
Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious. - rblion
http://www.economist.com/node/21526350?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/asiasloneyhearts
======
lionhearted
I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a
combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and
interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study
of _lots_ of history.

It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for
a moment before reacting please.

I think peaceful societies self-destruct.

With a few notable exceptions that require a geography suitable to
isolationism, long term peace has historically been achieved through your
country or one of your ally's having military supremacy over the rest of your
neighbors.

Obviously, diplomacy can keep the peace for long periods of time, even human
lifetimes, but eventually incidents happen when there's a hothead in one
government, and then that's when the military supremacy determines whether you
get attacked or not.

Anyways, I've found the more a country renounces war and gets further away
from it, the more birth rates go down. You get an explosion of commerce and
art for ~30 to ~70 years, and then the society self-destructs.

No longer forced to confront mortality and with no externally unifying cause,
people start living for luxury, pleasure, and consumption. They stop having
children. Birth rates fall off.

Eventually, this destroys a country's economy, the military supremacy fades,
and one of their neighbors comes in and cleans house, and the cycle begins
anew.

This has happened many times through history. It's happening in Japan right
now. If I became an advisor to anyone in the Japanese government, I'd advocate
two things as chief priorities - (1) exceedingly good relations with China,
and (2) re-militarize.

Then join the next war they can on America's or China's side. Combined with
some standard messages of nationalism/strength/growth/unity, birth rates would
almost certainly increase.

~~~
Meai
You come up with only a single, high level reason for what could have
thousands of reasons, and you seriously come up with one that is a detriment
to our entire species. Draw from that conclusions on your capacity and will
for logical thinking, sorry this has to be blunt. You are the modern day
crusader. You get an idea in your head with next to no logical reasons and
then start to proselytize everyone around you.

I'll give you another just as likely reason for past societal collapses
(frankly, a lot likelier reason), and you can then fill in more if you are
able. In times of peace, leaders have no dire motivation to mold their
citizens into specific paths that are catalyst for military purposes. This
leads to societes that are directionless. Historically, only military
societies prevailed because they had direction and motivation to improve.
However, what's so bad about being directionless? What exactly causes the
downfall of "peaceful" (=actually just directionless) societies? We have to
dig a little deeper. You jumped the gun and proclaimed it was peace itself
that was doing the damage. That sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Peace itself has
millions of little and big effects on society. Among these effects is the loss
of need for children, therefore inevitably marriage laws get relaxed. Humans
want to have sex a lot and with many other people, and marriage gets in the
way of that. In peaceful times we have seen a gradual destruction of marital
laws. This leads to marriages which can be formed and destroyed at the whim of
any person, and in our society today, it's even worse because women are
considerably favored in the break-up. This leads to people being very cautious
to form deep bonds, and this ultimately leads to a weaker society, a society
devoid of the ultimate motivation for every human being: Providing and
protecting your family. It's like taking away one of the primary engines of a
spaceship. There is still other engines that powers it: Need for food. Need
for sex. However the strongest one, the motivation to protect your own
children is gone. Because there are no children, because there are no
marriages, because marriages are nowadays too fast and detrimental for male
parties. What we need, is actual equality between the genders.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"there are no marriages, because marriages are nowadays too fast and
detrimental for male parties. What we need, is actual equality between the
genders."_

I'm not sure I follow this logic. By all indications in both the East and
West, it's women, not men, who are driving the changes in marriage rates,
ages, and trends.

1) Women are entering and succeeding in the workforce, and accordingly, they
see less reason to give that all up for traditional marriages and gender
roles.

2) Men outnumber women in many Asian countries (especially China, for obvious
reasons). Ergo, the women in these countries can afford to be choosey. It's a
buyer's market, and they are the buyers. With the power dynamic in the meat
market shifted in their favor, they can be more selective and take their time.
Unfortunately, they can't wait _too_ long, because eventually, they'll lose
out to younger women entering the same market -- and, when that happens, many
will have forfeited their marriage prospects altogether.

[For what it's worth, I am a proponent of gender equality. Please don't
misconstrue me there. I am not passing judgment on any of these trends, but
rather, am simply observing them.]

~~~
true_religion
> Unfortunately, they can't wait too long, because eventually, they'll lose
> out to younger women entering the same market

Consider this scenario: a man seeking marriage is likely to continue seeking
it through his old age (e.g. doesn't become an eternal bachelor or celibate).

