Miserable Societies and Very Low Fertility Rates

In the late 1990s, I moved here to pursue my first graduate degree in some area of biomedical research. At around the same time, the lab adjacent to one I worked in hosted a industry postdoc from Japan- let us call him ‘Hiro’- for a few months. Since we were both new to the country we developed a good acquaintance. The relevant part is I was in my very early 20s, while Hiro was in his mid 30s and and spoke quite good English and had travelled to other western countries. We talked about numerous topics over those months, I was especially curious about how Japan was- as a society. Let me remind you that this was before the Internet became a big thing and everybody and their dog was going to Japan as an English teacher and writing blogs or making YouTube videos about their experiences. It also helped that he had previously visited numerous other western countries while working for his company- and had a good baseline to compare and contrast countries and cultures.

One of the many things I learnt from my numerous chats with him was that while Japan still had pretty high levels of employee-employer loyalty (at least in late 1990s), things were not as rosy as many westerners would assume. For example, even something as trivial as an email to a colleague in the company required you to think carefully about how you were addressing them, the form of the request being made, the format of mandatory small-talk in email etc. Also, while buying gifts to take home to his colleagues, he had to consider all sorts of unspoken rules and conventions about their relative position in the company hierarchy, how that gift would be perceived etc. Moreover, these considerations also extended (albeit to a lesser extent) for family and friends. I got the impression that interpersonal interactions in Japanese society were far more regimented and subject to all sorts of unspoken rules, especially if you were Japanese. He explained that this was much less of an issue if you were an outsider.

But what does this story have to do with the topic of this post- namely, how miserable societies create very low fertility rates. Well.. one of the questions I asked him was about how dating and marriage worked in Japan- specifically since even at that time, the media was full of articles about how Japan’s fertility rates were below replacement. This was especially interesting since he was single in his mid 30s, in spite of having a good job, being not ugly and straight. So here is what he told me.. prior to the 1970s, families in Japan embraced traditional sex roles, with the husband being the major bread-winner and wife taking care of home and kids. It seems that sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, this changed with many more women working outside the home even after getting married and having kids. This change in the dynamics of family life had some familiar effects- starting with an increase in the age of marriage, women wanting fewer or no kids and a sharp rise in rate of marital discord. Some of the effects were, however, a bit culture specific.

One of these culture specific effect was the reluctance of Japanese corporations to keep employing married women. Regardless of the intent, this policy has precisely the opposite effect as intended with many younger women foregoing marriage and kids to keep their employment and newfound economic freedom. The strong social pressures to become a housewife after marrying also had a similar unintended effect, with many younger women preferring singlehood to the family life. But there was another, and in my opinion, much more systemic change. The combination of long working hours, rigid social hierarchy and tons of unspoken rules made the whole process of dating, marriage, having children etc a pretty unpleasant and miserable experience. This was the the case in spite of Japan being a very safe society, having excellent infrastructure, ,excellent education, cheap housing, job security and being generally a far more family and child friendly society than most of USA. To be fair, things in USA were pretty good during the 1990s and have been consistently bad for only the past 15 years.

Some readers might remember that, about a year ago, I wrote a post on how internalizing the logic of neoliberal capitalism (especially by women) is one of the major reasons for the precipitous decline of fertility rates in western countries. In that post, I also talked about how this trend is anti-relationship, causes social atomization and will ultimately cause these societies to go extinct. This post is a continuation of that one, but focusing more on the other side of that equation, namely- how miserable societies cause very low fertility rates. The thing is.. almost every large organized society on this planet and its mores were formed in an era before material plenty and still operate as if nothing has changed. While this was not a major issue before the discovery and widespread use of contraception, public health improvements of late 19th and early 20th century and women in the workforce- it is now. Simply put, the existent rules and mores of every large human society is no longer compatible with their continued existence. Let me explain that point in more detail by first focusing on east-Asian societies.

Have you ever wondered why nations from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have such low fertility rates? Or why the difference in fertility rates between cities and rural areas in Philippines or Indonesia is so large? Here is a though experiment.. think about how the life of a median person living in that area would feel like. While the material quality of life for the median person in countries such as Japan, South Korea and China is pretty good, what percentage of their population is living in a constant state of psychological misery and stress? How many can exercise a decent amount of personal agency in their own lives? Some of you might wonder about why these factors matter, so let me ask you another question- why would people invest so much time and effort into social institutions and relationships if it did not provide them personal happiness? Why invest effort in relationships which often don’t feel right or are unstable in ways that can hurt you? This is why the fertility rates in urban and socially atomized areas of these countries is often significantly lower than rural areas- Philippines and Indonesia being prime examples. The same pattern is seen in other Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc.

Before closing up this post, I should also quickly talk about the maximum realistic fertility rates possible in non-miserable developed societies. Here is the thing.. the vast majority of women seem to prefer somewhere between 2-4 kids. In other words, we are not going to go back to the times when women had 8-10 kids and maybe half survived to adulthood. Even under the best conditions, the fertility rates in developed countries is going to be somewhere between 2 to 3, over the long term. As far as the current situation with sub-2 (and increasingly sub-1) rates are concerned, there is not much that can be done to change this trajectory unless you can change a lot of the basic assumptions and institutions in these societies. The way things are going all over the world right now- societies which make the average person’s life miserable, stressful and atomized will continue to see even more declines in their fertility rates. Some will try to slow that down through immigration, but this will only delay the final dismal outcome. In summary, the way societies (and their many institutions) in developed countries function is incompatible with even replacement rates of fertility in the post-contraception era. Some of you might remember me talking about something similar in a series on my old blog about how “civilization” is a giant ponzi scheme which is now failing due to the widespread availability of contraception.

What do you think? Comments?