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Question to HN, what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? I fell like every year or so a similar article to this one comes out, and nothing

Question to HN, what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? I fell like every year or so a similar article to this one comes out, and nothing is being done about it. Is this a failure of policy, an outcome of a unique culture, or simply another manifestation of the loneliness epidemic? What is the root issue here and what can be done to mitigate it?

nathanaldensr 2y ago
If people choose not to have children, then they choose not to. That leaves only two possibilities: change social and economic conditions such that enough of them choose to, or force women to. Obviously, no society would choose the latter option.
- dkdbejwi383 2y ago
  Or be more open to migration - but this is Japan so hell would sooner freeze
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    Immigration is not a solution. East Asian countries were never keen and when they see what has happened in Europe I doubt they will change their mind (or they will be extremely careful and picky)
    - dkdbejwi383 2y ago
      What happened in Europe? I’m an immigrant in Europe myself to be honest
      - croisillon 2y ago
        we will never know apparently
  - koakuma-chan 2y ago
    It's important to preserve the cultural integrity of Japan, and migration would ruin that.
    - polotics 2y ago
      How does this even work? Is there something in the Japanese Haplogroup that enables this cultural inclusion that no other human can acquire. If I may address you in a non culturally appropriate manner: Please stop with the bullshit and get real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populations_of_East_and_Southeast_Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populatio... Urgently!
    - mytailorisrich 2y ago
      Yes, it seems to me that Japan, and other East Asian (and also South East Asian) countries put a high importance on keeping their ethnic and cultural homogeneity. My experience, as mentioned in other comments, is that they tend to be horrified when they see the consequences of large non-European immigration in Europe, so I doubt that they will adopt similar policies anytime soon.
- croisillon 2y ago
  why would we even need to increase birth rates? humanity is nowhere near extinction from low birth rates
- sandworm101 2y ago
  >> force women to. Obviously, no society would choose the latter option. Well, many governments today seek to limit reproductive rights specifically to encourage pregnancy over other options. Limits on the termination of pregnancies, along with discouragement of contraception and education, have the net effect of making more women pregnant. We in the glass houses ...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Not so obvious anymore in the US.
- nullbyte808 2y ago
  Or birth them from machines.
  - automatic6131 2y ago
    Sci-fi solutions are not solutions.
- senordevnyc 2y ago
  No sane society would...
  - koakuma-chan 2y ago
    If we can force men to go to war, we can also force women to have children.
ltadeut 2y ago
I have no idea what they can even do at this point. I have young Japanese friends (early 20s) and they all tell me the same thing: the cost of raising a child is too high in Japan (considering the wages). When I talk to people it seems that they all have this concern, I doubt it's something that can be changed drastically in the short term. But this is basically the same story everywhere. Living costs are really high. Add children to the mix and how do you manage? If I put my pessimist hat on, it's just a matter of time till the same happens in Europe/US. Heck, I already see friends in Ireland and UK struggling with that and they are all high earners.
- freddie_mercury 2y ago
  The cost of raising a child is basically the socially acceptable (but untrue) excuse that people get to use. It is pretty easy to look at millionaires and billionaires and see that money isn't what is holding down birthrates. Just look at the millionaire CEO of your own company. Do they have 6 kids? They probably don't even have 4 kids. And there have been studies (though I don't have any at hand) that sudden exogenous wealth (e.g. winning the lottery) doesn't really lead to people having more kids like they claim they wanted to. Or do cross-country comparisons. The US birthrate is (very roughly) the same as countries that have (even adjusted for purchasing power parity) dramatically lower incomes. Or look at low engagement levels of grandparents nowadays despite being dramatically richer than in previous generations. It isn't (mainly) about money. It is just that it is okay to complain about money but not as okay to complain "I'd honestly rather do my hobbies than have another kid".
  - trhway 2y ago
    >It is just that it is okay to complain about money but not as okay to complain "I'd honestly rather do my hobbies than have another kid". I'm a loser and don't want to condemn my kids by virtue of creating them to be losers to. Money of course a part of being a loser. I say that here anonymously. In real life i of course say something general like everybody else about money, time, etc.
  - koakuma-chan 2y ago
    Another kid? What justification is there to have kids in the first place?
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
There are Western European countries that have similar birthrates to Japan (Italy and Spain are very similar). However, they manage to sustain their population, and even have population growth, through immigration.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  If you're trying to convince East Asians that immigration is a good solution by using Europe as an example, you're not going to go very far...
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    I simply made a statement of fact. I'm not recommending anything to anyone.
akimbostrawman 2y ago
The demographic and cultural experts of hn will recommend adding more foreigners since that was very successful and without any issues in the west. An actual improvment could include not only reducing working hours but cultural norms such as staying longer than actually needed. Also building more living spaces around cities to reduce costs.
logicchains 2y ago
The problem will eventually solve itself, because people who don't have children won't pass their values down, while people with (sub)cultures that prioritise childbearing will. So eventually the subcultures that place a strong emphasis on having children will outbreed and replace those that don't. We already see the start of this in the US and Israel, where the ultra-religious are becoming a larger and larger fraction of the local-born population.
- gtirloni 2y ago
  What's "sub" about those other cultures?
  - abenga 2y ago
