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Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens

43 points by alexzeitler 4y ago

controversial97 4y ago
Declining human population is a good thing.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Only if spread out. Less Japanese vs who
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Who is swimming to Japan? Joking of course, but you have to consider that unless there are land adjacencies, it’s unlikely invasion is a concern as population declines. Less Japanese means more open space and less land contention from remaining Japanese. Less people overall means less resource contention overall.
    - nradov 4y ago
      People will be boating to Japan as countries in East Asia plus Russia are destabilized in the next couple decades due to rising energy and food prices.
      - schemester 4y ago
        East Asia is also depopulating.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - riffraff 4y ago
        But countries next to Japan (china, south Korea, Russia) are also depopulating.
    - bloppe 4y ago
      We are talking about Japan here. Clearly having to cross an ocean does not rule out an invasion. Not that I think that's relevant.
    - NalNezumi 4y ago
      Apparently Russian https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14424010#:~:text=SHIBETSU%2C%20Hokkaido%2D%2DA%20Russian,news%20agencies%20and%20other%20sources https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14424010#:~:text=SHIBE....
  - js8 4y ago
    They tried to spread out, but Americans put a stop to it in WW2.
creakingstairs 4y ago
1.3 looks pretty good next to 0.78 :p https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/south-korea-lowest-fertility-rate-record-2022-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/south-korea-lowest-f...
PebblesHD 4y ago
I contend that across the developed world, everything just got too expensive. In the two places I ‘live’, Sydney and Tokyo, young people are putting off the usual life events such as getting married, having kids etc. because of unstable housing and insecure employment. 50 years ago, a dwelling was around 3-4x annual salary, now it’s 15-20x salary. You aren’t paying that off early and growing the family, even with both parents working. To even get both parents working, you need child care, which for many people costs more than one parent just staying home. Your family lives in the more established suburbs because they bought when it was affordable, so you’re miles away from them and they can’t just come around and mind the grandkids, so you’re a bit stuck. Some serious consideration needs to be made about the growing trend of wealth percolating towards the older and established parts of society in a way that didn’t used to happen, personally I believe the financialisation of housing (and basically everything else, have you seen the prices of used games lately…) is a major contributor. Nonetheless, this will all slowly grind to a halt as our major cities die out due to lack of young people when they're forced out. Sydney is already becoming a retirement village, give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it.
- lethologica 4y ago
  > give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it. The problem has already begun. Politicians will only begin to look at the problem in 10 years time. Then the political power will shift from Labor to Liberal, or Liberal to Labor, (and back again), and any plans to fix the issue will be blown out by billions of dollars and another decade. By then, it’s too late.
- riffraff 4y ago
  I think the "it's too expensive" part is a very minor part of the issue. People had way less opportunities one or two generations ago, and my parents generation in Italy bought their house with a mortgage and payed it in decades just like their kids did. What changed is expectations: you feel like you should travel before getting a kid. You should have plenty of sexual experiences before picking a partner. You should give priority to your career before settling in a given city, etc. Empowerment of women made "get married and out of your parents house" a less interesting option, education and options for people added up, and cultural shifts happened. Having children is just another bucket list item these days.
acd 4y ago
Turn off wifi at nights ;). Increase immigration from highest birth rate countries.
- bombolo 4y ago
  > Increase immigration from highest birth rate countries. I think they'd consider that as even worse than less natality.
digianarchist 4y ago
Personally I'd move to Japan in a heartbeat if discrimination was illegal and they provided a pathway to (dual) citizenship. From Wikipedia: > Japan lacks any law which prohibits racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. The country also has no national human rights institutions.[3] Non-Japanese individuals in Japan often face human rights violations that Japanese citizens may not.[4] In recent years, non-Japanese media has reported that Japanese firms frequently confiscate the passports of guest workers in Japan, particularly unskilled laborers.[5][6]
- peanuty1 4y ago
  Can you speak Japanese? Also, I assume you are not African-American or South Asian.
  - karaokeyoga 4y ago
    I've lived here (Tokyo and Kyoto) for about ten years and my Japanese is terrible. If you're in a big city here, English-only actually works. There are also some good channels and videos on YouTube talking about the Black experience in Japan (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2eqJ4hZkFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2eqJ4hZkFg).
    - spike021 4y ago
      I've visited for a total of a month across multiple trips. I don't really know any Japanese, maybe the odd words here and there but that's it. Major cities all have fantastic english signage. Just not everyone speaks English "well". But Line or Google Translate work fine enough, especially when making friends. The only place I struggled a little with public transportation was Sapporo on some random bus line that surprisingly had no english signage or announcements, but even then GPS helped well enough.
