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More Than 40% of Japanese Women May Never Have Children

45 points by vwoolf 3y ago

jitl 3y ago
Why post fertility clickbait on Hacker News? I swear there’s a link every day on this topic does not change quickly!
rawland 3y ago
https://archive.is/3ePnP https://archive.is/3ePnP
calpaterson 3y ago
Why though? I've never been able to understand what it is that makes Japanese people so reluctant to form families and have children EDIT: you can read the full article here: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/more-than-40-of-japanese-women-may-never-have-children-1.1956657 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/more-than-40-of-japanese-women-m... but it does not explain further.
- MrVitaliy 3y ago
  What's interesting to me is how Japan still has higher birthrate than Taiwan and Korea, and some say than China.
  - JimtheCoder 3y ago
    "...and some say than China." Well, that old one child policy from back in the day may have had lasting consequences?
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      the problem isn't the policy, it's that when they repealed it China was facing the same issues as Japan, Taiwan, the US, Europe, etc. which is that no one is having kids. Like Japan never had that law and is still having serious consequences
  - raincole 3y ago
    Taiwan has all the Japan's problems plus higher house price to salary ratio. I suppose Korea is like that too.
- echelon 3y ago
  People want to focus on themselves. Career goals. Trips. Wealth. Fun. There are so many more outlets for dopamine in the modern world, and with the internet we can post about it and share it with our peers instantly. Children lock you into a life of servitude. They're "expensive furniture for tiny apartments" as Peter Zeihan says, no longer "free labor for the farm". Unlike dogs, you can't leave them at home unattended. This isn't just Japan. This is everywhere.
  - fartsucker69 3y ago
    iq 30 post nobody asked. people asked about why specifically japan stands out here, it is a big statistical outlier.
    - echelon 3y ago
      It's the start of a trend that will touch every nation, because the underlying cause is the same.
  - highwaylights 3y ago
    This seems like a very narrow take and doesn't match up to my experience at all. It also doesn't speak to the specific circumstances in Japan either. I'm sure "herbivore men" exist in the West, but they're not common enough that we have a term for it that I know of. (Sure there are incels, but that's something different).
  - deanmoriarty 3y ago
    > People want to focus on themselves. Career goals. Trips. Wealth. Fun. As a non-Japanese couple in our late 30s who decided not to have kids, I confirm those are exactly our reasons. While I generally love kids and will be a good uncle, I just can't fathom the financial/emotional/time burden required to raise a couple of them for 18 years. I have just one life and this is my ride. If regret will eventually show up, I'll deal with it.
    - barbacoa 3y ago
- brianwawok 3y ago
  As someone who has no ties to Japan but reads way too much news articles… it really seems like a lot of cons for women in Japan compared to women in the US? Having a kid and then sending them to daycare while you maintain a career seems way less common / harder. So it’s either have an actual career and money or be a stay at home mom.
  - sct202 3y ago
    America isn't doing so hot on the fertility front either. The US is at 1.64 and Japan 1.34.
    - igetspam 3y ago
      We're not doing so hot on the expectations for women either. People still assume Mom is going to quit and stay home more often than dad and her level of care is expected to be significantly higher. I'm a great dad when I go to a birthday party for one of the school friends. My wife is just mom, despite debilitating pain and chronic illnesses that people are aware of. She also plans all of the logistics and the gifts and everything else. I'm really good at showing up and playing though. Score! I wouldn't choose to be a mom in this world. They're far too underappreciated.
    - marcell 3y ago
      And if you filter by Asians in America, you get similar numbers to Japan: https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/226292/us-fertility-rates-by-race-and-ethnicity.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/226292/us-fertility-rates...
- pythonguython 3y ago
  Workplace standards. Men work too much and earn too little to support a family and be a present father. Having a child destroys women’s careers and they are stuck at home with a child and an absent husband. These are issues in many countries, but in Japan in particular, employees work much longer hours, and company loyalty is culturally enforced making it hard to find a new/better job.
  - pier25 3y ago