    I think they meant "subsets of cultures", not "lower cultures".
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  I don't know why this is down voted. It's spot on. Societies are ruthlessly darwinian. If liberal, open minded people stop having children then whoever does have more children will prevail. You might not care but in terms of the mechanics, this is just the natural consequence.
  - nprateem 2y ago
    My parents were pretty pro-kids, but I'm not. It's a flawed argument.
    - rich_sasha 2y ago
      It's not perfect, but surely globally there must be 90%+ correlation between the views held by parents and children. It won't look that way when you look within a smaller unit, but on a global scale, it must be significant.
trhway 2y ago
>what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? what for? it is a pretty legitimate choice for a society to have less children. Does the society have any issues that can be solved only by increasing birth rate? With AI/robots the issue of taking care of elders will be solved anyway. The AI will also possibly make the labor market even tougher, so less people may be better. Anecdotally, when i look at IQ charts and birth rate charts of various countries for the last several decades i see negative correlation between directions those two parameters move, and the higher IQ/lower birth rate doesn't look like a bad strategy for the projected technological future.
- tptacek 2y ago
  There are no such thing as real IQ charts broken down by countries, and anybody trying to sell you one is peddling junk science.
spacebanana7 2y ago
> What is the root issue here and what can be done to mitigate it? Nobody has a good answer for this. It's not about wealth. Huge amounts of money have been spent on incentive programs in Poland, Hungary and South Korea without success. Between countries, wealthier nations tend to have lower fertility rates. Eastern European countries tend to have lower house prices than France but also have lower fertility rates. It's not about religiosity. Qatar, Iran and the UAE all have negative fertility rates. As does Catholic Poland. It's not about social or employment policies. The Nordics have very generous maternity leave and benefits but still have terrible fertility. The only exception of a wealthy country having a long term positive fertility rate is Israel.
- demaga 2y ago
  > The only exception of a wealthy country having a long term positive fertility rate is Israel. Which is constantly at war(s). I wonder how long (20+ year) peace might affect Israel fertility rate.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  Exactly, there is a counter example for everyone's favourite theory. The only credible approach to this is issue can be found in this corner of the discourse: https://www.natalism.org/ https://www.natalism.org/
  - piva00 2y ago
    Credible on what grounds? It's just another facet of the ignorance around the subject, no one has a good answer to what's happening and this Natalism movement is not it either.
  - foldr 2y ago
    Apparently invited speaker Babygravy9 is one of the “brightest minds in the world”. Who’d have thought? https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1892928467152322571 https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1892928467152322571
    - 2y ago
noelwelsh 2y ago
I'm not sure declining birth rate is a problem that needs solving. A lot of other problems go away if there are fewer humans around. Elements of our current society will be difficult to maintain with a lower population, but I'm not convinced that we need to keep society as it currently is. That said, Alice Evans writes extensively on declining birth rates and she'd be my first port of call if I wanted to understand the reasons behind it: https://bsky.app/profile/draliceevans.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/draliceevans.bsky.social
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  A declining birth rate is a different problem to a declining population. The population pyramid becomes inverted with huge numbers of economically inactive retirees dependant on ever fewer numbers of working age people to care for them. Politics becomes hyper conservative as the young liberal voter base shrinks ever smaller. Military strength falls because the number of potential soldiers declines.
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    Yes. On the other hand the global population boom is a recent phenomenon on historical terms (it started in the 20th century) and is the main cause of our current environmental problems. Thus, arguably a lower population is the best long term solution for a sustainable human presence on this planet while maintaining or expanding living standards, but indeed this comes with big challenges (which governments and obviously business interests do not want to face).
    - spacebanana7 2y ago
      > is the main cause of our current environmental problems. I don't fully agree with this. Would you rather live on a planet with a population of 5 billion that primarily used coal energy and meat food? or a planet of 10 billion that primarily consisted of renewable energy and vegetarianism? My concern is more economic and social. With high population levels it seems too much wealth and power goes to the holders of land and natural resources. The Gulf state monarchs and London landlords being the 20th century manifestations of this.
forgotoldacc 2y ago
It takes massive cultural change. It angers people to hear it, but societies with high wages and particularly those where women can work have awful birth rates. Education correlates to lower birth rates. The ones with high birth rates are the ones where people barely scrape by, the ones where workers have no rights, the ones where people focus on getting by today and not plan for a poolside retirement 40 years down the road, the ones where menstruating women are considered filthy and isolated for a week from the men, the ones where having loads of kids makes important figures in your religion happy and there's nothing that matters in life beyond that. You need to change your country to have one (or many) of these conditions to induce high birth rates. The birth rates in Japan are really no different from any other first world country. The west simply has a massive amount of immigrants to supplant the losses of the barely reproducing locals. Those immigrants might have 2 or 3 kids, and maybe their kids will have 2 kids. Then it reverts back to the mean of 1.2 kids basically everywhere. There's lots of talk on reddit and other communities that if every country were like (XYZ country they consider paradise) and gave loads of vacation, paid high wages, gave everyone free college and housing, etc that the problem would disappear overnight. But you look at the birth rates of the locals in those countries, and it's always 1.2-1.4. Mass immigration is a band aid. It makes governments and corporations hope, pray, and potentially strong-arm other countries into being underdeveloped and oppressive in a way that causes high birth rates, and makes the people who live there desperate to find better lives elsewhere. People aren't mass immigrating to first world countries because they decided on a whim that they want to work there, like rich westerners do when they decide they want to retire in SE Asia and be pampered the rest of their life. They move to first world countries because their home country is not a place that makes them happy to live in.