      - NalNezumi 4y ago
        Living in Japan, even in Tokyo, is a vastly different experience from the tourism bubble one experience in a short visit. My (British) manager living in the international district of Tokyo still struggle with basic paperwork due language barrier. Which affect your work, tax, real estate errands, traveling, visa, daily shopping.
hknmtt 4y ago
give women voting rights and education and see birthrates plummet. if you call them out on it, you're a misogynist but if you phrase it in a positive way, they will cheer for it.
- kergonath 4y ago
  Well, if the only thing that keeps populations stable is uneducated and subservient women, then we deserve to decline as a species. Besides, there are many other factors involved. First one being the stupidly high cost of housing and childcare.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Give humans the buying power and free time to raise kids and see families raise natality rates to a healthy substitution rate. If you call them out on it, you're a socialist but if you phrase it in a positive way, they will cheer for it.
- raspyberr 4y ago
  I do think that women's independence is probably a contributing factor to lower birth rates but it's not the only one. More importantly, it's almost pointless to just state that because it seems to suggest that the simple solution is to remove that independence to hopefully increase the birthrate. That obviously won't be done. So what do you propose can be done with the wisdom you've given?
Hermitian909 4y ago
What I find really fascinating about this is that even in the depths of the birth rate crisis Japan cannot find the political will to take any of the "obvious" drastic measures. Begin covering childcare costs, subsidize housing for families, etc.
- peanuty1 4y ago
  The current PM has said he'd like to double govt spending on child benefits. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-its-now-or-never-stop-shrinking-population-2023-01-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-...
  - labster 4y ago
    They need an order of magnitude more spending. Child care is expensive and hard to find, and so is housing.
  - grugagag 4y ago
    It’ll take some time for the effects to materialize. Second, many possible future parents realize how burdened their children would be in the population pyramid which is inverted beyond hope at this point.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    If child related policies don't cover a fraction of childcare then doubling that fraction won't move the needle.
  - majikaja 4y ago
    Didn't they later say that 'double' was a figure of speech, and that they would increase it /after/ birth rates increase?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Aerroon 4y ago
  But it probably won't work. The highest birthrates are in poor countries. Every country that became rich(er) ended up with a drastic reduction in birth rates. Piling on more money doesn't seem like it would help the issue. It sounds like you would just enter into an ever-increasing spiral of more spending to try to increase birth rates.
mettamage 4y ago
Is it a bad thing for populations to fluctuate? Should populations only grow?
- peanuty1 4y ago
  Environmentally, it's a fantastic thing considering the frightening rate of deforestation, species going extinct, carbon emissions, and ocean pollution. Economically, it puts pressure on a smaller cohort of working age people to pay more taxes to support a bigger cohort of elderly people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >Environmentally, it's a fantastic thing considering the frightening rate of deforestation, species going extinct, carbon emissions, and ocean pollution. This assumes that the amount of resources consumed per person is relatively constant. That's not a good assumption. Fewer people can easily hog more resources, especially energy. People spreading out and buying more and bigger cars and living in bigger homes means more energy and pollution, whereas if more people concentrate into a dense metropolis with public transit and tiny apartments, their energy needs are lower per capita.
- shagie 4y ago
  Wildly varying rates of birth and an irregularly shaped population pyramid can result in economic and political instability as the majority becomes retirees who are not contributing to the economy but retain much of the political power. Silver Democracy: Youth Representation in an Aging Japan - https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54d3f8bz https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54d3f8bz Japan’s Silver Democracy : The Costs of Letting the Elderly Rule Politics - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2013-07-18/japans-silver-democracy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2013-07-18/jap... ( https://archive.is/hlAya https://archive.is/hlAya )
riffraff 4y ago
> It’s a familiar story throughout East Asia The same is happening in Europe. Hungary just published the result of a census ten years after the last one: turns out there's 300k less people than they expected (total population is 9.6M), and the country population is back to the size of ~1950.
- sofixa 4y ago
  Hungary and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and even Southern Europe for that matter, have the added problem of EU-wide migration - lots of people, especially young people, choose to go live in a more developed country in the Western EU (usually France and Germany).
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    "more developed country" = country that isn't run by a sycophant of Putin. Small wonder so many young people are fleeing Hungary.
Gustomaximus 4y ago
