{"id":45210,"date":"2024-03-08T07:33:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T07:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear"},"modified":"2024-03-08T08:15:40","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T08:15:40","slug":"please-do-not-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear","title":{"rendered":"PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPEAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Eswatini. <\/strong><\/span>You can\u2019t help feeling agog \u2013 that\u2019s being stopped in your tracks, but not painfully \u2013 when you read about South Korea\u2019s birth rate.<\/b><\/p>\n

I should ask you first whether or not you are a dedicated \u2018populationist\u2019. I have, of course, allowed myself the geriatric indulgence of introducing new words into the English language; and why not? That one now sits proudly beside \u2018esoteria\u2019 and \u2018ema\u2019, the latter an entirely appropriate abbreviation to minimise the use of \u2018rand\u2019 as money changes hands in Eswatini. On the other hand, if a shop attendant no longer says: \u201cThat will be R80 sir,\u201d I will lose the opportunity to say: \u201cMay I pay in Emalangeni?\u201d (lol). I will now get back onto the straight and narrow of seriousness, and share with you an interesting story about global birth rates, especially the dramatically, indeed ominously, falling birth rate in South Korea. Put simply, the ladies of that country are increasingly choosing to not have children; not even one.<\/p>\n

Impact<\/b><\/p>\n

The projected impact of this trend \u2013 one that is causing that country\u2019s authorities to treat it as a national emergency \u2013 is that in 75 years\u2019 time the population of South Korea will have halved, with 50 per cent of the remaining population being citizens above the age of 65. That\u2019s no joke when you consider the resultant fall in national output from a declining working population, as well as the impact of increasing elderly costs on the public purse. What is even more amazing is that all the incentives being offered to married couples to have children are largely being ignored. Couples who have children get plenty of cash in the form of monthly handouts to subsidised housing and free taxis. Hospital bills and even IVF treatments (normally costing many thousands of US Dollars) are covered, though only for those who are married. But to little effect. It\u2019s especially interesting to consider the various views on the motivation behind South Korean women deciding to live without ever having children. One possible reason is that Korean men are not hugely keen on helping with household chores and childcare.<\/p>\n

Committed<\/b><\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s very common throughout the world, but women in most countries submit to that in order to have children. A perhaps more powerful reason is that South Korean women are increasingly committed to their careers and are doing so in a professional climate where maternal absences are viewed as negatively affecting the chances of future promotion. A similarly insecure work feeling is experienced by their men. The extremely generous offer of one year\u2019s paternity leave in the first eight years of a child\u2019s life has been taken up by only seven per cent of the eligible fathers. Perhaps they just don\u2019t want to be doing the dishes (lol). There is also a prevailing culture of men being superior to women \u2013 again an atavistically (I didn\u2019t invent that one) common characteristic in the world. And the gender pay gap in South Korea is the biggest in the OECD countries, while the women are the best educated.<\/p>\n

This is not intended as an opportunist criticism of South Korea. They and Taiwan are our friends, and we have a lot of admiration for their profound commitment to hard work and decency. The South Korean economy has grown strongly over the past 50 years. At the same time it has become a very expensive country in which to bring up a child, with huge family spending on supplementary educational support for children. Many women have voiced the view that they wouldn\u2019t want a child to have to go through what they did.<\/p>\n

Shocking<\/b><\/p>\n

It is quite shocking to see the difference between the birth rate of South Korea, which is 0.7 per adult woman, and that of Niger, which is 6.0. The rate to keep a population static in number is 2.1 per woman. Such wide variations have significant regional characteristics. West and Central Africa have an average of 4.8 while Asia and Latin America have around 1.8. Not immediately evident, but a hard reality is that the countries with the highest birth rates also have high poverty levels, which will continue to increase in the absence of robust social welfare programmes; a bigger world population that\u2019s a poorer one. Eswatini\u2019s birth rate is 2.8, which means our population will increase in number. We must achieve robust economic growth and job creation to avoid increasing poverty levels.<\/p>\n

Then the question must arise \u2013 how do the various people live? The incidence of single parent households across the world is quite an eye-opener, the degree of variance being for different reasons. In the USA the figure is around 25 per cent, in Eswatini it is approximately 49 per cent, yet in Nigeria it is a mere four per cent. The analysis of that must wait for another time. What is a challenging contributor in Eswatini is the cavalier sexual attitude among men and a poor degree of accountability. This is not confined to Eswatini, but in the UK when you are singled out as the alleged father of a child, the DNA test is available quickly and the proven father is paying maintenance for 18 years. That\u2019s what makes the guys behave. In Eswatini our teenage pregnancy figures are especially worrying and all credit and support should go to the recently launched Anti-Teenage Pregnancy campaign, led by KaZondwako\u2019s Reverend Paul Kunene.<\/p>\n

Source: times<\/b><\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Eswatini<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Eswatini. You can\u2019t help feeling agog \u2013 that\u2019s being stopped in your tracks, but not painfully \u2013 when you read about South Korea\u2019s birth rate. I should ask you first whether or not you are a dedicated \u2018populationist\u2019. I have, of course, allowed myself the geriatric indulgence of introducing new words into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":45209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[234,248,249],"class_list":["post-45210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-eswatini","tag-eswatini"],"yoast_head":"\nPLEASE DO NOT DISAPPEAR - Eswatini<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You can\u2019t help feeling agog \u2013 that\u2019s being stopped in your tracks, but not painfully \u2013 when you read about South Kore ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPEAR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You can\u2019t help feeling agog \u2013 that\u2019s being stopped in your tracks, but not painfully \u2013 when you read about South Kore ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Eswatini\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-03-08T07:33:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-08T08:15:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/sites\/33\/2024\/03\/sm_1709873024.50339.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPEAR\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-03-08T07:33:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-03-08T08:15:40+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\"},\"wordCount\":918,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/sites\/33\/2024\/03\/sm_1709873024.50339.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Eswatini\",\"Eswatini\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"files\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/please-do-not-disappear\",\"name\":\"PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPEAR - 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