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One in 10 Japanese Now Aged over 80, Population Report Shows
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- famouswaffles 3y agoWeird population demographics are a problem. Here's why. When people stop working, they stop contributing to society but they don't stop taking from it. For as long as human society has formed, the solution was either the working population being productive enough for everyone else or the non working dying off soon after the fact. When fertility rates are in the shitter for a long time, you guarantee that at some point, the working population will be far far lower than what is necessary to support the rest. A demographic and societal collapse will ensue. Many benefits and safety nets for many people including the working will cease to exist simply because it can no longer be sustained. Japan's national pension scheme is "pay as you go", meaning that benefits for retirees today are paid out of the contributions going into the scheme today. Japan has already reached the point of having less than two workers per retiree. By 2050, that number is projected to be more like 1.5. Paying some taxes to social security / medicare / etc works out OK when those go to cover 0.5 to 1 dependent per worker. When that 1 workers income needs to support 1.5 .. 2+ things will get ugly fast. Once this hits in full force, it will last decades. It's that simple. And it has nothing absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or communism or whatever -ism you might want to scapegoat. For as long as humans need to work to survive this will be a problem. The problems Japan is having, South Korea is looking to speedrun. It's so bad that it's too late to forestall a collapse. Even if the country magically started having replenishing birth rates immediately, in at most a few decades, we'll be seeing a collapse that would last at least 20 years. This is the best case scenario. It's straight up apocalyptic. This is what a population table looks like for a country that had a fertility rate of 6 at year 0 and then an extinction level rate of 1 for decades (SK is actually decidedly worse at 0.78 now). (148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns, (194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns (208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns (187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns (93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns (46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns (23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn It's like climate change. You go decades with everything looking normal at first glance. By the time, everything doesn't look so normal it's to late to do anything other than save your population from extinction. (Assuming you can even do that. A lot of people seem to miss the fact that not one country that has suffered declining fertility rates has managed to reverse the trend despite trying for decades. Not one)
- failuser 3y agoMaybe you can run out of other people labor after all.
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- jiofj 3y ago[flagged]
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoSo in 20 years a tenth of the population will disappear?
- hotnfresh 3y ago1) I’d expect more than 10% of currently-living Japanese citizens will be dead in 20 years. 2) But the total population probably won’t drop that much in 20 years, because the birth rate, though low, is rather above zero.
- ipnon 3y agoLife expectancy is an about 84 years, death rate is about twice the birth rate, so population will decrease by 6 million in about 5 years. Population will go from 124M to ~118M by 2028 based on my elementary analysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
- yett 3y agohttps://archive.ph/1xlBx https://archive.ph/1xlBx
- ilyt 3y agoDrop the work culture and enable porn again and people might actually want some families.
- wombat-man 3y agoIdk if lack of uncensored pornography is what's holding them back.
- ilyt 3y agoI was joking about that one, developed countries with that have similar problem
- GamerUncle 3y agothe availibility of porn is correlated to people having less and less families, what are you talking about ? Also the Japanese quite obviously do have porn albeit censored, no one thinks that changing that will help, if anything Japan needs to restrict acces to pron and virtualized or parasocial relationships.
- Tade0 3y agoLooking at the population pyramid: https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2022/ There's going to be a lot of funerals when the boomers start passing away. Germany has a similar median age(less than one year difference), but a very different distribution: https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2022/ Still, they'll experience the same, just later.
- jahnu 3y agoThis animated projection of their population pyramid shows the future quite neatly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Japan_from_2020_to_2100.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Jap... Used on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan
- 8lahaj 3y agoWow that's pretty grim.
- RGamma 3y agoIt actually gets better toward the end as the working age/pensioner ratio increases and average age decreases (visual estimation). It's getting over the "lump" that's gonna be painful. That said there's no way the population will actually evolve like that...
- gota 3y ago2055 is going to be the roughest. Eyeballing it looks like by then the current 'lump' of 45-50 will make it above 80, with not enough replacement of younger folks
- biscottigelato 3y agoThis assumes thew birth rate holds steady at what it is today (1.1 or something?). My suspicion is that the birth rate will actually trend lower...