    According to the OECD, people in Japan don't work more than people in many European countries. https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      Different countries use different methods so you can’t use this as a comparison. “ The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources and method of calculation.”
      - pier25 3y ago
        Nevertheless according to that same data the avg has been decreasing. In the 70s the Japanese worked 2200 hours per year and now it's closer to 1600 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment#/media/File:Annual_working_time_in_OECD.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment#/med... Since the 80s, labor unions in Japan have been pushing for less hours worked and more holiday days. Currently the Japanese have between 10-20 PTO days per year. My point is that this idea the Japanese are overworking themselves to death is mostly a myth from previous decades.
        xboxnolifes 3y ago
        The data from the previous link shows that Japan has increased from 11% part time workers in 1970 to 25% part time workers in 2022. It's entirely possible that full-time workers are overworked while part-time workers are under-employed, leading to a decrease in average hours worked. Full-time workers can be time poor, while part-time workers may be money poor.
- tuyiown 3y ago
  (foreword, I'm far from well versed in Japanese society) From what I understand, traditional Japanese family model is a stay at home mother with an almost stay at work father. Society is organised around this model, e.g. no day care, mothers not expected to build a career, and probably being a father comes with pressure about being a reliable provider (getting overworked). I remember that a lot of father losing their work preferred abandoning their family than enduring the shame of losing their job during the late nineties asian crisis. Regardless of immediate material complications of begin parent, the additional social burden certainly not help.
  - jnwatson 3y ago
    The US culture was very much oriented around this model just a generation ago. What makes US culture change faster?
    - igetspam 3y ago
      Lies and misdirection? To think we've evolved past that is a mistake. We pay lip service to it but we haven't moved on. We still shame working women because they don't have or don't spend enough time with their kid(s). Then we shame stay-at-home mom's for being lazy. We're fun!
      - xboxnolifes 3y ago
        While I definitely see shame toward working women with children, I don't think I've ever seen anyone shame a stay at home mom for being a stay at home mom.
- toss1 3y ago
  It is a consistent trend that increasing levels of education and equality naturally (i.e., without external pressures such as a One Child Policy, extra taxation, etc.) reduce childbearing rates. On top of that, Japan's work culture of being more wedded & committed to work than to family strongly discourages it. When you are expected to work 12x6, then go out drinking with the boss, and still are living paycheck-to-paycheck it becomes very hard to see how you would have time to raise children. I've heard (PBS, no link now) abt studies where they reduced work hours in a town and fertility rapidly and significantly increased. Give people a little breathing room and you'll get kids.
- novia 3y ago
  Japanese women in particular can be locked out of career growth once they are married. The expectation is that after they get married they will quit their job and become a housewife. Add that to the issue that having children out of wedlock is frowned upon, and you get less people having children. Make it so women can have both children and a prosperous career and you'll fix the fertility issue.
- rjh29 3y ago
  70% of Japanese answered "it's hard to find a job which supports raising children". Japanese society is still rooted in women quitting when they have kids and being stay at home moms. Even though now 60% of couples have two earners, this hasn't changed fast enough. The economy is doing badly too, and people have less money than before. In Japan, marriage = kids, there are few children born outside of marriage. Increasingly people are marrying later or not marrying at all, which has a direct effect on that. There are other reasons: women still end up doing way more of the housework and childrearing than men (on average) in Japan; men work longer hours and don't get to spend time with the kids they're raising; in a divorce women almost always get full custody. Mother in laws used to live with the family and help, but that is less common now. Two earner households are more common. Women are focusing on careers more. The overall picture is similar to other countries - a rejection of the traditional marriage and kids plan in favour of spending time on other activities in ones 20s and 30s - but unique societal factors make it more prominent here.
