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Comment by pknomad | Hacker News Reader

> Korean government launched an online “National Birth Map” that showed the number of women of reproductive age in each municipality, illustrating just what it expected of its female citizens. (South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol won the election in March 2022 with a message that blamed feminism for Korea’s low birth rate, and a promise to abolish the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. ) Women were outraged by the map, observing that the government appeared to consider them “livestock”;

I find it extremely frustrating how government (not just Korean ones) in general wants a scapegoat for its social ails. Never mind the fact that low birth rate is a consequence of higher education + extreme hours + bunch of other contributing factors.

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I can confirm that if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that women do not appreciate livestock comparisons. Praising milk production for instance is right out.

This reminded me of a post on Reddit that made its way there from someone’s Facebook - a rural couple had a pregnancy announcement that involved her dressing up like a cow and made some jokes about the breeding program. It went over about as well as you’d expect for Reddit - terribly. But all I could think about is how cool it would be to find a woman chill enough to go along with that.

I think you are referring to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/awfuleverything/comments/djj6br/thi...

> Never mind the fact that low birth rate is a consequence of higher education + extreme hours + bunch of other contributing factors.

Not sure about the extreme hours thing, since Europe is following the same trend while not having remotely as many hours at work as North-East Asia

It's combination of multiple factors. I think education has the most pronounced effects on fertility/birth rate, though.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-chil... https://rdcu.be/c7r33

There's also papers on extreme working hours having negative effects on fertility: https://www.aijssnet.com/journals/Vol_5_No_1_February_2016/4...

I don't find it surprising since extreme work hours --> worse health/social outcomes --> low fertility.

China and Japan has similar thing going on, but I'm sure there's way more nuance to this issue than my statement shows.

> There's also papers on extreme working hours having negative effects on fertility

It could be, but the fertility rates are also going down significantly in Europe despite the fact that there's no extreme working hours there - so how much this is a significant factor is a question - if it is, it probably differs from one country to the next.

thus my statement > It's combination of multiple factors. I think education has the most pronounced effects on fertility/birth rate, though.

I'd say it's specifically the rising education rates and increasing income prospects for women that's the problem here, with relative stagnation for the men. The key is that women, unlike men, just don't date down. Somebody did some research on incels and found a common theme was poor education levels, and working low income jobs (if at all).

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