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI can’t help but think this is another case where the solution is clearly known, but the solution is not culturally acceptable. Groups of humans have a frustrating habit of choosing extinction over change.
- kredd 3y agoI am actually curious what is the solution you're talking about, unless you mean hardcore immigration that's most of the west using as a stopgap. I have no problem with it, but don't think it actually resolves the problem long-term.
- jylam 3y agoWhy ? Don't immigrants reproduce and work like westerners ?
- retrac 3y agoTaking a long term view, half a century or a century out, at the rate the world is currently developing, it seems possible there will be no poor countries left to supply cheap labour. Most of the world will be wealthy, except for a few basketcases mired in warlordism and economic isolation, such as Congo, Burma, or North Korea today. Such regions will certainly have still have plenty of poor desperate people - but they will not have the education, etc., that the migrating masses driving the economies of the highly developed countries do today. They will be malnourished and illiterate and no one will want them as immigrants, just as they are unwanted as immigrants today. The rest of us seem to be on track to be part of one competitive globalized labour pool.
- smileysteve 3y ago> half a century or a century out Based on the animation above, a half century out, 2070; the demographic disparity is significantly less pronounced in Japan. From a US perspective going from 3.62 avg children to replacement rate (2) is much more severe than going from 2 to 1.73. *Though, this data does put an interesting perspective on european immigration and the great depression from 1910-1930. From replacement rates, 4.24 (1880) to 2.22 (1940) https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/average-number-children-per-us-family-historic-infographic.pdf https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a...
- ipnon 3y agoThere will be so many villages left to ruin, so many practices lost to memory, it can be quite sad. Japan is again a rapidly changing society.
- jahnu 3y agoI wish we developed a culture of managed retreat. This change is an opportunity to consolidate some villages and remove old ones letting the land re-wild. We can better serve the needs of people when clustered closer together than spread thinly and we get back some of the nature we lost.
- themagician 3y agoThis is going to happen in a lot of places over the next 30 years. Italy and South Korea are also in big trouble. Unless we really ramp up immigration in the US, it's going to happen here too. On the plus side, everyone complaining about not being able to afford a house now… just wait 30 years. They'll be giving them out for free all over the place. The prices of real estate outside of major metropolitan areas will fall to zero.
- morkalork 3y agoWow, as a millennial that really sucks. Say you're in your 30s now, you probably bought at the height of inflated prices and right when you're ritiring, the value of one of your major assets/investments goes into the trash. Yay.
- tetris11 3y agoIf you buy a house to live in it, you lose nothing. If you buy a house purely to flip it, then sure.
- packetlost 3y agoThe idea that of home as a fiscal vehicle needs to die. Homes should be treated much closer to cars: as depreciating liabilities. Land on the other hand...
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- BaculumMeumEst 3y agoCultures that treat their younger generations like trash, demanding servitude and giving no meaningful aid or care to families with young children, are reaping what they sow.
- nine_zeros 3y ago> Cultures that treat their younger generations like trash, demanding servitude and giving no meaningful aid or care to families with young children, are reaping what they sow. America?
- eganist 3y agoNot OP, but ostensibly Japan considering they even have a name for death from overwork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi Though given the political climate in the US, it wouldn't surprise me if the US suffers from a bit of it.
- shadowgovt 3y agoSo does America. It's called "The American Dream." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman
- Lord-Jobo 3y agoGive it some time, but yeah, we will be in the same dire place before long if we cant manage some pretty big cultural and economic changes
- Clubber 3y agoWe solve it with immigration currently.
- chaostheory 3y agoCanada has also been doing this since the 1970s. They haven’t been able to naturally replenish their population since 1972. The problem is that now even countries in the EU realize that they can’t maintain their populations and their entitlement programs without immigration despite the backlash from the native population. What makes things worse is that nearly every country is suffering from declining birthrates now, even developing countries with the exception of Central Africa so it’s unlikely to be a long term solution anymore. In the coming decades, countries will likely start to compete for younger immigrants
- CalRobert 3y agoIs this bad? Would earth gradually reverting to a few billion people be bad?
