AdvertisementDeclining birth rates have been a huge bugbear for Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. Vanessa LeeLee, who owns two dogs and a cat, said that governments may be overestimating the effectiveness of one-off interventions in bolstering birth rates. AdvertisementShe added that a shift in societal mindsets toward work and family needs to occur for her peers to consider having children. But it also doesn't guarantee that having sex brings children and that not having sex is the only reason why people are not having children," Gietel-Basten said. Low birth rates, according to HKUST's Gietel-Basten, are a "barometer of the challenges in society" and should thus be seen as "symptoms of problems in a society."

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Persons: —, Vanessa Lee, Lee, Elon Musk, Paulin Straughan, Poh Lin Tan, Tan, Jonas Hue, Vanessa Lee Lee, It's, Emily Huang, Stuart Gietel, Basten, SMU's Straughan, Straughan, HKUST's, we're Organizations: Service, Business, Internal, Ministry, Asahi Shimbun, South, Singapore Management University, Singapore's Institute of Policy, Nordic, Hong Kong University of Science, Technology Locations: Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Korea, Tokyo, Seoul, Sweden, Finland, Hong Kong, Basten