发达国家人口荒

Nate Koch isn't sure what to make of the online dating scene.

内特·科赫还不确定如何看待网上约会。

"There's no rules," the 23-year-old Colorado resident says.

“完全都没有规则，”这位23岁的科罗拉多州居民说。

"We don't know what to do on these apps. It feels like kind of, like, the Wild West."

“我们不知道在这些应用程序上该做什么。感觉就像，就像，身处狂野的西部。”

And it can often feel extremely time-consuming and unproductive, says Koch, a recent college graduate.

刚从大学毕业的科赫说，这通常会让人觉得非常耗时，而且没有效率。

"I'm literally applying to jobs at the same time that I'm dating. The similarity between the two is a little, like, horrifying to me," he says.

“我实际上是在约会的同时申请工作。这两者之间的相似之处让我有点害怕，”他说。

The confusion over the rules of romance in the digital age shared by Koch and so many others might explain why millions of Americans are having less sex than previous generations did at the same age.

科赫等人对数字时代浪漫法则的困惑或许可以解释为什么数百万美国人的性生活比上一代同龄人少。

Add in a focus on building a career before having a family, and it all may be contributing to a national birthrate that keeps falling.

再加上很多人在成家之前都很注重事业发展，这一切都可能导致全国出生率持续下降。

All this raises alarms for the economy.

所有这些都给经济敲响了警钟。

Economies need new workers to replace older workers as they retire.

经济需要新工人来取代退休的老工人。

When a nation's birthrate drops too low, certain sectors can experience employee shortages, and ultimately, the economy might shrink.

当一个国家的出生率降得太低时，某些行业可能会出现员工短缺，最终导致经济萎缩。

Like an increasing number of young people in America, Koch is single.

和美国越来越多的年轻人一样，科赫也是单身。

"When I was in high school, I really liked that show How I Met Your Mother," he says.

他说:“当我上高中的时候，我真的很喜欢《老爸老妈浪漫史》。”

Shows like that, he says, "created this sort of image of what it's like to be in your 20s.

他说，这样的节目“塑造了很多人心目中20多岁时的样子”。

You know, you're hanging out in bars, and you're just sort of meeting people in these strange ways."

“你知道的，就是那种在酒吧里闲逛，以这些奇怪的方式去认识人。””

But, Koch says, everything about online dating today feels incredibly less straightforward than a sitcom.

但是，科赫说，今天所有关于网上约会的事情都没有情景喜剧那么直接。

Many young men and women across the country have been having less sex than those in previous generations.

与前几代人相比，美国各地的许多年轻男女的性生活都有所减少。

Almost a quarter of adults under 30 didn't have sex in the last year — a record high, according to the 2018 General Social Survey from NORC at the University of Chicago.

芝加哥大学NORC发布的2018年综合社会调查显示，近四分之一的30岁以下成年人去年没有性生活，创下了历史新高。

There are reasons besides just online dating, but experts and journalists have declared that America is in the middle of a "sex drought" or "sex recession."

除了网恋之外，还有其他原因，但专家和记者已经宣布，美国正处于“性干旱”或“性衰退”之中。

Part of the explanation is the challenges of online dating.

其中部分原因就是在线约会的挑战。

Part of it is that people are spending more time alone on the Internet.

部分原因是人们花了更多的时间独自上网。

Part of it is about young men and women waiting longer to find life partners or to cohabitate as they prioritize getting their careers and finances in order.

还部分原因是年轻男女为了找到生活伴侣或去同居而等待的时间更长了，因为他们优先考虑的是让自己的事业和财务状况恢复正常。

But, whatever the reason, it's leading to less sex and fewer births.

然而，不论原因如何，最后都导致了性生活和出生率的减少。

The birthrate dropped 2% between 2017 and 2018 — and the number of births slid to a 32-year low.

2017年至2018年间，美国的出生率下降了2%，出生率也降至32年来的最低点。

Koch says he expected to at least know who his wife would be by this time in his life, even if he didn't think he'd get married for a few years.

科赫说，他希望至少在这个时候他能知道自己的妻子是谁，即使他认为自己几年内都不会结婚。

But he says the difficulty of online dating has slowed down his timeline for marriage — and for having babies.

但是他说，网上约会的困难已经推迟了他结婚和生孩子的时间。

Another reason America's birthrate has dipped so low is that many women are dealing with career considerations first.

美国出生率下降如此之低的另一个原因是，许多女性首先考虑的是事业。

Rashmi Venkatesh, a married 30-year-old with a Ph.D., works in science research.

30岁的拉希米·文卡特什已婚，拥有博士学位，从事科学研究。

She says her job is in many ways her No. 1 priority right now.