- nine_zeros 3y ago> Is this bad? Would earth gradually reverting to a few billion people be bad? Not bad for the planet or the climate. But bad for people who care about civilizations, geopolitics or macro-economics.
- calculatte 3y agoIf your civilization, geopolitics, and macro economics all depend on pyramid scheme population growth you're doing it wrong.
- famouswaffles 3y agoEvery human civilization that has ever existed requires the young being productive enough for themselves and about 2 other other dependents. This isn't some "muh capitalism" scapegoat.
- awesomeMilou 3y agoDo you have a source for that?
- famouswaffles 3y agoWhat did the old do when they couldn't hunt and gather anymore ? If they didn't die, the young took care of them. People who are old stop contributing to society but they don't stop taking. Someone has to make up for that, doesn't matter what system.
- wizofaus 3y ago> People who are old stop contributing to society You've never used or heard of grandparents being used to provide childcare? Anyway, providing we can improve productivity sufficiently, then along with various measures that will enable the elderly to largely take care of themselves (medical advancements etc.) I don't think we're going to reach a situation where we simply have no capacity to keep the oldest generation alive and well. I can also see laws and attitudes towards euthanasia changing such that those with the highest care needs will no longer expect to be kept alive regardless of quality of life.
- biscottigelato 3y agoMice utopia
- nologic01 3y agoOmg, they live a healthy and long life. What a disaster. Rabbit-like population growth can hide every and all unsustainable habbits under the carpet of future fools that "will take care of things". We are not rabbits. We are humans. Japan is what the rest of the world should become, not the condition to avoid. Its not easy, we need to rebalance our priorities and obsessions but these are just cultural adaptations.
- BaculumMeumEst 3y ago"Japan is what the rest of the world should become, not the condition to avoid." > Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s recent speech to parliament brought Japan’s dropping birthrate into sharp relief. It’s “now or never” to address the nation’s population decline, he said in the 45 minute speech, adding that “Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.” > The difficulties of balancing work and family life is another significant factor in Japan’s low birth rate. In the industrialized world, Japan has some of the greatest working hours and fewest vacation days, making it difficult for parents to raise kids and have a full-time job. Additionally, there aren’t many affordable childcare options, which discourages people from having kids. > Japan is ranked one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child. Housing prices and education costs are particularly high, which can make it difficult for families to afford children. Japan’s high cost of living, limited space, and lack of city-based child care services make it challenging to raise kids, which results in fewer couples having kids. The declining marriage rate, financial strain, childcare load, later childbearing, and infertility are also some of the variables influencing Japan’s declining birthrate. https://thegeopolitics.com/japans-demographic-dilemma-the-challenge-of-a-declining-birth-rate/#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20individualism%20has%20contributed,in%20Japan's%20low%20birth%20rate https://thegeopolitics.com/japans-demographic-dilemma-the-ch.... > Despite noticeably decreasing suicide numbers over the past decade, Japan still has one of the highest suicide rates among high-income OECD countries. Historically, Japan’s above-average suicide rates have been closely linked to the economic situation of the country. https://www.statista.com/topics/5259/suicide-in-japan/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/5259/suicide-in-japan/#topic...
- awesomeMilou 3y agoThe article is about demographic change, not population growth.
- kshacker 3y agoWould be curious to hear theories on what succeeds in motivating people to produce more (kids). If our lifestyle has changed in a way that people do not want to produce, and I see it linked with wealth, it would be pretty hard to ask people to reverse it, no? I am not saying we need to constantly increase our populations, just wonder if it has been studied and do those studies prescribe a template for short term adjustments / inducements.
- solarmist 3y agoI don’t think anyone has any clue what works yet. But they keep trying things.
