Europe Shows How Asia's Low Fertility Rates Might Improve

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Asia's Family Values; Europe shows how Asia's demographic crisis might correct itself. Economist, Aug 22, 2015.
http://www.economist.com/news/as ... s-new-family-values

Quote:

"In the early 1970s the country had a fertility rate of 2.1, with 2m children born every year. Four decades later the number of births has halved, with the fertility rate down to 1.4. Or take an even more dramatic example, China. In 1995 some 245m Chinese were in their 20s. By 2025, on current trends, there will be only 159m, a decline within a single generation of 86m. This will reduce by more than a third the segment [twentysomething] of the population that is best educated, most technologically astute and most open to new ideas.

"At the beginning of the 20th century much of Europe also had very low fertility rates.

In East Asia: "Female literacy is nearly universal, and in Japan and South Korea female college graduates outnumber male ones. Female labour-force participation is also high. But women are still treated in the old ways. Until recently Japanese women were expected to give up work on having children. Working or not, Japanese and South Korean women do at least three more hours of housework a day than their men.

"f you force women to choose between family and career, then many will choose their career. In Tokyo, Bangkok and other Asian cities, rates of childlessness are sky-high. Women are refusing to marry. And if they do marry, they are getting hitched later in life, in practice reducing their likelihood of ever bearing children (births out of wedlock remain taboo and rare in Asia).

"In places where this process [child care; men doing house chores] has gone furthest—France, Scandinavia, Britain—fertility rates are almost back up to the replacement level. In those where traditional male breadwinner/female homemaker roles have lingered, such as Germany and Italy, fertility rates remain low.

Note: In Europe: "in the past 20 years. Child care became more widely available. Men started to help with the laundry and the school run. Women therefore found it easier to have both a career and rugrats."

rugrat ([American] slang; etymology: Small children spend a lot of time on the ‘rug’ or carpet, and sometimes they crawl around like rodents (‘rats’)):
"a young child; a toddler"
www.englishdaily626.com/slang.php?099