Low Birth Rates will Lower Population. What to Make of It



The country of South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. If this continues the population of the country eventually will be much smaller. Koreans today of child-bearing age know all about this. They know that if the population becomes too small it will be difficult for its government to operate and for its military to defend it. Merging, or being invaded by, with some other country may be inevitable.

So why don't Koreans of child-bearing age "do the patriotic thing" and have and raise more children. The answer has to be that it's not in the interests of young people, especially women, to have children. They just don't want them. Restaurants find that customers complain if there are noisy children. 

What can Korea do about this? Really, not much. There have taken a few measures but none have many any difference. Anti-abortion groups, like the author of the link works for, are shouting the U.S. "needs more babies." The U. S. eventually could see the same population decline Korea will soon experience. The link and all other such alarm blame it on abortions. It is not related to abortion. It is a cultural force that guides its way through time to futures we do not know for sure. 

To understand some of current fertility practice, we can go back to when the country was dominated by rural people. More children meant more income because they worked in the business. Now that there are few rural people the economic advantage of children is gone. They are all expense, no income.

As the entire world becomes huge cities and empty corporate food producing areas, we may see humans organizing themselves in ancient ways. That is, there may again be city-states, like ancient Rome. Inside, family groups and clans may be the organizations that run things. Children may again be economic assets because they will be valuable to the success of each group--labor will be needed to care for the old. The extended family or clan would raise the children, as in ancient times, taking the expense and effort off of the parents. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ancient God, Bel (Baal), the Main Character in an Ancient Play

Image
In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle...
Read more

What Was the "Argument" in the Election

Image
I hate to add my blog to the piles of blogs and pundits analyzing and pondering the meaning of the just passed election. But that's what I feel like doing today. I've always like Senator Ted Cruz's summary of politics. He once said, "First, win the argument. Then, win the election." I think there is a way of applying that to anti abortion Catholics and Protestants. The link talks of Catholics who now feel they have no political home because Republicans let them down with Trump but they remain against abortion rights. Taking Cruz's win-the-argument thesis, I'd call the past election about an argument between two groups. One group's argument was, "Trump's a jerk." The other's argument was, "Abortion is wrong." The group, "Trump's a jerk," won the argument and then the election.  While one can argue the election, or any election, it about more complex issues, I believe in the end elections hinge on very simple ar...
Read more

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more