Endless variable but I think key 5 things they could do to help; - Reduce house prices, couples often want to get the house while they have 2 incomes and then have kids. Pricing people out is going to add delay here making it harder to start a family and how many kids you can have. - Reduce education debt for the same reason as above, let youth start life without a burden holding them back. - Put tax break on kids. Have something like an extra $5k added to each parents tax free threshold for every child you have. This benefits people having children plus those returning to work which is good for society. - Paid maternity of a significant lenght for both the mum and dad. I was fortunate to have my kids in Norway where (more detail but roughly) you get 12 months paid to split between the mum and the dad. And the dad must take 3 month minimum. This was it normalises all people out of work for having kids and really helps the attitude to exit/entry and all sorts of benefits, its a real game changes to helping support families having a few kids IMO. - Subsided preschool - in Australia it was hardly worth my wife returning to work for the cost of 2 kids in pre-school. She wanted to but its a huge financial burden in many countries. Kids are covered when they get to school age but there is a window here that is financially very tough on families.
- freetime2 4y ago
  Japan already has many of these things. Preschool is free. And after-school programs are either free or very inexpensive for elementary school students with working parents. And there are tax breaks as well as a monthly stipend that gets deposited into your bank account for people with children (not sure of the exact amount off the top of my head). Housing is also quite affordable compared to many developed countries.
  - _nalply 4y ago
    But why do Japanese parents seem to struggle?
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Compared to who? Parenting is a struggle for all parents I've seen, but in Japan it's more common I think for grandparents to live close enough to help out sometimes. It's also more common for women to be stay-at-home mothers. When you compare the birthrate of Japanese people (in Japan) to westerners, after subtracting immigration in the western countries, Japan actually looks pretty normal, or even a little better.
frontman1988 4y ago
Perhaps it is not sustainable to have more than 100 million people on a small island with limited resources for the long term. People talking about population collapse forget that the population explosion that has happened in the recent past is quite the exception in human history and such high population growth was never sustainable in the long run. Continuously increasing the population while maintaining a good quality of life is a challenging task. The current population "crisis" may simply be a return to the norm, as nature seeks to establish a stable equilibrium. Japan has prospered as a civilization for thousands of years without being as densely populated as it is now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_before_the_Meiji_Restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Empire_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Empire_of_Ja...
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  Indeed. It is very telling that the article characterises it as a "crisis". We are facing the twin existential threats climate change and environmental collapse, and population is a staggeringly huge driver of both those problems. Reduction in population is generally a good thing. That's if you care about existential threats. Most people don't. The media doesn't talk about this. It's not a safe topic to discuss and if you dare to you are instantly politisied and become "the scary bad person". People care about the economy, they care about jobs, they care about growth, they care about having kids, they care about petrol prices, they care about a bigger TV and having a lithium battery drone they play with for a couple of weeks and then put it in the cupboard, they care about driving a 4WD in a city because the advertising made it look rugged and outdoorsy and anyway, Fred has one so you need one too, they care about having an electric car because it's painted "green" (it's not; the environmental costs are abstracted away to a place where you don't have to think about it). "Crisis"? Yes, but not in population.
  - NalNezumi 4y ago
    I think almost everyone is actually talking about the aging population problem rather than the declining population problem. We simply haven't seen a situation yet where such a massive proportion of the population is old and economically not contributing, while being supported by a welfare state (and pension) and having disproportionate political power (and incentives) to not correct the course
tanh 4y ago
It's no wonder it's in decline. We are considering having our second (we live in Japan) but the lack of daycare places is really hurting us. Even private daycares are fully subscribed. Moreover, if my wife gives birth, our child will have to come out of any public daycare she gets into. Here we are, in our mid 30s, with a good household income and have ruled out a third already. We are not far from ruling out a second as well.
shrubble 4y ago
Japan 1950: ~84 million people Japan 2023: ~123 million data from: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population-g... How is this a crisis?
- refurb 4y ago
  You making jam with those cherries you picked?
nine_zeros 4y ago
The common narrative always appears to be money. I would contend that the modern life is too fragile. Day to day life is so filled with stress and anxiety that young people don't mate until it's too late. Life has become too complicated. There is far too much paperwork, government bureaucracy and things to keep on top of. If you don't keep up on the bureaucracy, you will get penalized harshly. E.g. why the fuck does a car need to be registered every year? If I need to register a car, why can't I do it online? If I can do it online, why can't I do it if I change my address? Why do I need to present a thousand documents for 5 mins worth of work? Why does the registration have to be sent via snail mail? What happens if USPS loses it? These questions may sound trivial but for someone who may lose their job due to slow bureaucracy, this is a matter of their life. And now, imagine the same bureaucracy with income tax, property tax, drivers license, voter registration, health insurance, property insurance, car insurance, healthcare providers with a zillion portals, loan providers and their bullshit paperwork etc. One mistake with any of them will add even more burden on you to clear your records, pay things on time etc. Life has become too burdensome. And after living 30 years with this, the thought of more paperwork for kids seems awful. This all discounts how unstable jobs and incomes are. Without income stability, all of the above becomes crazier.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
