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Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 304 | July 7-13, 2023

The new Asian family

East Asian governments must try to manage a momentous social change they cannot prevent

The Economist | July 6, 2023

Listen to the Extractive Summary of the Article

Today in prosperous East Asia a different facet of those ballyhooed values is looking even more parlous. In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Asians’ supposed commitment to conservative family life is collapsing. Millions of young people are opting for looser, often lonelier and—in the East Asian context—less male-dominated arrangements.

In some ways young Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans are following a path charted in rich countries elsewhere. Between 1960 and 2010 Europe’s marriage rate fell by half, for many of the reasons that are now driving down East Asian rates. To many people, marriage seems increasingly anachronistic and unaffordable. High property prices are an added disincentive to setting up a marital home. Alternative domestic arrangements are becoming more accepted; besides singledom, they include intergenerational flat-sharing and, less often, cohabiting and gay partnerships. And growing numbers of middle-class women are putting off marriage to concentrate on their careers.  Traditional values are hard on women at work, too.

If most of this sounds familiar, two things make East Asia’s great social change distinct and hugely troublesome. First, the taboo against having children outside marriage remains as rigid as ever. Across the OECD, 40% of births are outside wedlock. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan less than 5% are. (The figure in China is unavailable, revealingly, but not thought to be higher.)  The result is a plummeting fertility rate.  The total population of the four East Asian countries is predicted to shrink by 28% between 2020 and 2075.  The second problem is that the region’s governments are making the situation worse. None seriously broaches the only policy guaranteed to revive East Asia’s flagging demography: mass immigration. Their main response is to try to resuscitate marriage with economic perks—including tax breaks and subsidised weddings—with little success.

Governments should try to complete this lopsided revolution. Even if social change is not entirely within their grasp, and does not happen overnight, they can at least stop resisting it. To make family life more attractive, they need to deal with its gender imbalances as well as its costs by, for example, making paternity leave routine. They should look beyond heterosexual marriage, as their citizens have, and extend legal recognition to cohabiting, gay and other non-traditional arrangements—and afford them the support married couples now enjoy, especially over child-rearing.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Asians’ supposed commitment to conservative family life is collapsing. Millions of young people are opting for looser, often lonelier and—in the East Asian context—less male-dominated arrangements. 
2. In some ways young Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans are following a path charted in rich countries elsewhere. To many people, marriage seems increasingly anachronistic and unaffordable. High property prices are an added disincentive to setting up a marital home. Alternative domestic arrangements are becoming more accepted; besides singledom, they include intergenerational flat-sharing and, less often, cohabiting and gay partnerships. And growing numbers of middle-class women are putting off marriage to concentrate on their careers.  Traditional values are hard on women at work, too.
3. In a region that is home to over a fifth of humanity, the socioeconomic and demographic consequences will be vast, potentially destabilising and will shape millions of lives.

Full Article

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Topics:   Population, East Asia, Global Economy