Blythe Terrell

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But to zoom out, though, I will say, you know, in a lot of countries, as women get more education, better paying jobs, our time becomes more expensive.

That was one thing that Jisoo kept pointing out.

She's like, your time, if you can get a job that pays you more money, the cost-benefit changes for having a kid.

Especially if you're going to be the one who's expected to stay home, especially if you don't have reliable childcare, like all these things, right?

And all of this like changes the calculus of having a kid.

So it's not necessarily just that people are like, my job is way more fun than hanging out with a kid all day.

No, no, no, no.

So a bigger picture, like even though there's other reasons people aren't having as many kids, some economists do argue that this gender shift in education and jobs and just overall more autonomy for women, it could be the biggest reason that we've seen this change worldwide.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay, so that's a little bit about the why, like the how we got here.

And now I want to stay in South Korea to talk about what can happen next.

So, you know, using South Korea as like sort of a worst case scenario, what does it look like when your fertility rate goes so low?

And I want to start with kids.

Because when you have fewer births, you have fewer kids.

And there's a ton of headlines about this, actually.

Like South Korea becoming basically like a kid desert.

Have you seen these?

Yeah, and there's tons of reports around this.

You know, this is happening.