  - jnwatson 3y ago
    It seems these are all structural problems that Japan can address directly. Universal child care, family leave might help. Still, I look at the generation younger than me in the US and see them in the same spot. We’d already be in their situation if it weren’t for immigration.
  - houseatrielah 3y ago
    Japan seems like a cheap place to raise a family. Housing is cheap and so is medical care. I assume public school is free. Why the average family in Tokyo can own a new house for $850/month https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-affordable-homes https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-esta...
    - iteria 3y ago
      I will tell anyone that there are two truths about children 1) they cost exactly as much money as you have and 2) the heaviest cost is time. I'm a high earner. I have no money issues, what I have are time issues. I'm a single parent with high flexibility and every single struggle I have with my child could be relieved by having a homemaker to distract my kid and take care of the impacts of my kid. I do more than double laundry and clean more often and burn hours at places I don't necessarily want to be but the kid does. My career has stalled out because I don't have the extra hours it takes to get promoted. Now imagine this in Japan where they're not just working 40 hours a week, looking at add 5-10 more for advancement. That's the issue of children in my opinion. It's why very wealthy people hire nannies. It's the only way to free the most value resource you spend on children: time.
- wilde 3y ago
  Income has fallen below costs. Costs: $40k equivalent [1] Income: $37k equivalent [2] Combine that with an expectation for women to stop working once they marry and surprise, people rationally find that it doesn’t make sense. [1] https://www.candyjapan.com/life-in-japan/what-it-costs-to-live-in-japan https://www.candyjapan.com/life-in-japan/what-it-costs-to-li... [2] https://kimi.wiki/work/income https://kimi.wiki/work/income
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Why do you think it exclusively a Japanese problem? Nearly every western nation is experiencing the same set of trends, Japan just happened to get their first. One part of the problem is that this is so compartmentalized. If you work at a place where people have children... they all have children for the most part. If you work at a place where they don't have children, then nearly all of them are childless (or have just the one). Same for non-work social lives. This means there's some significant fraction of people who look around them and can't notice that it's happening here in the US too, their own personal experience contradicts the trend too thoroughly for them to believe it to be some sort of fluke. In Japan, at a guess, I'd say that exact nature of the discouragement, they just keep putting the pressure on that "here are the 10,000 things you must do first" until children become an impossible achievement.
- abhiyerra 3y ago
  It is actually a problem everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, China are going through a massive demographic decline. India will likely be there in 15 years. The documentary Birthgap tries to seek a cause.
- mmh0000 3y ago
  Hard to date and fuck when you live in a shared 500sqft apartment with your mom, dad, grandma and sibling.
low_common 3y ago
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- oatmeal1 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
The first question, I think, would be: if 40% will never have children, and if that remains true into the far future, how long before there are no Japanese left? But the immediate followup question should definitely be, why would it stay at 40%, when it can go higher? Every woman who (for whatever reason) does not have children exerts a cultural influence on those around her, normalizing the behavior. Making it seem less out of place. Inadvertently teaching young girls within their social sphere that this is option, an acceptable one. If this number does go higher, the problem accelerates... it's not necessarily some theoretical demise of their nation centuries from now.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  That probably won't happen. The families that have children will die out, and the next generation will be almost exclusively have parents that chose to have children even when cultural norms were turning against it. That'll probably lead to a rebound in fertility, which funnily enough we're already seeing - the lowest it's been was 1.26 in 2005 and since then it's gone up a bit. But we'll need to give it another few decades first.
- swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
  I predict that fertility will remain below sustainable levels due to housing market being concentrated in fewer hands
JimtheCoder 3y ago