- reedf1 2y ago
  The article makes a strong case that it is not due to women working; as Japan has some of the lowest female labour market participation in the developed world.
- piva00 2y ago
  East Asian cultures like Japan and South Korea are extremely chauvinistic when compared to Western societies. Gender roles are still strong and women are expected to be a "good wife" taking care of kids, house chores, etc. It's no surprise that educated ones will reject that, as a sibling comment mentions, Japanese women labour participation is lower than in Western societies.
creakingstairs 2y ago
Their work culture is changing but it’s not changing enough. People need to be able to go home at 5pm and need to be paid more. Imagine leave home at 7am to ride a full train, getting to work at 8:15 (because you need to be ready to work by 8:30!) Then staying late till 7pm so you get home around 8:15pm to your small one-room studio. You eat, shower and clean. It’s time to sleep. You start doom scrolling in bed till 1am when you fall asleep. Would you want to marry and have kids?
flr03 2y ago
They are cooked, there is so much inertia with everything related to demography. That would need an instant culture shift in the the relation Japanese have with work, family, foreigners and just change overall. Japanese culture, without judgement, is very rigid so this just won't happen.
worble 2y ago
Why is it that the question is always "how can we increase birthrates?" All modern countries are facing similar problems with falling birth rates. At some point the crows will come home to roost and we'll have to tackle the actual problem - that we have an unsustainable economic system that relies on constant growth. The human population can't grow infinitely, especially while we're still constrained to a single rock in space.
- Meekro 2y ago
  I think the concern is that, once your population goes into freefall, it will head towards extinction rather than stabilize at some reasonable level. Others in this discussion have pointed out that happy, lazy, and comfortable people in a Western-like culture (or Japan) will have 1.2-1.4 kids per family. I can understand the argument for some amount of degrowth, but if people just keep having 1.2-1.4 kids forever then the species is headed towards extinction. Japan is already increasing its immigration quotas to meet the demand for labor, and this will only get worse.
  - soco 2y ago
    Why should it head towards extinction? The conditions that are today hindering the birth rates might look very different when we are only half today's numbers. So I wouldn't extrapolate based on this single trend.
  - ralferoo 2y ago
    I don't think that's really the concern. The concern is that most developed economies are essentially a ponzi scheme where the workers are taxed to support the children, those on benefits and the older members of society. People will support that system to some degree, because they contribute to it while they're working, with the promise of a state pension or other benefits when they are older (I realise as writing this that this is quite a Euro-centric and socialist mindset). The problem these countries are facing once the population declines is that the population as a whole is older on average. Sure, some old people will be dying, but if the rate of births falls below the death rate, then inevitably, the average age of the population increases. This means that more of the population as a percentage will be receiving benefits from the state, and the cost of that is borne by the decreasing percentage of the population that is working. This is more than just pensions and socialist benefits though, even in an extreme hypothetical country with no tax and no benefits at all, and aging population still places an increased consumption demand on a smaller workforce that can produce goods to satisfy that demand. Such an economy will necessarily have to shift their trade balance more towards importing goods to maintain the same standard of living. A smaller workforce is also likely to have a lower GDP. The falling birthrate also becomes important, because any policies to try to reverse the trend also have a massively delayed effect on the economy. A falling birthrate now means a huge problem in 20-60 years time when the effect will be felt in the working population. Likewise, any policies to incentivise couples to have children will take 20 years to benefit the economy. If the problem isn't addressed now, it will be too late. The reason the baby boomer generation has been so successful is because the working population massively outnumbered the population needing to rely on benefits. I'm assuming of course, that we think that a decreasing GDP or "standards of living" are a bad thing. Most people would say yes, but maybe the reality is that the baby boomer generation have just had it too good. Population levels have been at crisis levels for a while now, with a global population now that's double that of 50 years ago or 4 times that of 100 years ago. Our capacity to keep producing food can't keep increasing at that rate, and huge numbers of people live in overcrowded conditions. Even more significant is that access to fresh water is at a near critical level in many places, and there have been predictions that future wars might well be triggered by fighting to secure access to drinking water. The current predictions are that global population will peak at 10 billion (another 25% above now) in another 50 years and start dropping off. That means that all of the things above will get worse over the next 50 years - even more overcrowding, less food, less access to drinking water, as well as worsening GDP and ability to maintain the same standard of consumption as before. Perhaps only after we see a massive collapse in global population can we start existing more sustainably as a species again.
grunder_advice 2y ago
We are glamorizing everything else except having kids and raising a family, to the point where a DING couple with a garage full of Porsches and three yearly vacations is considered more successful than the working couple with four kids, which to me a ridiculous. I don't think the natural instinct to reproduce has gone away. It is just being overwritten by other cultural values.