While I won't be around, really curious as to what the world will look like in 100 years time. Fertility rates are below replacement levels in virtually all developed areas (and even some less developed areas as well), except for the giant exception of Africa, to a lesser extent some Middle Eastern countries, and some poorer South/Central American countries. I think vast migration will be inevitable, especially with the added affects of climate change, and I think great strife will be a part of that migration.
majikaja 4y ago
I often hear people saying say they're ok with not getting married and having children because they have their (also not married, childless) friends, pets or other sources of comfort/distraction. Just kick away these other supports to make people feel isolated and fearful and they will act accordingly. Give up on financial perks for people with kids, shift to negative reinforcement. Also, promote generation warfare in the form of painting the current generation of people in their 30s and 40s as feckless hedonists responsible for the economic troubles of the generation below. Probably half of older people would go along with it so this can become a political wedge. Make it clear to young people that their careers will ultimately be crushed by the dying economy unless their generation has children. All that's needed is a Trump-like figure who isn't scared to sow discord
- majikaja 4y ago
  More seriously, just today there has been some suggestion of lowering university debt repayments for people with children. Some Japanese people on twitter are displaying real anger complaining it's discriminatory towards people without children and backward for placing expectations on women to give birth. What else can you do but divide society along political lines like it is in the US and let the side that wants to die out do as they wish. Why should the people who want to have a sustainable society so their kids aren't forced to flee a collapsing nation have to include those who are aggrieved by that? To understand the situation you have to come here and see it for yourselves. Meet guys who never outgrew their high school friendship group and are still spending the same amount of time on video games at 30 as when they were 20, while complaining online that the government is to blame for their wages not going up. Listen to the young women blather on about their career aspirations but point-blank say they don't give a shit about other people and that they just want money for luxuries and status. Work next to the 60-year old guy who coasted along in life, never saw the need for kids and doesn't see any irony in being addicted to 18-year old prostitutes. These people beyond the influence of traditional government levers are not fringe groups! I can only imagine how insane things are in Korea... probably get murdered for suggesting people spend more on family and less on Louis Vuitton.
GoodJokes 4y ago
[dead]
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hulitu 4y ago
> Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens So it is not a good time for Japan to become militaristic again. /s. The solution is simple: do as the (catholic) church does: ban abortion and condoms.
rado 4y ago
Is there any (non) government org there to promote building a family?
minebreaker 4y ago
It is a common misconception that the birthrate is declining because of poor childcare support from the government. It is declining because people aren't getting married. The birthrate among married couples remains unchanged over the years. [0] Personally, I'm quite happy with this trend because the social 空気 that the grown man must get married is getting weaker and weaker. Why would I want to get married when I can't even pay for my own shit? [0]: https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/644174 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/644174 (Japanese)
- lifthrasiir 4y ago
  Well people aren't getting married because of poor childcare support among others. I think otherwise you are spot on though---I recall the same kind of statistics in South Korea. Trying to convince people to get married or have children won't work, in any case it will need an extensive social restructuring.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Yes it's the problem. Everyone confuse about parenting support and improving birthrate. Fist of all, separate surname must be legal to support getting married.
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
Unfortunately, the people here in the comments attributing this phenomenon to feminism tend not to go deep enough. Yes, feminism is cancerous, but most of these teenage-level critiques just play into the hands of enemies by arguing on the same terms of liberals, utilitarians and socialists. I invite you not to dialogue with these people, who are largely unaware of the occult roots of their own belief systems, and instead look to logical conclusions of feminism being an historical error. If you follow the trail long enough I think you will find that the only thing like a "solution" to this "problem" lies in catechizing youth in a consistent doctrine of sex before they grow too old, proud and familiar with justifying their own passions with pre-packaged ideology like many of us have throughout our lives. This doctrine of sex is as an ordering toward procreative ends (impregnation in the case of males, gestation in the case of females), and the conjugal act as having the intrinsic, divinely-ordained primary end of conception, rather than viewing conception as merely a natural consequence relating only to design in the case of humans actively attempted to conceive.

