this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
164 points (97.7% liked)

World News

39127 readers
2779 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

South Korea, the country with the world’s lowest birth rate, expects it to fall even further in the next two years while its overall population is expected to plummet to levels not seen since the 1970s.

The new data underscores the demographic timebomb that South Korea and other East Asian nations like Japan and Singapore are facing as their societies rapidly age just a few decades after their dramatic industrialization.

South Korea’s total fertility rate, the number of births from a woman in her lifetime, is now expected to drop from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.65 in 2025, according to the government’s Statistics Korea.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago

Basically if there are more older people in a society that need assistance and not enough working age people to assist them, it quickly becomes very problematic for the government. They are forced to scramble to do things like incentivise having children as well as attract foreign workers. If you don't do this, older people will accuse you of abandoning them after they supported the country their whole life by paying taxes and not breaking the law etc. However, on the other hand, doing these things is expensive and can put huge strain on the country's finances / economy.

It basically becomes a choice between losing votes and support of older generations or putting the country in a huge economic decline.

This is made worse too by the country's unique culture and language. Something like this isn't such a big deal in a place like say Canada, where it's easier to get foreign workers into the country to fix this because they would all most likely speak English. However Korean is not a popular language outside of Korea. Getting in foreign workers as a temporary fix also comes with the challenge of teaching them about the culture, language, customs etc. It's not as easy.

TLDR: This could cripple a lot of Asian countries if not dealt with.