.
Even the most wealthy have 2 kids on average. Some famous rich people have more but the birth rate among the top 1% is still below replacement level.
Basically
It’s not just one reason…I’m speaking broadly.
…but you can basically graph birth rates inversely with wealth.