Is overeducation the reason birth rates are in decline

Overeducation may be the reason birth rates are in decline. Changing the education system may be beneficial for society.

The Problem

There is a huge drop in birth rates in developed countries: Japan, Italy, UK, USA

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/health/women-doctors-infertility.html

This articles shows the scale of the problem:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521\

Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century.

Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe.

They are two of 23 countries – which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea – expected to see their population more than halve.

“That is jaw-dropping,” Prof Christopher Murray told me.

China, currently the most populous nation in the world, is expected to peak at 1.4 billion in four years’ time before nearly halving to 732 million by 2100. India will take its place.

This could cause huge problems to societies. Japan is likely to almost half in the coming years. Declining birth rates on this scale will cause huge economic decline and massive societal change.

The current solution is:

Try to encourage birth rates with policies – societies are trying this, but none have shown much success.
Immigration – but this is only a short term solution. Permanent immigration on this scale will still result in the local population declining, and becoming outnumbered by immigrants.

In order to find a solution, I think it’s important to look at why is there a decline in birth rates?

As Einstein said “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Tony Robbins said the opposite: “Leaders spend 5% of their time on the problem and 95% of their time on the solution.

Some people say that when they get richer, they want less children

That when women get more educated they have less children.

Education may play an extremely important part.

As people become more educated they have fewer children

Tertiary education has a direct negative impact on women’s decisions on family formation: It reduces the probability of becoming a mother by one-quarter.

There are two problems with education, particularly tertiary education.

1) Over-education

– there is a direct correlation between the length of time spent in higher education and declining birth rates. People are spending more time in tertiary education. When they graduate they want to have a career. Unfortunately by the time of the career, women have ran out of time.

Those countries with the lowest birth rates all have the highest education rates.

In Japan addition, 60.4 percent of Japanese aged 25 to 34 have attained some form tertiary education and bachelor’s degrees are held by 30.2 percent of Japanese aged 25 to 64. People enrolled in undergraduate schools are awarded bachelor’s degrees which take four to six years. Graduate schools award master’s (2 years), doctoral (3 years), and professional degrees (2–3 years).

According to a 2016 OECD estimate, 54% of Russia’s adults (25- to 64-year-olds) have attained a tertiary education, giving Russia the second-highest attainment of tertiary education among 35 OECD member-countries

69.8 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 34 years old have completed some form of tertiary education with 34.2 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 64 having attained a bachelor’s degree which is one of the highest among OECD countries

2) We are not educating the sexes equally.

Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of enrolment in universities and colleges and men just over 40 percent, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports. Fifty years ago, the gender proportions were reversed.

The number of male-to-female undergraduates was about at parity from 1900 to 1930. Many females were attending teacher-training colleges in those days. The highpoint of gender imbalance in college attendance was reached in 1947, after the return of men from World War II then eligible for educational subsidies through the GI bills, when undergraduate men outnumbered women 2.3 to 1. Women’s relative numbers in college have increased ever since the 1950s, with a pause when many men went to college to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. The decline in the male-to-female ratios of undergraduates in the past 35 years is real, and not primarily due to changes in the ethnic mix of the college-aged population or to the types of post-secondary institutions they attend, the authors assert. The female share of college students has expanded in all 17 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in recent decades, so much so that women now outnumber men in college in almost all rich nations.

In Italy, 35% of 25-34 year-old women had a tertiary qualification in 2020 compared to 23% of their male peers.

These dates and changes in more women being educated than men have exactly correlated with the change in birth rates. It may be correlation (and there is another factor to explain the link), and not causation, but it may be worth looking into more.

With more women being educated than men, there may be a gender imbalance and literally, not enough eligible men.

But this doesn’t quite work for China (women are only a slightly higher number than men), or Japan (men still outnumber women in higher education).

Solutions

If overeducation may be the cause of the decline in the birth rate problem, which is one of the biggest issues facing developed societies, then it what are some ways we can make changes to the education system?

Over-education may be seen as a positive thing, and we might not want to reduce tertiary education, if it makes people less education, it might reduce our capability.

But are there ways we can reduce the time spent in education? and make education more efficient? Can we allow working earlier. Does university need to be 4-6 years in Japan? Could be done in 2, or even 0 – if mixed with work.

Interestingly, countries with 3 years bachelor’s (such as UK, France) have a higher birth rates than those with 4-6 (Japan, South Korea, Russia, China). Even 1 year, may make a big statistical

Can we teach more efficiently? or combine learning with work? So people can launch careers earlier and not enter the workforce so late?

If the unequal education of men and women, could there be some strategies to educate more men.