她说，目前她的工作在很多方面都是她的首要任务。

She had pictured "a fully formed professional life and a fully formed family life."

她曾经幻想家庭事业两不误。

But, she says, the family life "has gone by the wayside."

不过，现在她说，家庭生活已经被挤到了一边。

Venkatesh says she's moving up the career ladder really quickly.

文卡特什说，她的职场晋升非常快。

So when she thinks of having a child, she worries it might hurt her advancement.

所以在考虑生孩子的时候，她担心这会影响自己的升迁。

She says she couldn't even imagine taking 10 or 12 weeks off for a new baby.

她说她无法想象要请10到12周的假去照顾小孩。

"You would miss something," she says.

“你肯定得错过很多，”她说。

"Or the time that I spend in the evening reading up on things would now be focused on something else — a child, which I guess is very important! It sounds awful when I say that."

“或者我晚上花在阅读上的时间现在会集中在其他事情上——一个孩子，我想这是非常重要的!感觉说起来都可怕。”

Like many working women, Venkatesh worries about losing income if she leaves work to have a child, and she worries about the cost of child care.

和许多职场女性一样，文卡特什担心，如果离开工作去生孩子，她会失去收入，她还担心育儿成本问题。

When Venkatesh was younger, she says, she imagined having three children.

当文卡特什更年轻的时候，她说，她曾想过要生三个孩子。

Now she thinks one, down the road, is more realistic.

如今她觉得将来生一个这样会现实。

"It's a bummer," she says. "It's a bummer for sure."

她说:“这太让人失望了。”“这肯定很让人失望。”

The longer women like Venkatesh wait to have a child, the fewer children they're likely to have.

像文卡塔什这样的女性推迟生育的时间越长，她们可能要的孩子就越少。

So, though the reasons are many and vary for men and women, America is in the midst of a sex (and baby) drought that it just can't seem to get out of.

因此，尽管男性和女性的原因有很多，而且各不相同，但美国正处于一场似乎无法摆脱的性别(和婴儿)干旱之中。

But the United States is not alone.

然而，不仅美国有这样的情况。

Developed nations across the world have been experiencing the same thing.

世界各地的发达国家都有相同的经历。

Western Europe is dealing with falling birthrates, and Japan's birthrate has dipped so low it's population has started to fall.

西欧正在应对出生率下降的问题，而日本的出生率下降得如此之低，以至于人口开始下降。

Jennifer Glass, a demographer at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that some countries have tried to boost their birthrates by urging citizens to get busy.

德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的人口学家詹妮弗·格拉斯指出，一些国家试图通过敦促公民忙碌起来来提高出生率。

One commercial from Denmark featured parents "bemoaning the fact that their children had not yet produced grandchildren for them and they were going to pay them to go on a [vacation] so that they would come home pregnant and give them grandchildren," Glass says.

在丹麦的一则广告中，父母们“哀叹自己的孩子还没有给他们生孙子孙女，付钱让孩子们去度假，这样他们就可以怀着孙子孙女回家，”格拉斯说。

It ends with a voice saying, "Do it for Denmark. Do it for mom."

广告最后说，“生孩子是为了丹麦。为了妈妈。”

Glass says those kinds of appeals rarely work.

格拉斯说这种方法很少奏效。

But other things do: "a [family leave] policy that gives you four to six months, almost completely paid, and is available to both partners," she says.

但另外一种方法却有效，“这种(探亲假)政策给你4到6个月的时间，几乎是全薪的，而且对男女双方都适用，”她表示。

Subsidized child care also helps, she says.

她说，儿童保育补贴也有帮助。

Glass and many other experts see a third fix: immigration.

格拉斯和其他的专家们还看到了一个补救的办法：靠移民。

Immigrants tend to be younger — the kind of workers aging economies need — and new immigrants often have birthrates that are higher than those of the native-born population.

移民往往更年轻——这正是老龄化经济体所需要的劳动力——新移民的出生率往往高于本国出生人口的出生率。

"We should not worry about the birthrate in the United States," says Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

“我们不应该担心美国的出生率，”马里兰大学的社会学家菲利普·科恩说。

"If we want to let those people come to this country, we can solve any problem you can think of related to population size."

“如果我们想让这些移民来到这个国家，我们就可以解决任何你能想到的与人口规模有关的问题。”

America's debate over just how many immigrants should be coming may not be over anytime soon.

美国关于移民数量的争论可能不会很快结束。

So the baby drought seems bound to continue until there's a shift — in the workplace, online or in the bedroom.

因此，在工作场所、网络或卧室里的情形发生转变之前，婴儿的缺乏似乎注定会持续下去。

问题

文中提到了哪几个面临出生率低问题的国家？

留言回复正确答案，前十名朋友可以获得红包奖励哦，赶快来试试吧！

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