this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
38 points (83.9% liked)
memes
21741 readers
3285 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can you elaborate? Why 0.8 in South Korea is so much worse than 1.08 in Poland?
The growth (or in this case decline) is exponential. 1.08 is bad, 0.80 is terrifying. 1.08 is roughly half of the fertility needed for a stable population (about 2.1 children per woman). This means that per generation your population shrinks by half its size. 0.8 is another 25% lower. At an exponential rate these differences add up fast. The first one gives you (roughly) one child per 8 great grandparents. The other one needs 18. So over 3 generations the population shrinks by another factor of more than a half.
But the birthrates are still falling everywhere. Countries that are at 1.08 today will be at 0.8 soon. I think they are just hitting the problem sooner, not that they are facing a different issue.
Here's a visualization of the birth rates of Japan, Poland and Germany against those of South Korea:
https://georank.org/birth-rate/japan/south-korea
https://georank.org/birth-rate/poland/south-korea
https://georank.org/birth-rate/germany/south-korea
Japan and Poland have been stable, maybe slightly declining, since the early 2000s, and Germany has been stable for 50, all below replacement, whereas South Korea is still going down.
I am no demographic expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but for the moment it doesn't look like the other countries are going to hit the same problems at the same severity anytime soon whereas South Korea is going to get hit by the full force of their demographic issues within a few short decades.
I am truly convinced after seeing line go down.
Westerners just REALLY want wealthy, peaceful Asian countries to be uniquely awful.