- jwells89 3y agoWhat's caused these numbers to trend low, in my uninformed opinion, is that society's idea for what constitutes adequate child care has escalated dramatically increasing the cost of having kids while working wages have bought less and less, which has made the risk being taken on by having even one kid increase beyond what most people are comfortable with. An increasing number of people only achieve a level of reasonable financial security by the time they're in their 30s. When getting to that point takes that much time and effort, it's not something one wants to gamble on unless they absolutely have to, and in this circumstance having kids is in effect gambling. The other thing is that also due to depressed wages, a couple becoming parents means that between working their jobs and taking care of their kids, their life as it previously was basically ceases entirely, which is also a hard pill to swallow. Ideally people would have time to both raise their kid and continue being who they used to be without trying to squeeze time out of the margins by e.g. giving up sleep. There’s also other aspects of work-dominated culture like difficulty of meeting people outside of the workplace which also factor in.
- neaden 3y agoI would say it's what consitutes adequate childcare combined with over reliance on parents as caregivers. So emphasis on nuclear family means you don't have grandparents, aunts, and uncles around so much. Paying for childcare is increasingly expensive as well. Even older children tend to be busier now with school and such which means that in a big family the older siblings aren't available to help out with the younger in the way that for instance my mother did as the third oldest of nine when she was a teen.
- blisterpeanuts 3y agoThe town of Nagi in Okayama prefecture is bucking the trend; they have many families with 3-4 children, and their overall birth rate is well over replacement levels.[1] They get delegations from all over Japan as well as Korea, eager to learn how they did it. So many visitors, in fact, that they've started charging a fee, to keep from being swamped. As far as I can tell, it comes down to money. About 20 years ago they decided to incentivize families in various ways, and this combined with a fairly stable local economy has paid off. It's not clear whether their success can be replicated nationally, but at least the problem is now widely recognized and discussed at the highest level, so perhaps they'll be able to slow down the trend at least, if not reverse it. 1. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-08-16/japan-miracle-town-birth-rate-depopulation-crisis https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-08-16/japan-...
- rnk 3y agoThere's not a magic thing, but you have a sequence of things that need to be addressed. Inexpensive young child care, less expensive schools, time off from your job without penalty to encourage having kids, make it triply so for women. Give a career boost for having kids. It's money and cultural and they're not changing their culture! It's really hard to change culture, look at the US, we turned out to have a significant racist underbelly after all, it never went away.
- archsurface 3y agoIt looks as though this isn't entirely the onset of an anomalous situation, but also the correction of a birth boom [1]. Maybe cultural mindset will again change and prevent over-correction. 1. https://www.nicepng.com/ourpic/u2y3q8q8q8w7a9a9_japanese-population-chart-1870-2100-japanese-population-decline/ https://www.nicepng.com/ourpic/u2y3q8q8q8w7a9a9_japanese-pop...
- chaostheory 3y agoWhile their work culture could be partially to blame, the main culprit for this is Japan’s xenophobic attitude towards immigration. They don’t mind tourists, but anything that would change the “purity” of their homogeneous population is still a big no. Japan also has arguably the best and most effective immigration controls in the developed world, which they are now a victim from. This attitude towards immigration is slowly changing now though due to desperation and political policies that still dole out entitlement after entitlement to elderly who no longer work and contribute to tax revenue and the economic growth at large
- sharadov 3y agoThey need to allow immigration or they're going to be in deep trouble!
- elAhmo 3y agoThere is a recent documentary on Netflix, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, which covers a a number of areas around the world, showing what seems to be most likely causes of people living relatively long compared to rest of the world. Okinawa, Japan is covered in one episode and I recommend checking this out to see some of the factors that contribute to longevity.
- gustavus 3y agoI read a study a while back that indicated the best predictor of "blue zones" or the prevelance of centenarians is how poorly records are kept, the worse the records are, the more likely to have people 100+.
- NotGMan 3y agoThis. The blue zones fall apart quickly, there is much controversy around them. Many vegans like to say "see, it's the little meat and many veggies that they eat". But many blue zone people eat a lot of meat. Eg they often forget to mention that Okinawans eat tons of pork.
- Animats 3y agoMore robots. A likely vision of the future is an increasing robot population and a decreasing human population. By 2100, the robots are more or less in charge.
- Sol- 3y agoIs increasing birth rates just an unsolvable problem somehow? I think the importance of at least stabilizing the population is widely recognised, so I don't think it's the case that politicians are asleep at the wheel or something, but somehow that doesn't translate into efficient action. I could imagine that authoritarian states would try what Romania did back in the day and outlaw contraception (which seemed effective, if very inhumane), but this is of course unrealistic in more liberal societies.