In this case, a woman of that same old age is likely to marry someone young
because they can provide for their young husband materially, and from the
young mans' point of view marrying an older woman is a good chance for
marriage in a market where older men are using their own value to attract
younger women.

~~~
wyclif
The factor you're leaving out is fertility.

------
burgerbrain
Good for them. More people need to reject this archaic sexist tradition. Legal
enforcement of the fantasy notion of "true love for life" is damn near
barbaric.

If you and your partner can swing it, more power to you, but social pressure
on _others_ to place themselves into _legally binding situations_ revolving
around this notion is something that need to die.

In the west (at least the states) these are legally binding arrangements that
are _heavily_ biased against males, but if women are rejecting that in Asia
then all the better.

~~~
sliverstorm
Whether or not marriage as an institution is biased against males or females
(honestly, it seems to be biased against both) I am always astounded by people
who see no value whatsoever in marriage.

America is practically _founded_ on capitalism. How can you understand
specialization & its benefits, and not see how marriage (well, used to) makes
use of it?

Yes, if marriage was just about pretending "True Love is real, and the world
is full of roses and daisies!" it would be a ridiculous sham. But as I have
come to see it, it is more about facing the world as a "team". In larger
groups (that is to say, extended family, all composed of marriage links),
perhaps even as a "tribe"... think about that.

(Not to mention, kids are a thing we kind of need as a species, and I think
most everyone is familiar with the plight of single parents)

~~~
pagekalisedown
I love children, but as a specie, we've secured our dominant position on this
planet a long time ago. There's over 7 billion of us now. If children isn't
your thing, why bring some into the world, and risk neglecting them?

~~~
sliverstorm
The main problems are these:

1) Due to social values, we build momentum. If marriage ceases to happen and
children cease to be born, 50 years from now we won't have 50 million fewer
people- we'll have 1 billion fewer people, and it will take decades to reverse
the trend. (made-up numbers, but I hope you take my point)

2) It's not just about protecting the species. We have a tiny bit of a Ponzi
scheme going. The young support the old, and as a result graphs like this:
<http://japanfocus.org/data/fig3.jpg> (Japan's population) As a taxpayer, make
your blood run cold.

~~~
pagekalisedown
1) I understand your point, but according to this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population>

It only took a decade to go from 6 to 7 billion. We can build up a population
in the blink of an eye.

2) Do parents have children to bring more tax payers into the world? :) Ponzi
scheme or not, people taking the time to establish themselves first means
fewer children, but also fewer neglected children.

~~~
sliverstorm
_Do parents have children to bring more tax payers into the world? :)_

You say it like it's a silly idea, but not long ago people in America had
children _expressly_ for the purpose of helping around the farm, and in Asian
cultures there is _still_ an explicit overtone that parents have children so
that they have someone to depend upon in old age.

And by 'explicit overtone', I mean your parents say it to your face and you
become a social pariah if you abandon your family- at least as best I
understand it from my Asian friends.

~~~
mrphoebs
Agreed, in asia a family unit is not just parents and their children. It
involves, grandparents, and great grandparents if they are around. It's not a
"you have to take care of me" kind of a deal but something like "family takes
care of itself" -> when you have kids, grandparents help out actively in
raising them, then you are adults you help your parents, physicall,
financially. Families often have assets stowed away as a collective unit.

------
gamble
A friend of mine has lived in Japan teaching one-on-one English lessons for a
number of years. A good chunk of his customers are recently married women.
Their husbands don't want them to work, but with nothing to do at home they
end up taking English lessons out of a desperate need to find something
mentally stimulating to pass the hours.

------
thevivekpandey
"So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India."

It is not fair to label a trend as "Asian" when you need to exclude China and
India.

~~~
g123g
Actually the first trend of delayed marriage age is now very much evidence in
India. Working professionals are marrying at quite a late age - 35 for boys
and 30 for girls is now very common. This is very quickly going to turn into
the rejection of marriage trend mentioned in the article. So in case of India
it is only a question of when not if.

~~~
gnufied
Where are you pulling that data from? The Article makes no mention of average
marrying age for Indians. Anecdotally,as a middle class Indian - I see average
marrying age for Males around 27-30 and for females 25-28.

And again, Indian values are quite different from Japanese, Chinese or Thai
values.

------
bennesvig
George Gilder's "Naked Nomad's" is a great book studying single men in
America. Unmarried men own the majority of bad statistical categories to be
in. Higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates. No society wants that
burden.

