Baby dearth: why rich societies like Hong Kong are committing demographic suicide
N. Balakrishnan says societies that reach a certain level of development appear vulnerable to an ‘anomie’ that makes people prize hedonistic pursuits over child-rearing. Can they reorganise themselves into a more family-friendly way before it’s too late?
As a newly married man in Singapore many years ago, my hairdresser once asked me when my wife and I were going to have our first child. I replied, like many people do even today, that it was too expensive to have a child and to bring one up. He said that people who were earning a fraction of what we were and living in a one-room flat were still able to have two children and bring them up, and so could we.
It is a truism that we put up with hardships to do things we want to do while making a lot of excuses to justify what we don’t want to do.
Travelling between northeast Asian countries such as Japan and Hong Kong and Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and the Philippines, one is struck by children running all over the place in public places in the generally poorer Southeast Asian nations and the grim old people walking stiffly in north Asian societies. Affluent Singapore, though in Southeast Asia, is an exception, but even within Singapore it is the less affluent Singaporeans who seem to be having more children.
Fertility in numbers: how having children in Hong Kong has changed over the years
Personal experience and statistics show that merely giving a bigger flat to an average Hong Kong family won’t solve the problem of demographic extinction that is looming over the city, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, at 1.2.
Societies are like individuals, too; some are energetic and outward-looking during periods of their life, while at other times, “anomie” takes over. That’s when individuals and societies go through life depressed and fearful while trying to hide it with empty indulgences, whether it is drinking or shopping, which one American philosopher called “joyless hedonism”.
Hong Kong is only an extreme and concentrated example of what will happen in other societies soon
Until this value system changes, many “affluent” societies of today will become so depressed that they will commit demographic suicide.
The rich and powerful, as those who have read about the ancient feudal male rulers with their large harems will know, used to take delight in fathering as many children as possible. Genghis Khan seems to have fathered so many children that his genetic marker is said to be found in about 10 per cent of the population within the old Mongol empire.