43 points by alexzeitler 4y ago

controversial97 4y ago

Declining human population is a good thing.

themitigating 4y ago
Only if spread out. Less Japanese vs who
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Who is swimming to Japan? Joking of course, but you have to consider that unless there are land adjacencies, it’s unlikely invasion is a concern as population declines. Less Japanese means more open space and less land contention from remaining Japanese. Less people overall means less resource contention overall.
  - nradov 4y ago
    People will be boating to Japan as countries in East Asia plus Russia are destabilized in the next couple decades due to rising energy and food prices.
    - schemester 4y ago
      East Asia is also depopulating.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - riffraff 4y ago
      But countries next to Japan (china, south Korea, Russia) are also depopulating.
  - bloppe 4y ago
    We are talking about Japan here. Clearly having to cross an ocean does not rule out an invasion. Not that I think that's relevant.
  - NalNezumi 4y ago
    Apparently Russian https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14424010#:~:text=SHIBETSU%2C%20Hokkaido%2D%2DA%20Russian,news%20agencies%20and%20other%20sources https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14424010#:~:text=SHIBE....
- js8 4y ago
  They tried to spread out, but Americans put a stop to it in WW2.

creakingstairs 4y ago

1.3 looks pretty good next to 0.78 :p https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/south-korea-lowest-fertility-rate-record-2022-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/south-korea-lowest-f...

PebblesHD 4y ago

I contend that across the developed world, everything just got too expensive. In the two places I ‘live’, Sydney and Tokyo, young people are putting off the usual life events such as getting married, having kids etc. because of unstable housing and insecure employment. 50 years ago, a dwelling was around 3-4x annual salary, now it’s 15-20x salary. You aren’t paying that off early and growing the family, even with both parents working. To even get both parents working, you need child care, which for many people costs more than one parent just staying home. Your family lives in the more established suburbs because they bought when it was affordable, so you’re miles away from them and they can’t just come around and mind the grandkids, so you’re a bit stuck. Some serious consideration needs to be made about the growing trend of wealth percolating towards the older and established parts of society in a way that didn’t used to happen, personally I believe the financialisation of housing (and basically everything else, have you seen the prices of used games lately…) is a major contributor. Nonetheless, this will all slowly grind to a halt as our major cities die out due to lack of young people when they're forced out. Sydney is already becoming a retirement village, give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it.

lethologica 4y ago
> give it a few years to really set in and maybe then there will be the impetus to start fixing it. The problem has already begun. Politicians will only begin to look at the problem in 10 years time. Then the political power will shift from Labor to Liberal, or Liberal to Labor, (and back again), and any plans to fix the issue will be blown out by billions of dollars and another decade. By then, it’s too late.
riffraff 4y ago
I think the "it's too expensive" part is a very minor part of the issue. People had way less opportunities one or two generations ago, and my parents generation in Italy bought their house with a mortgage and payed it in decades just like their kids did. What changed is expectations: you feel like you should travel before getting a kid. You should have plenty of sexual experiences before picking a partner. You should give priority to your career before settling in a given city, etc. Empowerment of women made "get married and out of your parents house" a less interesting option, education and options for people added up, and cultural shifts happened. Having children is just another bucket list item these days.

acd 4y ago

Turn off wifi at nights ;). Increase immigration from highest birth rate countries.

bombolo 4y ago
> Increase immigration from highest birth rate countries. I think they'd consider that as even worse than less natality.

digianarchist 4y ago

Personally I'd move to Japan in a heartbeat if discrimination was illegal and they provided a pathway to (dual) citizenship. From Wikipedia: > Japan lacks any law which prohibits racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. The country also has no national human rights institutions.[3] Non-Japanese individuals in Japan often face human rights violations that Japanese citizens may not.[4] In recent years, non-Japanese media has reported that Japanese firms frequently confiscate the passports of guest workers in Japan, particularly unskilled laborers.[5][6]

peanuty1 4y ago
Can you speak Japanese? Also, I assume you are not African-American or South Asian.
- karaokeyoga 4y ago
  I've lived here (Tokyo and Kyoto) for about ten years and my Japanese is terrible. If you're in a big city here, English-only actually works. There are also some good channels and videos on YouTube talking about the Black experience in Japan (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2eqJ4hZkFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2eqJ4hZkFg).
  - spike021 4y ago
    I've visited for a total of a month across multiple trips. I don't really know any Japanese, maybe the odd words here and there but that's it. Major cities all have fantastic english signage. Just not everyone speaks English "well". But Line or Google Translate work fine enough, especially when making friends. The only place I struggled a little with public transportation was Sapporo on some random bus line that surprisingly had no english signage or announcements, but even then GPS helped well enough.
    - NalNezumi 4y ago
      Living in Japan, even in Tokyo, is a vastly different experience from the tourism bubble one experience in a short visit. My (British) manager living in the international district of Tokyo still struggle with basic paperwork due language barrier. Which affect your work, tax, real estate errands, traveling, visa, daily shopping.

