Han Chan said:
I totally agree with the first about the fact that there can be no linkage between porn and low fertility. However, the second about "Western nations" is not correct: Actually the birthrates in Germany, Italy, Spain and a number of East European countries are also alarmingly low!
In the Scandinavian countries we had similar problems in the 80'es, but since it have become far less a economical burden for parents to raise their children and there are plenty of room in kindergartens etc.
Most people who seriously study these issues agree that the main problem arises from the fact that young women in these countries are now mostly well educated and if the choise is between a prefessional career of becoming "house wife" many choose the first - or at least delay having their first child untill it is suddenly too late.
The demographic problems in countries like Japan, Italy and Spain is mainly due to the fact that the societies have changed faster that the people in power can comprehend. One problem is that the people who have the power in these countries are mostly elderly men who are out of touch with the reality of young women.
In Japan as well as most of the other countries the young women have been accused of beeing too lazy of spoiled to live up to their responsibility and produce the next generation - but obviously each individual woman makes her choise. The only way seems to offer the young women the option of taking paid maternaty leave and at the same time enshure that they after a short period of a year or so can return to their jobs.
In Japan the young generation do not even bother to argue with the old conservative "dinosaurs" - they simply live their life. And in a few years this situation will lead to economic decline or increased immigration. But at that time todays generation of old men in power will not need to be reelected - so who cares? If the Japanese women care, they should get involved in politics -it is not likely that the old men are going to change anything....
Hmmm did I say that Western countries do not have population decline issues? Because I don't think I did. I just think it seems like the population decline problems in Asian nations seem to be bigger than the Western nations.
From what I heard, Japan also confronts an even worse demographic trouble than Western countries. Japan has a population of people around 65 years old or older than people younger than 20, something which only Italy also has. And it will get a lot worse.
China has a very vast trouble with population decline too, because in pure numbers, the magnitude of China's coming age flourish is astonishing.
In China there is no pension or health care coverage at all. Most Chinese people proceed to bank on the conventional form of old-age insurance: children. Just as birth numbers fall and urbanization fractures extended families, this common safety net is commencing to ravel out.
In Singapore the unsuccessfulness of highly educated women to get married and have children, assigned in part to the visible predilection of highly educated men for wives with lower education, was separated as a severe societal trouble.
Hong Kong on the other hand does not have the educational, health care and housing resources to support population growth. I think I saw it somewhere that on average in HK woman have less than one child in her life.
South Korea also has the trouble of preserving full employment and a socially feasible society with a moribund population.
Asia contains half the world's people, so the abstractions are at large. Across the next 20 years or so, Asian populations will turn more urbanised and older.
