[A] Fertility in East Asia has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in the late 1960s to 1.6 now. In countries with the lowest marriage rates, the fertility rate is nearer 1.0. That is beginning to cause huge demographic problems, as populations age with startling speed.
[B]Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.
[C]People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.
[D]Family law should give divorced women a more generous share of the couple’s assets. Governments should also legislate to get employers to offer both maternal and paternal leave, and provide or subsidise child care. If taking on such expenses helped promote family life, it might reduce the burden on the state of looking after the old.
[E]Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%.
[F]In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged “scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.
[G]Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours. And Asian women who give up work to look after children find it hard to return when the offspring are grown.
Passage 8
In the English-speaking world, people escape from frying pans into fires. In Thailand, the proverb is couched differently: people are said to escape from tigers only to be eaten by crocodiles. (1)_______________With that in mind, the Bank of Thailand raised interest rates on August 24th for the ninth time since mid-2010. But it was a split decision. The economic woes of America and Europe have darkened Asia’s mood. Some can again hear the tiger’s growl.
After last year’s swift recovery from recession, policymakers in developing Asian countries congratulated themselves on the resilience of their economies. (2)_______________In April 2009 the Thai central bank cut rates to 1.25%—lower than in most Asian economies—alongside a fiscal push worth 3% of GDP. Emerging economies were hit harder than optimists expected, but responded better than pessimists feared.
That resilience may be tested again sooner than anyone would have liked. In announcing its latest rate decision, the Bank of Thailand noted the dangers posed to the economy by a slowdown in America and Europe. (3)____________________But the bank found consolation in Thailand’s growing sales to its neighbours and to “new” markets farther afield. Last year China overtook America to become the country’s leading customer.
That trend is not unique to Thailand. Most of its neighbours now sell a smaller share of their exports to America and Europe than they did before the crisis (see chart). The precise percentages may be misleading. These exports include parts and components that may end up in the West, after first being assembled into final products in another country. But there is no denying the trend.
The region’s economies are not, then, as vulnerable to the tiger’s claws as they were in 2008. The crocodile, on the other hand, is uncomfortably close. Thailand’s headline consumer-price inflation (4.1% in the year to July) was too high for the central bank’s comfort, but lower than in many of its neighbours, such as China (6.5%), India, where wholesale prices rose by 9.2%, or Vietnam, where consumer prices rose by an alarming 23% in the year to August.
Asia’s campaign against inflation has dragged on longer than its central bankers hoped. Higher food and commodity prices were expected to drop out of the inflation figures eventually, but instead seem to have leached into other consumer prices. (4)________________The big exceptions are Taiwan, where the discount rate is less than 1.9%, and Singapore, which carries out monetary policy by setting a path for the exchange rate, not the interest rate. With rates in America at rock bottom, and the Singapore dollar set to strengthen against its American counterpart, interest rates in Singapore are extraordinarily low.
Reducing rates would help Asia’s economies withstand a modest slowdown in the West. Goldman Sachs, for example, has cut its 2011 rate forecast for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan, but has barely trimmed its growth forecasts for these countries.(5)___________
A fiscal response would do more to buoy demand in the rest of the world, as it did from 2007 to 2009, when budget balances deteriorated markedly throughout the region.
With luck, another stimulus package will not be necessary. A modest slowdown in the West might even take the pressure off prices in Asia, without doing undue harm to the region’s growth—a case perhaps of the tiger eating the crocodile.
[A]Thailand remains highly exposed to global trade: exports, including air conditioners, video cameras and fridges, as well as tourism, accounted for over 70% of its GDP in 2010.
[B] But rate cuts would also weaken the region’s exchange rates, sharpening their competitiveness and doing little to help economies outside Asia.
[C]Their docile banking systems, high saving rates and hoards of foreign exchange shielded them from the worst of the financial chaos. Their efforts to tighten fiscal and monetary policy before the crisis struck gave them room to loosen up in response, as exports collapsed and confidence evaporated.
[D]The Thai economy, like many in Asia, sprang free from the great recession surprisingly quickly. This year the bigger threat has been the widening jaws of inflation.
[E]America will overcome its current economic woes and Europe will muddle through.
[F]One consequence of this prolonged fight is that nominal interest rates have been raised off the floor. Indonesia’s policy rate is now 6.75%; India’s is 8%. That gives central bankers some room to cut if the world economy sags.
[G]Thailand’s new prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is contemplating another budgetary splurge. But policymakers elsewhere will be reluctant to spill the red ink again.
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