hknmtt 4y ago

give women voting rights and education and see birthrates plummet. if you call them out on it, you're a misogynist but if you phrase it in a positive way, they will cheer for it.

kergonath 4y ago
Well, if the only thing that keeps populations stable is uneducated and subservient women, then we deserve to decline as a species. Besides, there are many other factors involved. First one being the stupidly high cost of housing and childcare.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Give humans the buying power and free time to raise kids and see families raise natality rates to a healthy substitution rate. If you call them out on it, you're a socialist but if you phrase it in a positive way, they will cheer for it.
raspyberr 4y ago
I do think that women's independence is probably a contributing factor to lower birth rates but it's not the only one. More importantly, it's almost pointless to just state that because it seems to suggest that the simple solution is to remove that independence to hopefully increase the birthrate. That obviously won't be done. So what do you propose can be done with the wisdom you've given?

Hermitian909 4y ago

What I find really fascinating about this is that even in the depths of the birth rate crisis Japan cannot find the political will to take any of the "obvious" drastic measures. Begin covering childcare costs, subsidize housing for families, etc.

peanuty1 4y ago
The current PM has said he'd like to double govt spending on child benefits. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-its-now-or-never-stop-shrinking-population-2023-01-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-...
- labster 4y ago
  They need an order of magnitude more spending. Child care is expensive and hard to find, and so is housing.
- grugagag 4y ago
  It’ll take some time for the effects to materialize. Second, many possible future parents realize how burdened their children would be in the population pyramid which is inverted beyond hope at this point.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  If child related policies don't cover a fraction of childcare then doubling that fraction won't move the needle.
- majikaja 4y ago
  Didn't they later say that 'double' was a figure of speech, and that they would increase it /after/ birth rates increase?
deleted 4y ago
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Aerroon 4y ago
But it probably won't work. The highest birthrates are in poor countries. Every country that became rich(er) ended up with a drastic reduction in birth rates. Piling on more money doesn't seem like it would help the issue. It sounds like you would just enter into an ever-increasing spiral of more spending to try to increase birth rates.

mettamage 4y ago

Is it a bad thing for populations to fluctuate? Should populations only grow?

peanuty1 4y ago
Environmentally, it's a fantastic thing considering the frightening rate of deforestation, species going extinct, carbon emissions, and ocean pollution. Economically, it puts pressure on a smaller cohort of working age people to pay more taxes to support a bigger cohort of elderly people.
- deleted 4y ago
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- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Environmentally, it's a fantastic thing considering the frightening rate of deforestation, species going extinct, carbon emissions, and ocean pollution. This assumes that the amount of resources consumed per person is relatively constant. That's not a good assumption. Fewer people can easily hog more resources, especially energy. People spreading out and buying more and bigger cars and living in bigger homes means more energy and pollution, whereas if more people concentrate into a dense metropolis with public transit and tiny apartments, their energy needs are lower per capita.
shagie 4y ago
Wildly varying rates of birth and an irregularly shaped population pyramid can result in economic and political instability as the majority becomes retirees who are not contributing to the economy but retain much of the political power. Silver Democracy: Youth Representation in an Aging Japan - https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54d3f8bz https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54d3f8bz Japan’s Silver Democracy : The Costs of Letting the Elderly Rule Politics - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2013-07-18/japans-silver-democracy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2013-07-18/jap... ( https://archive.is/hlAya https://archive.is/hlAya )

riffraff 4y ago

> It’s a familiar story throughout East Asia The same is happening in Europe. Hungary just published the result of a census ten years after the last one: turns out there's 300k less people than they expected (total population is 9.6M), and the country population is back to the size of ~1950.

sofixa 4y ago
Hungary and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and even Southern Europe for that matter, have the added problem of EU-wide migration - lots of people, especially young people, choose to go live in a more developed country in the Western EU (usually France and Germany).
- midoridensha 4y ago
  "more developed country" = country that isn't run by a sycophant of Putin. Small wonder so many young people are fleeing Hungary.