The fact that Japan has not always been seen as the most immigration friendly/multicultural country greatly exacerbates their demographic issues. Somehow, I don't see how this can be turned around...
- timtom39 3y ago
  To back this up because I was curious, 2.29% of Japan's population is immigrants vs 13.6% of US's population.
LUmBULtERA 3y ago
My hot take, as we approach the equilibrium population in the world (perhaps the sustainable carrying capacity), fertility rates will naturally decrease. Some countries have already exceeded their equilibrium populations; therefore, their fertility rates will decrease below replacement rates for some time until they reach equilibrium (which is not 0, which fearmongers may promote). As climate change progresses, it may be the equilibrium population is even lower than we expect right now.
- pier25 3y ago
  > My hot take, as we approach the equilibrium population in the world (perhaps the sustainable carrying capacity), fertility rates will naturally decrease. We already surpassed that point of equilibrium long ago. Humanity is now consuming 1.7 Earths of resources every year. Some countries like the US consume a lot more than that. https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/ https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do...
  - LUmBULtERA 3y ago
    Oh, I agree. It's just strange to me that there seem to be more and more alarmists that speculate that populations will go to 0 or something. With greater and greater amounts of automation available to us, I personally don't see a falling population to be a huge problem.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I dont think that is a particularly helpful metric. If you are spending 1.7x your income, how much money you have in the bank becomes extremely relevant. Are you broke tomorrow, or do you have enough savings for 1,000 years
    - pier25 3y ago
      The important part is that you can't just make more natural resources, unlike money. In some cases we've already passed the peak of certain resources. See this paper about peak minerals from 2012. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378011001361 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593...
fidotron 3y ago
It is amazing/scary how wide the gulf in comprehension between the parents and non-parents of the world is becoming. Both groups can reasonably argue the other is being selfish as part of some core moral failing, and both seem to consider their choice of group membership to be the universal cure to the woes afflicting the other. Then you have those who genuinely have no choice stuck in the middle of this nonsense. Ultimately society is going to have to accept some higher proportion of people being childless than in the 19th century, and work out how to maintain an appropriate balance that enables everyone to have a shot at actually leading a fulfilling life without the moralising in either direction getting to critical mass.
- bitshiftfaced 3y ago
  I wonder if it would really play out that way. I was surprised just how many personality traits were apparently genetic when I learned about the "lost identical twin" cases. Only the children who received their genes from their "selfish" parents will make it to the next generation, so I wonder how sustainable a down-trending population will be in the long run.
prismatix 3y ago
We took our 3 year old to Japan and had a difficult time entertaining them with our usual cop-out: playgrounds. Japanese public playgrounds are few and far between, and when we did find them they were typically old and sad (a swing or monkey bars and a metal slide). The swings we found were abnormally low to the ground, making it difficult for kids to actually pump their legs and most end up standing on them instead. We did some research into it, wondering if Japanese people felt as frustrated as we were trying to physicslly entertain a kid. We came across this interesting piece about physical differences between kids in 2007 and kids in 1985. In short, the average 5 year old in 2007 had the athletic abilities of a 3 year old in 1985. Granted this data is rather old, but anecdotally we did notice our 3 year old playing on equipment specified for (and mostly being used by) the much older children. https://poh.ngo/en/the-state-of-play-in-japan/ https://poh.ngo/en/the-state-of-play-in-japan/ The best public and highly used playgrounds we found were in Kyoto (near the train museum), in Osaka called the mountain slides (near the Children's Plaza), and in Arashiyama at the top of the Monkey Park hill. Aside from that, paid entertainment was the way to go. Happy to share more if anyone is interested in the experience, but I'd rather stop there for now.
- m463 3y ago
  There is a Kurosawa movie showing how hard this could be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru (wikipedia is always a spoiler if you read the Plot section)