- famouswaffles 3y ago>Is increasing birth rates just an unsolvable problem somehow? Problem is that not one country that has suffered declining fertility rates has managed to reverse the trend despite trying for decades. Not one.
- callalex 3y agoThe same can be said about solving wealth inequality. Perhaps the two are related.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> Is increasing birth rates just an unsolvable problem somehow? If solvable, it is ridiculously expensive. For one, the cost (non monetary) of birthing is placed on just half of the population. So the other half needs to sweeten the pot for that half. And these divisions are not just men/women, but also old/young. Second, the benefit of higher fertility rates is not seen for decades, but the drawbacks are immediate. So it is very difficult for the participants to agree on a price. Many will die before they see any benefit, but they will pay the costs. Artificial wombs might be an answer, but I doubt they are coming soon.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoOf course it's not unsolvable. But that means you can't make your populace work 60 hours a week anymore. Who's really interested in solving that problem given the "sacrifice"? >I think the importance of at least stabilizing the population is widely recognised, so I don't think it's the case that politicians are asleep at the wheel or something I see it more as "we tried nothing and we're all out of options". Similar to how I wanted to lose weight for years and instead gained 30 lbs over the pandemic. You need to solve the underlying issues if you really want to fix the problem. And this problem seems to be cultural. It's a similar situation to the US, despite having very different causes and consequences. But similar solution: give people time for leisure and don't work them to the bone during the physical prime of their lives. Which does mean "paying people the same for less hours", the kryptonite to corporations.
- Octokiddie 3y ago> Japan’s steps to bolster the birthrate haven’t been successful, while authorities have been hesitant to accept large numbers of migrant workers to make up the shortfall. It's hard to imagine how Japan can keep on the current path. But it's also hard to imagine how they'd adapt to normalized immigration. Seems like an adapt-or-die situation.
- kwere 3y agoWill japan financially implode before they reach a serious demographic collapse?
- rajeshp1986 3y agoWhy are Japanese so adamant and self-sabotaging? What explains this behavior? Their govt simply refuse to tackle population decline. They could easily give tax breaks to families and encourage people to have children. They also seem to be adamant on not opening up immigration. Is there any deep social reasons for this?
- ipnon 3y agoVery simply put, there are many more important values in Japanese society than “having as many kids as your parents did.” What these factors are and why they exist is a topic so vast it borders the incomprehensible. All of the reductive, frequently cited reasons are correct individually, but when added up they don’t come to a conclusive answer. That is why Japan is not alone with this problem. I think however that a trip to Japan would leave a firm impression as to some root causes. In many ways it is staring you in the face while you’re there.
- wizofaus 3y agoSurely the most likely outcome is that Japan becomes increasingly reliant on automation to ensure sufficient resources are available to support the non-working population? How well that works out is anyone's guess but there are plenty of opportunities to reduce the need for human labour in the Japanese economy even with current technology, and I would imagine that will become increasingly the case as technology improves and economic realities set in.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoOr they start to open up to the idea of immigration.
- wholien 3y agoTemporary and permanent immigration to Japan seems to be increasing in the last few years. On the "influencer" side, you also are seeing more and more people talk about how cheap houses in beautiful parts of Japan are, how easy / difficult it is to buy and live in one of them, etc. Come to think of it, are these covert advertisements by the Japanese government to get more foreign immigration and capital?
- UncleOxidant 3y agoYeah, I follow a few YouTube channels where they bought (or rented very cheaply) a Japanese farm house in a rural part of the country.
- wizofaus 3y agoThere's only so many countries that will have a surplus of young workers though, and arguably they're ones with cultures/ethnicities least likely to be readily integrated into Japanese society. And such workers are likely to have better options available as other countries with more of a history of accepting immigrants look to remedy their demographic woes. I say that as a Westerner with an ambition to spend some time living/working in Japan - but AFAIK the only way it would be possible currently is to legally marry my (Japanese) partner, so most likely we'll go elsewhere.