Gustomaximus 4y ago

Endless variable but I think key 5 things they could do to help; - Reduce house prices, couples often want to get the house while they have 2 incomes and then have kids. Pricing people out is going to add delay here making it harder to start a family and how many kids you can have. - Reduce education debt for the same reason as above, let youth start life without a burden holding them back. - Put tax break on kids. Have something like an extra $5k added to each parents tax free threshold for every child you have. This benefits people having children plus those returning to work which is good for society. - Paid maternity of a significant lenght for both the mum and dad. I was fortunate to have my kids in Norway where (more detail but roughly) you get 12 months paid to split between the mum and the dad. And the dad must take 3 month minimum. This was it normalises all people out of work for having kids and really helps the attitude to exit/entry and all sorts of benefits, its a real game changes to helping support families having a few kids IMO. - Subsided preschool - in Australia it was hardly worth my wife returning to work for the cost of 2 kids in pre-school. She wanted to but its a huge financial burden in many countries. Kids are covered when they get to school age but there is a window here that is financially very tough on families.

freetime2 4y ago
Japan already has many of these things. Preschool is free. And after-school programs are either free or very inexpensive for elementary school students with working parents. And there are tax breaks as well as a monthly stipend that gets deposited into your bank account for people with children (not sure of the exact amount off the top of my head). Housing is also quite affordable compared to many developed countries.
- _nalply 4y ago
  But why do Japanese parents seem to struggle?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Compared to who? Parenting is a struggle for all parents I've seen, but in Japan it's more common I think for grandparents to live close enough to help out sometimes. It's also more common for women to be stay-at-home mothers. When you compare the birthrate of Japanese people (in Japan) to westerners, after subtracting immigration in the western countries, Japan actually looks pretty normal, or even a little better.

frontman1988 4y ago

Perhaps it is not sustainable to have more than 100 million people on a small island with limited resources for the long term. People talking about population collapse forget that the population explosion that has happened in the recent past is quite the exception in human history and such high population growth was never sustainable in the long run. Continuously increasing the population while maintaining a good quality of life is a challenging task. The current population "crisis" may simply be a return to the norm, as nature seeks to establish a stable equilibrium. Japan has prospered as a civilization for thousands of years without being as densely populated as it is now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_before_the_Meiji_Restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Empire_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Empire_of_Ja...

MrVandemar 4y ago
Indeed. It is very telling that the article characterises it as a "crisis". We are facing the twin existential threats climate change and environmental collapse, and population is a staggeringly huge driver of both those problems. Reduction in population is generally a good thing. That's if you care about existential threats. Most people don't. The media doesn't talk about this. It's not a safe topic to discuss and if you dare to you are instantly politisied and become "the scary bad person". People care about the economy, they care about jobs, they care about growth, they care about having kids, they care about petrol prices, they care about a bigger TV and having a lithium battery drone they play with for a couple of weeks and then put it in the cupboard, they care about driving a 4WD in a city because the advertising made it look rugged and outdoorsy and anyway, Fred has one so you need one too, they care about having an electric car because it's painted "green" (it's not; the environmental costs are abstracted away to a place where you don't have to think about it). "Crisis"? Yes, but not in population.
- NalNezumi 4y ago
  I think almost everyone is actually talking about the aging population problem rather than the declining population problem. We simply haven't seen a situation yet where such a massive proportion of the population is old and economically not contributing, while being supported by a welfare state (and pension) and having disproportionate political power (and incentives) to not correct the course

tanh 4y ago

It's no wonder it's in decline. We are considering having our second (we live in Japan) but the lack of daycare places is really hurting us. Even private daycares are fully subscribed. Moreover, if my wife gives birth, our child will have to come out of any public daycare she gets into. Here we are, in our mid 30s, with a good household income and have ruled out a third already. We are not far from ruling out a second as well.

shrubble 4y ago

Japan 1950: ~84 million people Japan 2023: ~123 million data from: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population-g... How is this a crisis?

refurb 4y ago
You making jam with those cherries you picked?

nine_zeros 4y ago

The common narrative always appears to be money. I would contend that the modern life is too fragile. Day to day life is so filled with stress and anxiety that young people don't mate until it's too late. Life has become too complicated. There is far too much paperwork, government bureaucracy and things to keep on top of. If you don't keep up on the bureaucracy, you will get penalized harshly. E.g. why the fuck does a car need to be registered every year? If I need to register a car, why can't I do it online? If I can do it online, why can't I do it if I change my address? Why do I need to present a thousand documents for 5 mins worth of work? Why does the registration have to be sent via snail mail? What happens if USPS loses it? These questions may sound trivial but for someone who may lose their job due to slow bureaucracy, this is a matter of their life. And now, imagine the same bureaucracy with income tax, property tax, drivers license, voter registration, health insurance, property insurance, car insurance, healthcare providers with a zillion portals, loan providers and their bullshit paperwork etc. One mistake with any of them will add even more burden on you to clear your records, pay things on time etc. Life has become too burdensome. And after living 30 years with this, the thought of more paperwork for kids seems awful. This all discounts how unstable jobs and incomes are. Without income stability, all of the above becomes crazier.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