ezoe 2y ago
The root cause is it need 30 years to establish a self-sustaining life. The average first birth of Japanese women are reaching to almost 30 years old Most Japanese are expected to graduate high school(18 years), more than half of them get a degree(22 years minimum). Then you start working for many years. The issue is clear. If we make our life self-sustaining in late teen, problem will be solved. I have an idea that works but nobody(including myself) appreciate it. Spread certain religions like Christianity or Islam. Significantly reduce University students. Significantly reduce high school students, especially female students. Abandon modern health care so significant percentage of people die before reaching 15 years old.(It may sounds like counter-intuitive, but this situation motivate human to give more birth) It has serious moral issue as well as political and economical issues. We somehow manage to keep the political stability and food supply under this condition. I think it's more reasonable we wait for the natural selection that evolve the human to give a healthy first birth in their 50s.
finnthehuman 2y ago
Child rearing requires parents to expend resources on their kids that the economy would rather have for itself. Capturing someone's undivided labor and their limited capacity to truly give a shit about anything in the world are great for productivity figures. So steering people away from having children gets baked into the culture haphazardly by people who will later be scratching their head about why they can't find labor and start advocating for the next-easiest short term solution. The mechanisms don't quite matter. They do, but they're a distraction. Both because they're entirely replaceable with other things that would accomplish the same goals, and they're very tricky to discuss in polite company.
- km144 2y ago
  There is certainly something cultural going on—at least in the US, I notice this. Older generations will look at you with puzzled expressions if you ask them about what made them decide to have children and why they thought it was worth it at the time. Having children simply wasn't a question for people that were born before a certain year. Analyzing the tradeoffs of having children does not lead to some profound realization—mostly people recognize that it would take a lot of their time, and that sounds like that might make them less happy. But we also know that humans are not really very good at judging what would make them happy. We also know that as you say, economic forces have normalized a situation where it's difficult for two people to find the time to justify the value of child-rearing. But I find it hard to see how we reverse this trend if the only discussion is economic—people don't have more children in Scandinavia even though the economic burden is lower.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    You mean, the generation before them were financially inevitably fucked if they didn't have children. For our parent's generation it was more-or-less neutral and for this generation it's a strong financial disincentive. You have enough (barely, but still), right into old age, if you don't have children. In fact it's easier without children. Simple as that. As for a solution short of canceling pension plans? That would do it, of course, but ... of course this is exactly what current governments in EU, US, Japan, ... are effectively doing: canceling pension plans. They can either cancel pensions in the future ... or they can choose to spend much less now. So of course they are really reducing pensions (from already insufficient levels to basically nothing...) That won't help the current generation choose children, although that may turn out to be the smart play. The trouble is humans largely don't learn rationally, we learn from example. So we first need to see a large number of Americans and Europeans (and ...) fall into destitution after 65, and see the few that did have many children get rescued by their children from that fate, only then will we choose to have children again. I guess this is how natural selection stabilizes the human population. This has happened before and it will happen again. (seriously, human birth rates change in "waves")
Balgair 2y ago
The only ideas I have are to look at, like, 2 examples: The Victorians and Ulaanbaatar. The Victorians had a bit of a higher birthrate as compared to their continental cousins. This is due to Queen Victoria's penchant for her husband and the subsequently large amount of children she had. Essentially, since the queen had a lot of children, it was fashionable to have more children. Ulaanbaatar is also a fair bit above the fertility rate for the rest of central Asia. Most commenters state this is because of the social status that mothers receive. Mongolia is pretty urbanized, in that most everyone lives in Ulaanbaatar. So parking gets hard, and they have laws that preference mothers with a lot of children for things like parking. They also get little medals/feathers that they wear about and thow in the faces of other women. Since Ulaanbaatar is the place in Mongolia, demographically, these social status rewards end up highly coveted, so people have more kids to get the rewards. Based on these 2 examples, and pretty much nothing else, I'm gong to say the way Japan can reverse the fertility crisis is via social engineering. And based on the Victorians, you can use the power and prestige of the imperial family to accomplish this. Currently, the only young people in the family are Princess Kako (30), Prince Hisahito (18, second in line to the throne), Princess Aiko (23), Princess Akiko (43), Princess Yohko (41), and Princess Tsuguko (38). Essentially, you'd need Prince Hisahito and Princess Aiko (maybe Princess Akiko) to marry quickly (not each other, of course) and have a whole mess of kids. Then play up every little thing possible about these kids growing up in the press. Follow their every move. Make having kids fun and gossipy and a sign of social status. Have the Princesses talk about how easy it is, how hard it is, how fun it is, how they pity women without children. Really be mean about it and hammer it home all the time. Lots of paparazzi stuff, standard British royal family treatment (showing my ignorance here). I'm not Japanese, so what I'm saying here may just be outright impossible though due to cultural expectations.
csa 2y ago
> what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? Re-establish the social contract that was unceremoniously thrown away in the ‘90s and was replaced with a ragtag collection of weak measures and inaction. Large swathes of the population that used to live comfortably and relatively stress free in terms of money are now paranoid, sometimes reasonably, sometimes not. This paranoia on top of structural changes just crushed the velocity of money.