~~~
bobo888
This could also mean that women avoid getting married to men who are prone to
"higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates". For example, how many women
would really get married to a hobo?

~~~
tsotha
Yeah, selection bias. Not just shiftless hobos, either. As a man you're going
to have a harder time finding a wife if you're sick or have unhealthy habits
(like obesity or heavy drinking).

Edit: I expect the same is true for single women, too. I doubt single women
live as long as their married counterparts on a statistical basis.

------
bobo888
Is it really the women who are avoiding marriage?

Do this experiment: go to a newspaper stand and look for magazines about
weddings. Look for books about marriage. I have never ever seen one addressed
to men (there are ones which _seem_ to be, but on a quick glance I actually
think they were written to feed the women's ego), which means IMHO that men
wouldn't spend money on subjects like these. Meanwhile you sholdn't be
surprised to find at least half a dozen for women. So I really really doubt
that men are more willing to marry EITHER.

I would actually dare to say that men were (and still are) the ones who don't
really care about marriage.

~~~
guard-of-terra
If someone likes marriage as a concept and a form of art, doesn't mean they
want to be married themselves, now and with all the implications.

By analogy: many women enjoy and write slash stories about male homosexuality,
which they obviously can't participate in. Same for wedding stories, dresses
and shots.

------
diN0bot
"Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on
average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three
hours."

"Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone
and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime."

~~~
bobo888
And the proof is...? How about, more crime might mean less marriage?

I know it's not about Asia, but:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-
pr...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-productivity-
idUSTRE6744A620100805)

 __"London School of Economics sociologist Catherine Hakim's research shows
that when both paid work and unpaid duties such as housework, care and
voluntary work are taken into account, men do pull their own weight." __

~~~
sliverstorm
Now hold on there. Just because the employed member of the family puts in 60+
hours per week at the office doesn't mean they should do any less work around
the house...

~~~
bobo888
Whaaat? So are you basically saying that one shold do half of the house chores
no matter how much he/she works at their job? If one spouse is unemployed, and
the other spouse works 60 hrs you consider it fair only when each does 50% of
the house work?

~~~
bobo888
Sorry, but sarcasm doesn't really work over the web.

------
EGreg
Yes, an aging population might be worrisome on the surface, but I find
overpopulation more worrying. Therefore, I am happy that people in really
populated countries are having less babies overall!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE>

Longer (but more boring) version:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related)

------
emanuer
I am married to a Japanese and live here right now, so I can only comment on
the situation of the country. I will try to give an economical assessment of
the situation. As you might be aware Japan had a “lost decade” during the 90s.
It experienced almost no growth of the GDP. There are many theories as to why,
but the most convincing one is: The Japanese “Baby Boomers” retired during
this decade. In fact the percentage of workers in the population (age 15-64)
decreased by 5.6% during this time, as the number of retirees increased by
10.7%. <http://goo.gl/kVZxB>

What does this have to do with anything? / What happens when you have fewer
people in the expected working age? 2 things happen:

    
    
      1. More people have to work
      2. People have to work longer
    

The official retirement age for Japanese is 63/61 (M/W), the effective
retirement age is 69.5/66.5 <http://goo.gl/s9slK> (very interesting graph)

My wife held a managerial position before our son was born, amongst her
friends hardly any of them want to stay single, they simply don’t have a
choice. If they want to sustain their current life standard, marriage would be
impossible. One man working has a hard time providing for his wife, kids,
paying for a decent home & the mandatory elderly taxes. The taxes are almost
2000 USD per person / year, no matter if employed, or not. And those are just
to pay for the pensions; insurances, social etc. come on top of that.

Many women still life / moved back in with their parents, even in their late
40es. It is not because they want to, or cannot find a partner (many of them
look quite stunning). The pensions simply don’t suffice and they feel obliged
to support their parents. The same holds true for many men.

I very much disagree with the statement that women in Japan enjoy their single
life so much, as they choose not to marry. I have yet to meet a Japanese
woman, who will state this. Compared to Europe, where this kind of ideology is
quite common.

Edit:

Japanese women are expected to do 90% of the housework, where as American
women will “only” do 60% of the work. <http://goo.gl/qj64W> This fact and the
very big distance Japanese develop for their spouses are certainly not
helping. <http://goo.gl/QlAfx> Surprisingly no women I ever conversed with,
complained about this lack of love between a married couple, on the contrary
it is expected by the women. And it often leads to problems in marriages with
foreigners.

Edit #2:

If my experience with the Japanese Culture is in any way representative
employing more men in the military will be the worst thing imaginable. The
country has a deficit of 180% /GDP and every person in the army is one person
less doing productive work to keep country afloat.