While I won't be around, really curious as to what the world will look like in 100 years time. Fertility rates are below replacement levels in virtually all developed areas (and even some less developed areas as well), except for the giant exception of Africa, to a lesser extent some Middle Eastern countries, and some poorer South/Central American countries. I think vast migration will be inevitable, especially with the added affects of climate change, and I think great strife will be a part of that migration.

majikaja 4y ago

I often hear people saying say they're ok with not getting married and having children because they have their (also not married, childless) friends, pets or other sources of comfort/distraction. Just kick away these other supports to make people feel isolated and fearful and they will act accordingly. Give up on financial perks for people with kids, shift to negative reinforcement. Also, promote generation warfare in the form of painting the current generation of people in their 30s and 40s as feckless hedonists responsible for the economic troubles of the generation below. Probably half of older people would go along with it so this can become a political wedge. Make it clear to young people that their careers will ultimately be crushed by the dying economy unless their generation has children. All that's needed is a Trump-like figure who isn't scared to sow discord

majikaja 4y ago
More seriously, just today there has been some suggestion of lowering university debt repayments for people with children. Some Japanese people on twitter are displaying real anger complaining it's discriminatory towards people without children and backward for placing expectations on women to give birth. What else can you do but divide society along political lines like it is in the US and let the side that wants to die out do as they wish. Why should the people who want to have a sustainable society so their kids aren't forced to flee a collapsing nation have to include those who are aggrieved by that? To understand the situation you have to come here and see it for yourselves. Meet guys who never outgrew their high school friendship group and are still spending the same amount of time on video games at 30 as when they were 20, while complaining online that the government is to blame for their wages not going up. Listen to the young women blather on about their career aspirations but point-blank say they don't give a shit about other people and that they just want money for luxuries and status. Work next to the 60-year old guy who coasted along in life, never saw the need for kids and doesn't see any irony in being addicted to 18-year old prostitutes. These people beyond the influence of traditional government levers are not fringe groups! I can only imagine how insane things are in Korea... probably get murdered for suggesting people spend more on family and less on Louis Vuitton.

GoodJokes 4y ago

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hulitu 4y ago

> Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens So it is not a good time for Japan to become militaristic again. /s. The solution is simple: do as the (catholic) church does: ban abortion and condoms.

rado 4y ago

Is there any (non) government org there to promote building a family?

minebreaker 4y ago

It is a common misconception that the birthrate is declining because of poor childcare support from the government. It is declining because people aren't getting married. The birthrate among married couples remains unchanged over the years. [0] Personally, I'm quite happy with this trend because the social 空気 that the grown man must get married is getting weaker and weaker. Why would I want to get married when I can't even pay for my own shit? [0]: https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/644174 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/644174 (Japanese)

lifthrasiir 4y ago
Well people aren't getting married because of poor childcare support among others. I think otherwise you are spot on though---I recall the same kind of statistics in South Korea. Trying to convince people to get married or have children won't work, in any case it will need an extensive social restructuring.
fomine3 4y ago
Yes it's the problem. Everyone confuse about parenting support and improving birthrate. Fist of all, separate surname must be legal to support getting married.

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

Unfortunately, the people here in the comments attributing this phenomenon to feminism tend not to go deep enough. Yes, feminism is cancerous, but most of these teenage-level critiques just play into the hands of enemies by arguing on the same terms of liberals, utilitarians and socialists. I invite you not to dialogue with these people, who are largely unaware of the occult roots of their own belief systems, and instead look to logical conclusions of feminism being an historical error. If you follow the trail long enough I think you will find that the only thing like a "solution" to this "problem" lies in catechizing youth in a consistent doctrine of sex before they grow too old, proud and familiar with justifying their own passions with pre-packaged ideology like many of us have throughout our lives. This doctrine of sex is as an ordering toward procreative ends (impregnation in the case of males, gestation in the case of females), and the conjugal act as having the intrinsic, divinely-ordained primary end of conception, rather than viewing conception as merely a natural consequence relating only to design in the case of humans actively attempted to conceive.