nathanaldensr 2y ago

If people choose not to have children, then they choose not to. That leaves only two possibilities: change social and economic conditions such that enough of them choose to, or force women to. Obviously, no society would choose the latter option.

dkdbejwi383 2y ago
Or be more open to migration - but this is Japan so hell would sooner freeze
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Immigration is not a solution. East Asian countries were never keen and when they see what has happened in Europe I doubt they will change their mind (or they will be extremely careful and picky)
  - dkdbejwi383 2y ago
    What happened in Europe? I’m an immigrant in Europe myself to be honest
    - croisillon 2y ago
      we will never know apparently
- koakuma-chan 2y ago
  It's important to preserve the cultural integrity of Japan, and migration would ruin that.
  - polotics 2y ago
    How does this even work? Is there something in the Japanese Haplogroup that enables this cultural inclusion that no other human can acquire. If I may address you in a non culturally appropriate manner: Please stop with the bullshit and get real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populations_of_East_and_Southeast_Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populatio... Urgently!
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    Yes, it seems to me that Japan, and other East Asian (and also South East Asian) countries put a high importance on keeping their ethnic and cultural homogeneity. My experience, as mentioned in other comments, is that they tend to be horrified when they see the consequences of large non-European immigration in Europe, so I doubt that they will adopt similar policies anytime soon.
croisillon 2y ago
why would we even need to increase birth rates? humanity is nowhere near extinction from low birth rates
sandworm101 2y ago
>> force women to. Obviously, no society would choose the latter option. Well, many governments today seek to limit reproductive rights specifically to encourage pregnancy over other options. Limits on the termination of pregnancies, along with discouragement of contraception and education, have the net effect of making more women pregnant. We in the glass houses ...
actionfromafar 2y ago
Not so obvious anymore in the US.
nullbyte808 2y ago
Or birth them from machines.
- automatic6131 2y ago
  Sci-fi solutions are not solutions.
senordevnyc 2y ago
No sane society would...
- koakuma-chan 2y ago
  If we can force men to go to war, we can also force women to have children.

ltadeut 2y ago

I have no idea what they can even do at this point. I have young Japanese friends (early 20s) and they all tell me the same thing: the cost of raising a child is too high in Japan (considering the wages). When I talk to people it seems that they all have this concern, I doubt it's something that can be changed drastically in the short term. But this is basically the same story everywhere. Living costs are really high. Add children to the mix and how do you manage? If I put my pessimist hat on, it's just a matter of time till the same happens in Europe/US. Heck, I already see friends in Ireland and UK struggling with that and they are all high earners.

freddie_mercury 2y ago
The cost of raising a child is basically the socially acceptable (but untrue) excuse that people get to use. It is pretty easy to look at millionaires and billionaires and see that money isn't what is holding down birthrates. Just look at the millionaire CEO of your own company. Do they have 6 kids? They probably don't even have 4 kids. And there have been studies (though I don't have any at hand) that sudden exogenous wealth (e.g. winning the lottery) doesn't really lead to people having more kids like they claim they wanted to. Or do cross-country comparisons. The US birthrate is (very roughly) the same as countries that have (even adjusted for purchasing power parity) dramatically lower incomes. Or look at low engagement levels of grandparents nowadays despite being dramatically richer than in previous generations. It isn't (mainly) about money. It is just that it is okay to complain about money but not as okay to complain "I'd honestly rather do my hobbies than have another kid".
- trhway 2y ago
  >It is just that it is okay to complain about money but not as okay to complain "I'd honestly rather do my hobbies than have another kid". I'm a loser and don't want to condemn my kids by virtue of creating them to be losers to. Money of course a part of being a loser. I say that here anonymously. In real life i of course say something general like everybody else about money, time, etc.
- koakuma-chan 2y ago
  Another kid? What justification is there to have kids in the first place?

InsideOutSanta 2y ago

There are Western European countries that have similar birthrates to Japan (Italy and Spain are very similar). However, they manage to sustain their population, and even have population growth, through immigration.

mytailorisrich 2y ago
If you're trying to convince East Asians that immigration is a good solution by using Europe as an example, you're not going to go very far...
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  I simply made a statement of fact. I'm not recommending anything to anyone.

akimbostrawman 2y ago

The demographic and cultural experts of hn will recommend adding more foreigners since that was very successful and without any issues in the west. An actual improvment could include not only reducing working hours but cultural norms such as staying longer than actually needed. Also building more living spaces around cities to reduce costs.

logicchains 2y ago

The problem will eventually solve itself, because people who don't have children won't pass their values down, while people with (sub)cultures that prioritise childbearing will. So eventually the subcultures that place a strong emphasis on having children will outbreed and replace those that don't. We already see the start of this in the US and Israel, where the ultra-religious are becoming a larger and larger fraction of the local-born population.