Edit #3:

When the "Baby Boom" generation will retire in the United states, do you
expect the country to sustain a positive GDP? This would mean that every
person working will have to work harder and produce more just to reach 0
growth. Something the Japanese managed to do. The only solution to this is
immigration, something Japan is battling against.

~~~
nhaehnle
_As you might be aware Japan had a “lost decade” during the 90s. It
experienced almost no growth of the GDP. There are many theories as to why,
but the most convincing one is: The Japanese “Baby Boomers” retired during
this decade._

Richard Koo has a different view on this, one that should also inform the
thinking in the US and rest of the Western world these days. According to him,
the Japanese "lost decade" was caused by an asset price bubble collapse in
housing. The parallels to the global financial crisis are fascinating.

See, for example, his talk which is linked here:
[http://seekerblog.com/2009/04/11/richard-koo-more-on-the-
bal...](http://seekerblog.com/2009/04/11/richard-koo-more-on-the-balance-
sheet-recession/)

~~~
emanuer
Yes I am aware of this point of view. I think, the trigger for the lost decade
can be attributed to the housing bubble. Yet, the almost complete stop in the
GDP's growth and the complete immunity to monetary stimuli (~0% interest rate
for 20 years) are impossible to explain by the bubble collapse.

~~~
bzbarsky
~0% interest rate doesn't imply monetary stimulus. At least not when the rate
gets hiked as soon as inflation goes over 0% or so, which is what the Bank of
Japan has been doing.

In other words, BoJ has _explicitly_ targeted stable to falling prices in its
monetary policy. That's not monetary stimulus; that's just contractionary
policy. What interest rate target they use to implement that policy isn't
really relevant.

------
wyclif
It would have been useful if this article had taken into account the fact that
the laws of certain SE Asian countries (i.e., the Philippines) do not provide
for divorce:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Ph...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_law_around_the_world#Philippines)

~~~
patrickgzill
However annulments are increasingly easier to get. Cost about $4K USD from
what I understand and a lot of paperwork.

------
peteretep
> in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married

In Bangkok, 20% of the women you see in couple on streets are part of a woman-
woman couple, holding hands - usually one with short hair and a shirt, and one
with long hair and a dress - something I've never seen as prevalent anywhere
else in the world, and something the locals don't look twice at.

------
known
I believe marriage and career are mutually exclusive for women in Asia

------
NY_Entrepreneur
Seems to me that the article missed the most central point. Let's start with a
little, simple, relevant background:

(1) In the past, e.g., in tribal or agricultural communities, women had
children whether they really 'wanted' to or not.

(2) Now in more industrialized countries, a significant fraction of women have
some options. Some women still have children but some women do not want to
have children and do not.

(3) The change in number of children per woman is a 900 pound gorilla in the
room: The article mentioned numbers under 2 children per women with a rate a
low as 1 child per woman. There is some recent data that Finland is at 1.5
children per woman.

Of course, for any rate much under 2, each 20 years or so the population will
be going down significantly. "Get your old houses, furniture, dishes, baby
clothes, etc. cheap, cheap, cheap!".

So, net, heavily women who don't want to have children won't. These women will
be 'weak, sick, dead limbs on the tree' and will be pruning their genes from
the tree. What will be left are women who, given the choice, actually,
effectively WANT to have children.

The big point: After a few such generations, we will be left with a much
smaller population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have
children. Then the population will start growing again.

One more big, surprising point: We are now, in much of the world, in the most
rapid change in the gene pool of the last 40,000 or so years.

Where did the 40,000 come from? Humans walked out of Africa back there
somewhere. At one point, ballpark 40,000 years ago, they reached, say, India.
One branch went west to Western Europe, and another branch went east to China
and Japan. Mostly the two branches haven't much mixed since then.

Okay, at the common branch, ballpark 40,000 years ago, what were women like?
Well, take women from Japan and women from Western Europe. Take some
'characteristic' in common, say, desire of a major fraction of the women,
given an economic opportunity, not to have children. Now, start in either
Japan or Western Europe and count genetic 'changes' on this 'characteristic'
going backwards in the tree to the common branch, about 40,000 years ago, and,
then, continuing to count changes, going forward in the other branch of the
tree to the present.

So, if on this characteristic the women in Japan and Western Europe are close,
that is, have few changes, then on this characteristic the common ancestor
40,000 years ago has still fewer, that is, is closer to the women in both
Japan and Western Europe than they are to each other.

Net, since a significant fraction of women in both Japan and Western Europe
will, given an economic opportunity, choose not to have children, that is,
these women are close to each other, both are still closer to their common
ancestor 40,000 years ago. So, for 40,000 years, many women had children not
really because they 'wanted' to but because of economic necessity.

