201102045 EIT
Se-Kyu Oh (오세규)
Small Families, Less Happiness
Time was that the number of family members was equal to its labor force. When agriculture was the main source of food supply for human beings, more people meant more labor, therefore more outcomes. However, as people moved on to the secondary industry and even further generation of industry, the number of family members no longer assured how much they can produce. Therefore, people no longer felt needs to have babies or even needs to get married. As a result of this trend, we're having aging society, depopulation is expected, and we're even losing our own culture and traditions.
First, as people have fewer kids, the number of children and young adults is significantly going down. At the same time, with an improved health care and medical system, adults are living longer than before. As a result, our society is aging very fast. The distribution of population to age has changed. Once it was a pyramid where majority of young people support the small number of old people. However, now it turned to a rectangular where the rates of young generation and old generation are almost same. Due to this problem, the government's spending for welfare is drastically increasing and the burden is on young people.
Second, as people have fewer kids, the number of population is expected to be on decrease. With a simple calculation, it is expected that we're facing looming depopulation. Two people get married and if the entire population is to be maintained, each couple should have two babies. However, considering those who don't get married or who can't have babies, or someone who dies earlier than his or her life expectancy, each couple should have 2.1 babies during their entire life. Because couples in Korea have about 1.19 babies, depopulation is expected with no doubt.
Finally, we would even lose our culture and traditions. Our descendant would learn our own traditions and culture and pass it to their kids. It's how our properties, whether it is material, intellectual, or spiritual, have continued to exist for the past decades and centuries. However, because more people are living alone or have no kids, there are fewer people to learn current generation's culture.
The development in industries made our life more convenient, easy, and even joyful. However, it led us to small families with fewer or no kids, thus threatening our daily life. Society is getting old, population would be decreasing, and our culture would also disappear. If we don't do something to solve this problem, I'm afraid that human beings will someday disappear on this planet. Love someone, get married, and have babies.
I would like to change the title which is 'Small Families, Less Happiness' to
ReplyDelete'Small Familes, More problems'