gtirloni 2y ago
What's "sub" about those other cultures?
- abenga 2y ago
  I think they meant "subsets of cultures", not "lower cultures".
rich_sasha 2y ago
I don't know why this is down voted. It's spot on. Societies are ruthlessly darwinian. If liberal, open minded people stop having children then whoever does have more children will prevail. You might not care but in terms of the mechanics, this is just the natural consequence.
- nprateem 2y ago
  My parents were pretty pro-kids, but I'm not. It's a flawed argument.
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    It's not perfect, but surely globally there must be 90%+ correlation between the views held by parents and children. It won't look that way when you look within a smaller unit, but on a global scale, it must be significant.

trhway 2y ago

>what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? what for? it is a pretty legitimate choice for a society to have less children. Does the society have any issues that can be solved only by increasing birth rate? With AI/robots the issue of taking care of elders will be solved anyway. The AI will also possibly make the labor market even tougher, so less people may be better. Anecdotally, when i look at IQ charts and birth rate charts of various countries for the last several decades i see negative correlation between directions those two parameters move, and the higher IQ/lower birth rate doesn't look like a bad strategy for the projected technological future.

tptacek 2y ago
There are no such thing as real IQ charts broken down by countries, and anybody trying to sell you one is peddling junk science.

spacebanana7 2y ago

> What is the root issue here and what can be done to mitigate it? Nobody has a good answer for this. It's not about wealth. Huge amounts of money have been spent on incentive programs in Poland, Hungary and South Korea without success. Between countries, wealthier nations tend to have lower fertility rates. Eastern European countries tend to have lower house prices than France but also have lower fertility rates. It's not about religiosity. Qatar, Iran and the UAE all have negative fertility rates. As does Catholic Poland. It's not about social or employment policies. The Nordics have very generous maternity leave and benefits but still have terrible fertility. The only exception of a wealthy country having a long term positive fertility rate is Israel.

demaga 2y ago
> The only exception of a wealthy country having a long term positive fertility rate is Israel. Which is constantly at war(s). I wonder how long (20+ year) peace might affect Israel fertility rate.
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
Exactly, there is a counter example for everyone's favourite theory. The only credible approach to this is issue can be found in this corner of the discourse: https://www.natalism.org/ https://www.natalism.org/
- piva00 2y ago
  Credible on what grounds? It's just another facet of the ignorance around the subject, no one has a good answer to what's happening and this Natalism movement is not it either.
- foldr 2y ago
  Apparently invited speaker Babygravy9 is one of the “brightest minds in the world”. Who’d have thought? https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1892928467152322571 https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1892928467152322571
  - 2y ago

noelwelsh 2y ago

I'm not sure declining birth rate is a problem that needs solving. A lot of other problems go away if there are fewer humans around. Elements of our current society will be difficult to maintain with a lower population, but I'm not convinced that we need to keep society as it currently is. That said, Alice Evans writes extensively on declining birth rates and she'd be my first port of call if I wanted to understand the reasons behind it: https://bsky.app/profile/draliceevans.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/draliceevans.bsky.social

spacebanana7 2y ago
A declining birth rate is a different problem to a declining population. The population pyramid becomes inverted with huge numbers of economically inactive retirees dependant on ever fewer numbers of working age people to care for them. Politics becomes hyper conservative as the young liberal voter base shrinks ever smaller. Military strength falls because the number of potential soldiers declines.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Yes. On the other hand the global population boom is a recent phenomenon on historical terms (it started in the 20th century) and is the main cause of our current environmental problems. Thus, arguably a lower population is the best long term solution for a sustainable human presence on this planet while maintaining or expanding living standards, but indeed this comes with big challenges (which governments and obviously business interests do not want to face).
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    > is the main cause of our current environmental problems. I don't fully agree with this. Would you rather live on a planet with a population of 5 billion that primarily used coal energy and meat food? or a planet of 10 billion that primarily consisted of renewable energy and vegetarianism? My concern is more economic and social. With high population levels it seems too much wealth and power goes to the holders of land and natural resources. The Gulf state monarchs and London landlords being the 20th century manifestations of this.

forgotoldacc 2y ago

It takes massive cultural change. It angers people to hear it, but societies with high wages and particularly those where women can work have awful birth rates. Education correlates to lower birth rates. The ones with high birth rates are the ones where people barely scrape by, the ones where workers have no rights, the ones where people focus on getting by today and not plan for a poolside retirement 40 years down the road, the ones where menstruating women are considered filthy and isolated for a week from the men, the ones where having loads of kids makes important figures in your religion happy and there's nothing that matters in life beyond that. You need to change your country to have one (or many) of these conditions to induce high birth rates. The birth rates in Japan are really no different from any other first world country. The west simply has a massive amount of immigrants to supplant the losses of the barely reproducing locals. Those immigrants might have 2 or 3 kids, and maybe their kids will have 2 kids. Then it reverts back to the mean of 1.2 kids basically everywhere. There's lots of talk on reddit and other communities that if every country were like (XYZ country they consider paradise) and gave loads of vacation, paid high wages, gave everyone free college and housing, etc that the problem would disappear overnight. But you look at the birth rates of the locals in those countries, and it's always 1.2-1.4. Mass immigration is a band aid. It makes governments and corporations hope, pray, and potentially strong-arm other countries into being underdeveloped and oppressive in a way that causes high birth rates, and makes the people who live there desperate to find better lives elsewhere. People aren't mass immigrating to first world countries because they decided on a whim that they want to work there, like rich westerners do when they decide they want to retire in SE Asia and be pampered the rest of their life. They move to first world countries because their home country is not a place that makes them happy to live in.