45 points by vwoolf 3y ago

jitl 3y ago

Why post fertility clickbait on Hacker News? I swear there’s a link every day on this topic does not change quickly!

rawland 3y ago

https://archive.is/3ePnP https://archive.is/3ePnP

calpaterson 3y ago

Why though? I've never been able to understand what it is that makes Japanese people so reluctant to form families and have children EDIT: you can read the full article here: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/more-than-40-of-japanese-women-may-never-have-children-1.1956657 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/more-than-40-of-japanese-women-m... but it does not explain further.

MrVitaliy 3y ago
What's interesting to me is how Japan still has higher birthrate than Taiwan and Korea, and some say than China.
- JimtheCoder 3y ago
  "...and some say than China." Well, that old one child policy from back in the day may have had lasting consequences?
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    the problem isn't the policy, it's that when they repealed it China was facing the same issues as Japan, Taiwan, the US, Europe, etc. which is that no one is having kids. Like Japan never had that law and is still having serious consequences
- raincole 3y ago
  Taiwan has all the Japan's problems plus higher house price to salary ratio. I suppose Korea is like that too.
echelon 3y ago
People want to focus on themselves. Career goals. Trips. Wealth. Fun. There are so many more outlets for dopamine in the modern world, and with the internet we can post about it and share it with our peers instantly. Children lock you into a life of servitude. They're "expensive furniture for tiny apartments" as Peter Zeihan says, no longer "free labor for the farm". Unlike dogs, you can't leave them at home unattended. This isn't just Japan. This is everywhere.
- fartsucker69 3y ago
  iq 30 post nobody asked. people asked about why specifically japan stands out here, it is a big statistical outlier.
  - echelon 3y ago
    It's the start of a trend that will touch every nation, because the underlying cause is the same.
- highwaylights 3y ago
  This seems like a very narrow take and doesn't match up to my experience at all. It also doesn't speak to the specific circumstances in Japan either. I'm sure "herbivore men" exist in the West, but they're not common enough that we have a term for it that I know of. (Sure there are incels, but that's something different).
- deanmoriarty 3y ago
  > People want to focus on themselves. Career goals. Trips. Wealth. Fun. As a non-Japanese couple in our late 30s who decided not to have kids, I confirm those are exactly our reasons. While I generally love kids and will be a good uncle, I just can't fathom the financial/emotional/time burden required to raise a couple of them for 18 years. I have just one life and this is my ride. If regret will eventually show up, I'll deal with it.
  - barbacoa 3y ago
brianwawok 3y ago
As someone who has no ties to Japan but reads way too much news articles… it really seems like a lot of cons for women in Japan compared to women in the US? Having a kid and then sending them to daycare while you maintain a career seems way less common / harder. So it’s either have an actual career and money or be a stay at home mom.
- sct202 3y ago
  America isn't doing so hot on the fertility front either. The US is at 1.64 and Japan 1.34.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    We're not doing so hot on the expectations for women either. People still assume Mom is going to quit and stay home more often than dad and her level of care is expected to be significantly higher. I'm a great dad when I go to a birthday party for one of the school friends. My wife is just mom, despite debilitating pain and chronic illnesses that people are aware of. She also plans all of the logistics and the gifts and everything else. I'm really good at showing up and playing though. Score! I wouldn't choose to be a mom in this world. They're far too underappreciated.
  - marcell 3y ago
    And if you filter by Asians in America, you get similar numbers to Japan: https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/226292/us-fertility-rates-by-race-and-ethnicity.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/226292/us-fertility-rates...
pythonguython 3y ago
Workplace standards. Men work too much and earn too little to support a family and be a present father. Having a child destroys women’s careers and they are stuck at home with a child and an absent husband. These are issues in many countries, but in Japan in particular, employees work much longer hours, and company loyalty is culturally enforced making it hard to find a new/better job.
- pier25 3y ago
  According to the OECD, people in Japan don't work more than people in many European countries. https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    Different countries use different methods so you can’t use this as a comparison. “ The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources and method of calculation.”
    - pier25 3y ago
      Nevertheless according to that same data the avg has been decreasing. In the 70s the Japanese worked 2200 hours per year and now it's closer to 1600 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment#/media/File:Annual_working_time_in_OECD.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment#/med... Since the 80s, labor unions in Japan have been pushing for less hours worked and more holiday days. Currently the Japanese have between 10-20 PTO days per year. My point is that this idea the Japanese are overworking themselves to death is mostly a myth from previous decades.
      - xboxnolifes 3y ago
        The data from the previous link shows that Japan has increased from 11% part time workers in 1970 to 25% part time workers in 2022. It's entirely possible that full-time workers are overworked while part-time workers are under-employed, leading to a decrease in average hours worked. Full-time workers can be time poor, while part-time workers may be money poor.
tuyiown 3y ago
(foreword, I'm far from well versed in Japanese society) From what I understand, traditional Japanese family model is a stay at home mother with an almost stay at work father. Society is organised around this model, e.g. no day care, mothers not expected to build a career, and probably being a father comes with pressure about being a reliable provider (getting overworked). I remember that a lot of father losing their work preferred abandoning their family than enduring the shame of losing their job during the late nineties asian crisis. Regardless of immediate material complications of begin parent, the additional social burden certainly not help.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  The US culture was very much oriented around this model just a generation ago. What makes US culture change faster?
