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Loneliness and financial nihilism go together
A lonely nation
Few nations are experiencing a loneliness crisis more severe than South Korea's. Marriage rates have declined 40% in the past decade. The fertility rate hit 0.8 last year, the only OECD nation with a fertility rate below one, and local governments are now paying people to get married.
Financial nihilism
Many young people there levered up on single stocks, praying the price would go to the moon and take them into a state of financial security and success. A sense of financial nihilism has become pervasive among them.
Coming to America
The two are linked. The same loneliness crisis and the same financial nihilism are starting to show up in America, and South Korea is ground zero for the problems about to arrive here.
Why is South Korea's birth rate so low?
Demographers and Korean government surveys commonly cite high housing costs, long working hours, expensive private education, and childcare burdens that fall mostly on women. Marriage and childbearing are closely linked in South Korea, with very few births outside marriage. When marriages fall, births fall with them. Statistics Korea reported that the country's total fertility rate dropped below 1.0 in 2018, to 0.98.
How did Korea's 'give-up generation' get its name?
The term sampo, meaning 'three give-ups,' was coined by Korean media around 2011. It described young people giving up courtship, marriage, and children because of economic pressure. Later versions added employment and homeownership, and the open-ended 'N-po generation' covers everything else given up. The terms became common shorthand in Korean public debate about youth and the economy.
Why don't cash incentives raise births much?
Anne Gauthier's 2007 review of research on family policies in industrialized countries found that cash benefits generally had small effects on fertility. Where effects appeared, they tended to change the timing of births more than the total number. Childcare provision and flexible working arrangements appeared in the same literature as factors linked to larger effects. South Korea's local governments have offered cash payments for marriage and childbirth for many years.