reedf1 2y ago
The article makes a strong case that it is not due to women working; as Japan has some of the lowest female labour market participation in the developed world.
piva00 2y ago
East Asian cultures like Japan and South Korea are extremely chauvinistic when compared to Western societies. Gender roles are still strong and women are expected to be a "good wife" taking care of kids, house chores, etc. It's no surprise that educated ones will reject that, as a sibling comment mentions, Japanese women labour participation is lower than in Western societies.

creakingstairs 2y ago

Their work culture is changing but it’s not changing enough. People need to be able to go home at 5pm and need to be paid more. Imagine leave home at 7am to ride a full train, getting to work at 8:15 (because you need to be ready to work by 8:30!) Then staying late till 7pm so you get home around 8:15pm to your small one-room studio. You eat, shower and clean. It’s time to sleep. You start doom scrolling in bed till 1am when you fall asleep. Would you want to marry and have kids?

flr03 2y ago

They are cooked, there is so much inertia with everything related to demography. That would need an instant culture shift in the the relation Japanese have with work, family, foreigners and just change overall. Japanese culture, without judgement, is very rigid so this just won't happen.

worble 2y ago

Why is it that the question is always "how can we increase birthrates?" All modern countries are facing similar problems with falling birth rates. At some point the crows will come home to roost and we'll have to tackle the actual problem - that we have an unsustainable economic system that relies on constant growth. The human population can't grow infinitely, especially while we're still constrained to a single rock in space.

Meekro 2y ago
I think the concern is that, once your population goes into freefall, it will head towards extinction rather than stabilize at some reasonable level. Others in this discussion have pointed out that happy, lazy, and comfortable people in a Western-like culture (or Japan) will have 1.2-1.4 kids per family. I can understand the argument for some amount of degrowth, but if people just keep having 1.2-1.4 kids forever then the species is headed towards extinction. Japan is already increasing its immigration quotas to meet the demand for labor, and this will only get worse.
- soco 2y ago
  Why should it head towards extinction? The conditions that are today hindering the birth rates might look very different when we are only half today's numbers. So I wouldn't extrapolate based on this single trend.
- ralferoo 2y ago
  I don't think that's really the concern. The concern is that most developed economies are essentially a ponzi scheme where the workers are taxed to support the children, those on benefits and the older members of society. People will support that system to some degree, because they contribute to it while they're working, with the promise of a state pension or other benefits when they are older (I realise as writing this that this is quite a Euro-centric and socialist mindset). The problem these countries are facing once the population declines is that the population as a whole is older on average. Sure, some old people will be dying, but if the rate of births falls below the death rate, then inevitably, the average age of the population increases. This means that more of the population as a percentage will be receiving benefits from the state, and the cost of that is borne by the decreasing percentage of the population that is working. This is more than just pensions and socialist benefits though, even in an extreme hypothetical country with no tax and no benefits at all, and aging population still places an increased consumption demand on a smaller workforce that can produce goods to satisfy that demand. Such an economy will necessarily have to shift their trade balance more towards importing goods to maintain the same standard of living. A smaller workforce is also likely to have a lower GDP. The falling birthrate also becomes important, because any policies to try to reverse the trend also have a massively delayed effect on the economy. A falling birthrate now means a huge problem in 20-60 years time when the effect will be felt in the working population. Likewise, any policies to incentivise couples to have children will take 20 years to benefit the economy. If the problem isn't addressed now, it will be too late. The reason the baby boomer generation has been so successful is because the working population massively outnumbered the population needing to rely on benefits. I'm assuming of course, that we think that a decreasing GDP or "standards of living" are a bad thing. Most people would say yes, but maybe the reality is that the baby boomer generation have just had it too good. Population levels have been at crisis levels for a while now, with a global population now that's double that of 50 years ago or 4 times that of 100 years ago. Our capacity to keep producing food can't keep increasing at that rate, and huge numbers of people live in overcrowded conditions. Even more significant is that access to fresh water is at a near critical level in many places, and there have been predictions that future wars might well be triggered by fighting to secure access to drinking water. The current predictions are that global population will peak at 10 billion (another 25% above now) in another 50 years and start dropping off. That means that all of the things above will get worse over the next 50 years - even more overcrowding, less food, less access to drinking water, as well as worsening GDP and ability to maintain the same standard of consumption as before. Perhaps only after we see a massive collapse in global population can we start existing more sustainably as a species again.

grunder_advice 2y ago

We are glamorizing everything else except having kids and raising a family, to the point where a DING couple with a garage full of Porsches and three yearly vacations is considered more successful than the working couple with four kids, which to me a ridiculous. I don't think the natural instinct to reproduce has gone away. It is just being overwritten by other cultural values.