  - igetspam 3y ago
    Lies and misdirection? To think we've evolved past that is a mistake. We pay lip service to it but we haven't moved on. We still shame working women because they don't have or don't spend enough time with their kid(s). Then we shame stay-at-home mom's for being lazy. We're fun!
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      While I definitely see shame toward working women with children, I don't think I've ever seen anyone shame a stay at home mom for being a stay at home mom.
toss1 3y ago
It is a consistent trend that increasing levels of education and equality naturally (i.e., without external pressures such as a One Child Policy, extra taxation, etc.) reduce childbearing rates. On top of that, Japan's work culture of being more wedded & committed to work than to family strongly discourages it. When you are expected to work 12x6, then go out drinking with the boss, and still are living paycheck-to-paycheck it becomes very hard to see how you would have time to raise children. I've heard (PBS, no link now) abt studies where they reduced work hours in a town and fertility rapidly and significantly increased. Give people a little breathing room and you'll get kids.
novia 3y ago
Japanese women in particular can be locked out of career growth once they are married. The expectation is that after they get married they will quit their job and become a housewife. Add that to the issue that having children out of wedlock is frowned upon, and you get less people having children. Make it so women can have both children and a prosperous career and you'll fix the fertility issue.
rjh29 3y ago
70% of Japanese answered "it's hard to find a job which supports raising children". Japanese society is still rooted in women quitting when they have kids and being stay at home moms. Even though now 60% of couples have two earners, this hasn't changed fast enough. The economy is doing badly too, and people have less money than before. In Japan, marriage = kids, there are few children born outside of marriage. Increasingly people are marrying later or not marrying at all, which has a direct effect on that. There are other reasons: women still end up doing way more of the housework and childrearing than men (on average) in Japan; men work longer hours and don't get to spend time with the kids they're raising; in a divorce women almost always get full custody. Mother in laws used to live with the family and help, but that is less common now. Two earner households are more common. Women are focusing on careers more. The overall picture is similar to other countries - a rejection of the traditional marriage and kids plan in favour of spending time on other activities in ones 20s and 30s - but unique societal factors make it more prominent here.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  It seems these are all structural problems that Japan can address directly. Universal child care, family leave might help. Still, I look at the generation younger than me in the US and see them in the same spot. We’d already be in their situation if it weren’t for immigration.
- houseatrielah 3y ago
  Japan seems like a cheap place to raise a family. Housing is cheap and so is medical care. I assume public school is free. Why the average family in Tokyo can own a new house for $850/month https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-affordable-homes https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-esta...
  - iteria 3y ago
    I will tell anyone that there are two truths about children 1) they cost exactly as much money as you have and 2) the heaviest cost is time. I'm a high earner. I have no money issues, what I have are time issues. I'm a single parent with high flexibility and every single struggle I have with my child could be relieved by having a homemaker to distract my kid and take care of the impacts of my kid. I do more than double laundry and clean more often and burn hours at places I don't necessarily want to be but the kid does. My career has stalled out because I don't have the extra hours it takes to get promoted. Now imagine this in Japan where they're not just working 40 hours a week, looking at add 5-10 more for advancement. That's the issue of children in my opinion. It's why very wealthy people hire nannies. It's the only way to free the most value resource you spend on children: time.
wilde 3y ago
Income has fallen below costs. Costs: $40k equivalent [1] Income: $37k equivalent [2] Combine that with an expectation for women to stop working once they marry and surprise, people rationally find that it doesn’t make sense. [1] https://www.candyjapan.com/life-in-japan/what-it-costs-to-live-in-japan https://www.candyjapan.com/life-in-japan/what-it-costs-to-li... [2] https://kimi.wiki/work/income https://kimi.wiki/work/income
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Why do you think it exclusively a Japanese problem? Nearly every western nation is experiencing the same set of trends, Japan just happened to get their first. One part of the problem is that this is so compartmentalized. If you work at a place where people have children... they all have children for the most part. If you work at a place where they don't have children, then nearly all of them are childless (or have just the one). Same for non-work social lives. This means there's some significant fraction of people who look around them and can't notice that it's happening here in the US too, their own personal experience contradicts the trend too thoroughly for them to believe it to be some sort of fluke. In Japan, at a guess, I'd say that exact nature of the discouragement, they just keep putting the pressure on that "here are the 10,000 things you must do first" until children become an impossible achievement.
abhiyerra 3y ago
It is actually a problem everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, China are going through a massive demographic decline. India will likely be there in 15 years. The documentary Birthgap tries to seek a cause.
mmh0000 3y ago
Hard to date and fuck when you live in a shared 500sqft apartment with your mom, dad, grandma and sibling.

