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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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To emphasize the point, men in their cohort who enter the workforce had their mandatory military service counted as work experience and so enter at a higher pay level.

Well, there's a rather self-evident political option to remedy this.

Buying a house is a precondition to marrying under Korean social norms.

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

In America you’re totally allowed to rent, and if you have a plausible story and one set of parents is willing you can live with them- my parents lived with dad’s family at first.

And there are plenty of societies(eg Albania) where owning your own home before marriage would be seen as highly unusual or possibly suspect. They’re not societies most people want to live in, but neither is Korea.

It's not just the ownership that matters, it's that renting is frouned upon, housing loans are not cheaply available (30% down payment is common, IIRC), housing is treated as an investment, the closing price for typical condos is now 20x~30x the median annual salary. I only know one 20-30 year old who purchased a condo in the last 5 years without parental assistance (and the one guy sold his startup to a conglomerate for millions.)

My wife and I were married for nearly a decade before we bought a house. In the US.

I'd guess that marriage and owning a house are generally somewhat correlated here, but I know a plenty of married couples with kids who rent.

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

Just across the yellow sea there is a quite similar culture that didn't have this expectation; in China the (male's) parents would typically buy a house when their child gets married - and subsequently move in with the newly married couple. Hence the preference for sons, since you'll get your adult child to take care of you in old age, whereas the parents of the woman just get a dowry.

The preference for sons in China goes deeper, as in older tradition the sons of a family perform the sacrificial rites due for ancestor worship. But it is true that the pragmatic aspect of this was of significant concern as well, enough for (no longer extant) jokes to exist about families being "robbed" by having many daughters but no sons.

Then again, go back that far and often enough the newlyweds would just live in the (husband's) family compound...

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

Plenty of married couples rent? That's without going into the "living like a pack of sardines at your parents' place, possibly with your sibling(s) and their spouse(s)" arrangement that was pretty common in my parent's generation, even in Europe, and is likely still common in poorer parts of the world.

Plenty of married couples rent?

I'm sure they do, generally as long as they're still childless. Once they're not, I'm not sure most people see that as a viable option.

Tell me you're American without telling me you're American.

That's only managerial class and above Americans. Plenty of Americans have kids while renting, even in smallish apartments.

I'm in fact not American.

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