So, now that women who don't really want to have children are being pruned
from the tree, we are, on this characteristic, in the most rapid change in the
human gene pool of the past 40,000 years. And, the change is VERY rapid,
should have a huge effect in just a few generations, say, just 100 years,
which on the scale of 40,000 years, is FAST.

~~~
dctoedt
> _After a few such generations, we will be left with a much smaller
> population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have
> children. Then the population will start growing again._

This is a fascinating and well-thought-out analysis, but it seems to make two
potentially-dangerous assumptions:

1) It assumes that those women who really WANT to have children, have this
desire mainly because of their genetic heritage.

Unfortunately, we don't know enough about human motivation to be able to say
this with any confidence.

Even if the vast majority of a generation of women really wanted to have
children, I don't know how we could confidently predict that their daughters
would feel the same way.

2) The analysis assumes that such a genetic trait is inherited maternally. If
instead the trait comes from a mix of the mother's and father's genes, or even
from the father alone (let alone a combination of genetics and environment),
we probably won't know how to predict what will happen N generations on.

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
Nice points. Okay, I revise my argument! What will be left are genes, in the
society, in both men and women as required, that make the people, men and
women as required, really WANT to have babies! Then back to my argument: The
population will shrink on the way there and then will grow again.

There is another point on my side: It is commonly accepted that what children
do is a mixture of both 'nature' (genes) and 'nurture' (that is, what they
learned from their parents). There are common, strong suggestions that a
daughter of a women who is really happy being a mommy is more likely to want
to be a mommy. So, net, for a woman to WANT to have children can have come
down from nature or nurture.

In my experience, some women REALLY want to have children, and some women
REALLY do NOT want to have children. When I was in the ninth grade, I met and
dated a girl in the seventh grade, natural blond, great figure, very sweet,
who REALLY wanted to have children, knew it, admitted it. E.g., each time she
saw the face of a baby with its common characteristics, she wanted to have a
baby. Now, I'm not saying that she wanted to have a baby there in the seventh
grade, but she wanted to be a MOMMY eventually. And she was, eventually.

And I've known women who had children or not and, in both cases, looked at
motherhood as "giving up the best years of their lives and their careers doing
low grade, menial scut work to take care of some MAN'S [bitter resentment and
anger about the man] children". Sure, the position was partly just
negotiations as "don't throw me into that briar patch" but also was
meaningfully genuine.

Net, now, some women WANT to be mommies, and some don't. Does this situation
inherit, via nature and/or nurture? My observations say that it does. My
observations are not very good data, but if the observations are roughly
correct then we conclude that the effect, even if weak, could be how Mother
Nature will "find a way".

More generally I have confidence that Mother Nature will 'win' this one, will
meet the challenge, will "find a way"!

While I believe that the 'way' I mentioned, that women WANT to have children,
and that this will get passed from mother to daughter, is the one Mother
Nature will select, there can be other ways. E.g., a society can get rid of
anything like US Social Security and, thus, tell people in stark terms that
they need to have children as a source of support in old age. A society can
tell girls that it does not support single women or single mothers and, net,
girls should look for good husbands or hope that they have good brothers or
have good inheritance from their fathers.. There can be a role for some
traditional religions that strongly emphasize 'traditional family values' and
having children, whether the women want to or not. Some people might say that
the result will not be a change in the gene pool but in the popularity of some
religious, social, and/or political values.

Or one might just say that the 'Darwinian' effect will apply to whole
societies, e.g., Finland: Finland beat Sweden, Russia, and Germany in wars but
is losing out to the 'feminists'! Whatever the politics, at 1.5 children per
woman, Finland is on the way out of it as surely as some genocide. So, maybe
it's countries that will die off instead of people with the wrong genes.
Still, I trust the influence of genes more than that of politics.

Your issue of "N generations on" is interesting: In part my analysis is saying
that the women were much the same 40,000 years ago, which would be about N =
2000 generations! So, it would seem that we could extrapolate a few
generations from the N = 2000 generations! But, in part my analysis is saying
that, if you will, the current, big 'environmenal' changes, i.e., from women
having jobs, will bring the biggest changes in the gene pool in 40,000 years
and bring the changes very quickly, in, say, just a few generations, say, just
100 years. My reading of evolution is that, when the 'enviroment' changes,
then genes can change very quickly. E.g., the genes in some of those weak,
sick, or dead limbs on the tree are already gone forever.

------
Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu
Good thing. But being gay this never bothers me.

------
Shenglong
I smell a business opportunity.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
its called human trafficking and organized crime is way ahead of you.

