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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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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.

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).

> 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.

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