The availability of opportunities for women to pursue careers and run businesses – and have equal chances of hiring, just like men – has provided alternative lifestyles to that of being a housewife. The women of today are more independent and financially stable than they were in the past. In our very recent past, women were relegated to housework, and not even allowed to vote until very recently.
The latest RH trends in Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Europe,US and the Middle East shows that the total fertility rates of these countries are declining because women are opting to have careers instead of raising a family.
SHOULD WOMEN SETTLE FOR A CONDOM? OR BETTER TO HAVE CAREER AND JOB OPPORTUNITIES?
These trends also show that in industrial economies, women tend to postpone having children due to the high cost of raising kids.
Singapore
Lee Kuan Yew expressed his concern that Singapore ‘will fold up’ if citizens don’t reproduce:
Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has stressed once again the need for Singaporeans to procreate.
Speaking publicly for the first time after National Day at a constituency national day celebration dinner on Saturday, Lee warned of adverse consequences if the country’s declining birth rates continue.
“If we go on like that, this place will fold up, because there’ll be no original citizens left to form the majority, and we cannot have new citizens, new PRs to settle our social ethos, our social spirit, our social norms,” he said, noting that Chinese reproduction rate is now at 1.08, Indians at 1.09 and Malays at 1.64.
Japan
Japan’s low birth rate poses demographic dilemma
TOKYO (MarketWatch) — Tokyo doesn’t have an official one-child policy like the one the Chinese government has tried to implement, but you’d never guess that by looking at the average family size here in the capital.
In 2008, the latest year for which data are available from the Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare, Tokyo had the nation’s lowest birthrate, at 1.09 children per woman.
The high cost of living, long working hours and scarce day-care in the capital help explain why elementary schools in some central Tokyo neighborhoods are shuttered and awaiting redevelopment, their playgrounds quiet, with only the occasional passing waterfowl visible in their algae-slicked swimming pools.
Elsewhere in the world’s second-largest economy, the situation is similarly worrying. The national birthrate in 2008 was 1.37 children per woman — up from a record low of 1.26 in 2005, but still nowhere near what the country needs to replenish its population. If current trends continue, Japan’s population will fall to 95 million by 2050, from about 127 million now.
And the good news about rising average life spans here is bad news for demographic planning, as few workers support more and more older folks.
Taiwan
Declining birth rate in Taiwan raises economic concerns
Asia’s more developed countries are becoming concerned about declining birth rates, as more women choose their career over starting a family.
Taiwan’s birth rate has fallen to the lowest in the world, raising economic concerns about a smaller workforce in the future.
As the BBC’s Cindy Sui reports from Taipei, the government has started a campaign against what it calls a national crisis.
China
The economist reports in an article Fertility and living standards: Go forth and multiply a lot less
China’s one-child policy, which began nationwide in the early 1970s. China’s population is probably 300m-400m lower now than it would have been without it. The policy (which is one of population control, not birth control) has had dreadful costs, including widespread female infanticide, a lopsided sex ratio and horrors such as mass sterilisation and forced abortions. But in its own terms, it has worked—20m people enter the workforce each year, instead of 40m—and, to the extent that China is polluting less than it would have done, it has benefited the rest of the world.
The Goldilocks moment
Higher standards of living, then, reduce fertility. And lower fertility improves living standards. This is what China’s government says.”
Asia
Asia Experiences Huge Birth-Rate Decline
With the declining birth trend in Asia, questions arise about how to address the issue, if at all. Economics play a large role. Working women have to give up earnings as they leave employment to have children. The cost of raising children then becomes a factor, especially if mothers have a difficult challenge returning to work.
Europe
A generation ago Spain was just coming out of its Francoist era, a strongly Catholic country with among the highest birth rates in Europe, with the average woman producing almost four children in 1960 and nearly three as late as 1975-1976. There was, he notes, “no divorce, no contraception allowed.” By the 1980s many things changed much for the better better, as young Spaniards became educated, economic opportunities opened for women expanded and political liberty became entrenched.
Yet modernization exacted its social cost. The institution of the family, once dominant in Spain, lost its primacy. “Priorities for most young and middle-aged women (and men) are career, building wealth, buying a house, having fun, travelling, not incurring in the burden of many children,” observes Macarron. Many, like their northern European counterparts, dismissed marriage altogether; although the population is higher than it was in 1975, the number of marriages has declined from 270,000 to 170,000 annually.
Now Spain, like much of the EU, faces the demographic consequences. The results have been transformative. In a half century Spain’s fertility rate has fallen more than 50% to 1.4 children per female, one of the lowest not only in Europe, but also the world and well below the 2.1 rate necessary simply to replace the current population. More recently the rate has dropped further at least 5 percent.
US
Thanks to the weak economy, Americans are having fewer babies than the British and the French — not enough to maintain the size of the U.S. population, according to the Economist.
The U.S. birth rate now is 1.9 births per woman over her lifetime, when 2 births per woman is necessary to keep the population stable. The birth rate has been plunging since the recession started in 2007 and fell below population-sustaining levels in 2010. It’s projected to fall to a 25-year low this year and not recover to pre-recession levels anytime soon, according to the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence.
Many young Americans are postponing starting their own families because they are struggling to stay afloat. Some 22 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds say they have delayed having a baby because of the weak economy, and another 20 percent have delayed getting married, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Roughly one in four adults in that same age range have moved back in with their parents during the economic downturn, after living on their own.
Middle East and North Africa
The fertility rates in the MENA area is also on the decline.
The Fertility rate; total (births per woman) in Middle East and North Africa was 2.74 in 2009, according to a World Bank report, published in 2010. The Fertility rate; total (births per woman) in Middle East and North Africa was reported at 2.77 in 2008, according to the World Bank.
How do these trends bear on the RH Bill?
These trends are very clear – when women have opportunities outside the household – the fertility rate goes down because they have activities other than procreation.
Filipinas need to think better of themselves as mere recipients of welfare and useless contraceptive programs.
Women’s health should be in the hands of women and not left to the whims of Congressmen and Senators.
Having “free contraceptives” provided by the DOH and what not, will not lift Filipinas out of poverty – JOBS WILL.
One more thing, pro-RH cite that Singapore and Japan have RH programs. They ought to look at the details of the RH programs of these countries – it is for procreation – not contraception. 
About the Author
BongV has written 417 stories on this site.
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