low_common 3y ago

[flagged]

oatmeal1 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago

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NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

The first question, I think, would be: if 40% will never have children, and if that remains true into the far future, how long before there are no Japanese left? But the immediate followup question should definitely be, why would it stay at 40%, when it can go higher? Every woman who (for whatever reason) does not have children exerts a cultural influence on those around her, normalizing the behavior. Making it seem less out of place. Inadvertently teaching young girls within their social sphere that this is option, an acceptable one. If this number does go higher, the problem accelerates... it's not necessarily some theoretical demise of their nation centuries from now.

dukeyukey 3y ago
That probably won't happen. The families that have children will die out, and the next generation will be almost exclusively have parents that chose to have children even when cultural norms were turning against it. That'll probably lead to a rebound in fertility, which funnily enough we're already seeing - the lowest it's been was 1.26 in 2005 and since then it's gone up a bit. But we'll need to give it another few decades first.
swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
I predict that fertility will remain below sustainable levels due to housing market being concentrated in fewer hands

JimtheCoder 3y ago

The fact that Japan has not always been seen as the most immigration friendly/multicultural country greatly exacerbates their demographic issues. Somehow, I don't see how this can be turned around...

timtom39 3y ago
To back this up because I was curious, 2.29% of Japan's population is immigrants vs 13.6% of US's population.

LUmBULtERA 3y ago

My hot take, as we approach the equilibrium population in the world (perhaps the sustainable carrying capacity), fertility rates will naturally decrease. Some countries have already exceeded their equilibrium populations; therefore, their fertility rates will decrease below replacement rates for some time until they reach equilibrium (which is not 0, which fearmongers may promote). As climate change progresses, it may be the equilibrium population is even lower than we expect right now.

pier25 3y ago
> My hot take, as we approach the equilibrium population in the world (perhaps the sustainable carrying capacity), fertility rates will naturally decrease. We already surpassed that point of equilibrium long ago. Humanity is now consuming 1.7 Earths of resources every year. Some countries like the US consume a lot more than that. https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/ https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do...
- LUmBULtERA 3y ago
  Oh, I agree. It's just strange to me that there seem to be more and more alarmists that speculate that populations will go to 0 or something. With greater and greater amounts of automation available to us, I personally don't see a falling population to be a huge problem.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I dont think that is a particularly helpful metric. If you are spending 1.7x your income, how much money you have in the bank becomes extremely relevant. Are you broke tomorrow, or do you have enough savings for 1,000 years
  - pier25 3y ago
    The important part is that you can't just make more natural resources, unlike money. In some cases we've already passed the peak of certain resources. See this paper about peak minerals from 2012. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378011001361 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593...

fidotron 3y ago

It is amazing/scary how wide the gulf in comprehension between the parents and non-parents of the world is becoming. Both groups can reasonably argue the other is being selfish as part of some core moral failing, and both seem to consider their choice of group membership to be the universal cure to the woes afflicting the other. Then you have those who genuinely have no choice stuck in the middle of this nonsense. Ultimately society is going to have to accept some higher proportion of people being childless than in the 19th century, and work out how to maintain an appropriate balance that enables everyone to have a shot at actually leading a fulfilling life without the moralising in either direction getting to critical mass.

bitshiftfaced 3y ago
I wonder if it would really play out that way. I was surprised just how many personality traits were apparently genetic when I learned about the "lost identical twin" cases. Only the children who received their genes from their "selfish" parents will make it to the next generation, so I wonder how sustainable a down-trending population will be in the long run.

prismatix 3y ago

We took our 3 year old to Japan and had a difficult time entertaining them with our usual cop-out: playgrounds. Japanese public playgrounds are few and far between, and when we did find them they were typically old and sad (a swing or monkey bars and a metal slide). The swings we found were abnormally low to the ground, making it difficult for kids to actually pump their legs and most end up standing on them instead. We did some research into it, wondering if Japanese people felt as frustrated as we were trying to physicslly entertain a kid. We came across this interesting piece about physical differences between kids in 2007 and kids in 1985. In short, the average 5 year old in 2007 had the athletic abilities of a 3 year old in 1985. Granted this data is rather old, but anecdotally we did notice our 3 year old playing on equipment specified for (and mostly being used by) the much older children. https://poh.ngo/en/the-state-of-play-in-japan/ https://poh.ngo/en/the-state-of-play-in-japan/ The best public and highly used playgrounds we found were in Kyoto (near the train museum), in Osaka called the mountain slides (near the Children's Plaza), and in Arashiyama at the top of the Monkey Park hill. Aside from that, paid entertainment was the way to go. Happy to share more if anyone is interested in the experience, but I'd rather stop there for now.

m463 3y ago
There is a Kurosawa movie showing how hard this could be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru (wikipedia is always a spoiler if you read the Plot section)