ezoe 2y ago

The root cause is it need 30 years to establish a self-sustaining life. The average first birth of Japanese women are reaching to almost 30 years old Most Japanese are expected to graduate high school(18 years), more than half of them get a degree(22 years minimum). Then you start working for many years. The issue is clear. If we make our life self-sustaining in late teen, problem will be solved. I have an idea that works but nobody(including myself) appreciate it. Spread certain religions like Christianity or Islam. Significantly reduce University students. Significantly reduce high school students, especially female students. Abandon modern health care so significant percentage of people die before reaching 15 years old.(It may sounds like counter-intuitive, but this situation motivate human to give more birth) It has serious moral issue as well as political and economical issues. We somehow manage to keep the political stability and food supply under this condition. I think it's more reasonable we wait for the natural selection that evolve the human to give a healthy first birth in their 50s.

finnthehuman 2y ago

Child rearing requires parents to expend resources on their kids that the economy would rather have for itself. Capturing someone's undivided labor and their limited capacity to truly give a shit about anything in the world are great for productivity figures. So steering people away from having children gets baked into the culture haphazardly by people who will later be scratching their head about why they can't find labor and start advocating for the next-easiest short term solution. The mechanisms don't quite matter. They do, but they're a distraction. Both because they're entirely replaceable with other things that would accomplish the same goals, and they're very tricky to discuss in polite company.

km144 2y ago
There is certainly something cultural going on—at least in the US, I notice this. Older generations will look at you with puzzled expressions if you ask them about what made them decide to have children and why they thought it was worth it at the time. Having children simply wasn't a question for people that were born before a certain year. Analyzing the tradeoffs of having children does not lead to some profound realization—mostly people recognize that it would take a lot of their time, and that sounds like that might make them less happy. But we also know that humans are not really very good at judging what would make them happy. We also know that as you say, economic forces have normalized a situation where it's difficult for two people to find the time to justify the value of child-rearing. But I find it hard to see how we reverse this trend if the only discussion is economic—people don't have more children in Scandinavia even though the economic burden is lower.
- spwa4 2y ago
  You mean, the generation before them were financially inevitably fucked if they didn't have children. For our parent's generation it was more-or-less neutral and for this generation it's a strong financial disincentive. You have enough (barely, but still), right into old age, if you don't have children. In fact it's easier without children. Simple as that. As for a solution short of canceling pension plans? That would do it, of course, but ... of course this is exactly what current governments in EU, US, Japan, ... are effectively doing: canceling pension plans. They can either cancel pensions in the future ... or they can choose to spend much less now. So of course they are really reducing pensions (from already insufficient levels to basically nothing...) That won't help the current generation choose children, although that may turn out to be the smart play. The trouble is humans largely don't learn rationally, we learn from example. So we first need to see a large number of Americans and Europeans (and ...) fall into destitution after 65, and see the few that did have many children get rescued by their children from that fate, only then will we choose to have children again. I guess this is how natural selection stabilizes the human population. This has happened before and it will happen again. (seriously, human birth rates change in "waves")

Balgair 2y ago

The only ideas I have are to look at, like, 2 examples: The Victorians and Ulaanbaatar. The Victorians had a bit of a higher birthrate as compared to their continental cousins. This is due to Queen Victoria's penchant for her husband and the subsequently large amount of children she had. Essentially, since the queen had a lot of children, it was fashionable to have more children. Ulaanbaatar is also a fair bit above the fertility rate for the rest of central Asia. Most commenters state this is because of the social status that mothers receive. Mongolia is pretty urbanized, in that most everyone lives in Ulaanbaatar. So parking gets hard, and they have laws that preference mothers with a lot of children for things like parking. They also get little medals/feathers that they wear about and thow in the faces of other women. Since Ulaanbaatar is the place in Mongolia, demographically, these social status rewards end up highly coveted, so people have more kids to get the rewards. Based on these 2 examples, and pretty much nothing else, I'm gong to say the way Japan can reverse the fertility crisis is via social engineering. And based on the Victorians, you can use the power and prestige of the imperial family to accomplish this. Currently, the only young people in the family are Princess Kako (30), Prince Hisahito (18, second in line to the throne), Princess Aiko (23), Princess Akiko (43), Princess Yohko (41), and Princess Tsuguko (38). Essentially, you'd need Prince Hisahito and Princess Aiko (maybe Princess Akiko) to marry quickly (not each other, of course) and have a whole mess of kids. Then play up every little thing possible about these kids growing up in the press. Follow their every move. Make having kids fun and gossipy and a sign of social status. Have the Princesses talk about how easy it is, how hard it is, how fun it is, how they pity women without children. Really be mean about it and hammer it home all the time. Lots of paparazzi stuff, standard British royal family treatment (showing my ignorance here). I'm not Japanese, so what I'm saying here may just be outright impossible though due to cultural expectations.

csa 2y ago

> what can actually be done in Japan to increase the birth rate? Re-establish the social contract that was unceremoniously thrown away in the ‘90s and was replaced with a ragtag collection of weak measures and inaction. Large swathes of the population that used to live comfortably and relatively stress free in terms of money are now paranoid, sometimes reasonably, sometimes not. This paranoia on top of structural changes just crushed the velocity of money.