6 ms·

Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

32 points by padobson 12y ago

unsignedint 12y ago
It's really nothing sexual, rather economical. If you plot marriage rate by their income level, you'll see it's impacting heavily for lower income group. For women at least some good chunk of "cannot meet a suitable partner" is pretty much "can't find a suitable partner making good money" and it got to the point, that it's common things people joke about these days. :-) But here's some relevant data[1] about it from the post in the past. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574
shillster 12y ago
Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual.
- notacoward 12y ago
  Same point I was about to make. From what I can see of Japanese media and culture, there's no shortage of sexual desire or ways to act upon it. It's just acted upon in ways that don't lead to reproduction. In 2015 you'd think we might have moved beyond casually equating the two, but apparently not.
- phkahler 12y ago
  >> Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual. No, but this is: "More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34"
  - notacoward 12y ago
    "Have never had sex" (usually construed as meaning "...with another person") and "lacking sexual desire" are still not the same thing. I find it extremely hard to believe that you're unaware of the possibility of solo sex (which highlights the distinction). Wouldn't be surprised if you're an expert, in fact.
  - shillster 12y ago
    How does this statistic compare to other countries? I suspect its in the same ballpark everywhere.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
adamkittelson 12y ago
previous discussion, 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601
- dang 12y ago
  Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755
nerdo 12y ago
> More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61 of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic relationship. So 12-24% of women are sharing men then? Or would this be an artifact of the age bounding and women pairing with older, not counted men?
- tsotha 12y ago
  Or maybe there's some disagreement between the sexes on what constitutes "a relationship".
  - na85 12y ago
    Wouldn't that be shocking.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  A little of both, I'd guess. They're not immune to the "hooking up" phenomenon over there, are they?
  - marktangotango 12y ago
    Does hooking up qualify as a 'romantic relationship'? Depends on who you ask apparently.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
      "Romantic" is a euphemism in these things. When even apparently romantic relationships no longer result in marriage, how do you even test them anymore? About the only objective criteria is "did he pay for sex" which lets you rule out prostitution. Everything else is wishy-washy.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  Or have more same-sex relationships. Or the men are overemphasizing on the lack of romance in the relationship. Or the unmarried women are seeing married men. Or the statistics are flawed. I think sharing is actually the most likely if you consider the "herbivore men" trend. If more men are unwilling to have a sexual relationship than women, it would figure that the left over "carnivore men" would need to pick up the slack, resulting in sharing. Poor carnivores.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Just wait until they discover virtual reality and the "appropriate accessories".
VLM 12y ago
Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population, the same problem the USA has, but worse? In that case they can either suffer eternally, shrink their population to match their economy, or expand their economy. Apparently #1 is unappealing, they're carrying out #2, and #3 has proven impossible for the past couple decades. One way to report on the future is to make a "questioning" article that asks what will happen if ... and carefully point out there is no answer. So, much like CO2 emission, this isn't a "if" or "unless" story, this is the inevitable future. Best start thinking about how to handle the Japanese bond defaults, because they're coming. Other than that, there appear to be no real problems at a worldwide scale.
- john_b 12y ago
  > "Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population" I'm not sure what you mean. These are apples and oranges you are comparing here.
  - VLM 12y ago
    Supply and demand. Much like the various ecological simulations of predator/prey or food/consumer. So if you have an economy that only has space for 90M people as participants yet have 100M population, you've got a very big problem. Immigration, starvation, revolution, they'll find something to do. Or if they're mellow they'll just sit out the supposed societal mandates, after all, what else could they do?
adventured 12y ago
"Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy." The premise of this article is absurd, and flat out wrong. Japan's big problem is debt, currency destruction, a collapsing standard of living due to the prior two items (zero savings rate, trillions in loans to the government being paid back in debased currency, high taxes, ~45% of tax revenue being eaten by debt servicing costs, and so on). All of that debt is eating a large portion of the available capital for investment. Without enough private sector investment, you can't grow an economy, you can't bring in higher tax revenue, and so on. You don't primarily grow an economy through massive reproduction anyway, you do it through innovation and productivity gains. If population gains were the key to massive economic gains, Nigeria would be a leading economy, and Sweden / Denmark / Norway / Switzerland would have spent the last 20 years languishing. Or take Germany, their population has hardly moved in 40 years. Their GDP has increase nine fold in that time (and is still a dramatic increase accounting for inflation). Japan's nominal GDP hasn't moved in 20 years. In that time their population has remained essentially flat (+2m). In those same 20 years, Germany's population has actually declined. And in that time Germany boosted its GDP by 77% roughly. By this article's logic, Germany's economy should have spent the last 20 years in dire condition. The age of robotics is upon us. The last thing you're going to want in the next century is a vast oversupply of human labor. Japan should allow their population to continue contracting, while they focus on replacing human labor with robotics and artificial intelligence / software. That's where a large portion of the economic growth in the next several decades is going to come from, the vast productivity gains to be found in those two areas.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  So the problem is not that they don't have enough people. The problem is that they won't have enough people to form a sizeable enough tax base in the future, given demographic trends and the situation of debt/currency destruction. The demographic trend isn't the underlying cause, but it comes at a particularly bad time.
  - adventured 12y ago
    You don't need more people, you need economic growth via capital investment, innovation, productivity gains, and government that isn't wildly fiscally irresponsible. Again, see: Germany If your theory were true, Germany would be in terrible financial trouble just like Japan. Their population decline over the last 20 years would have reduced their financial tax base, but the exact opposite happened. You do not need more people to grow your financial tax base. Also, without productivity gains and a competitive private sector when it comes to innovation (see: South Korea and China taking Japan's growth by out-competing them), an expanded labor pool will not boost your tax base, it'll make everything worse - you'll still have the social welfare costs of an ever greater number people, meanwhile you'll primarily stagnate existing labor through wage pressure that comes with more workers.
glittershark 12y ago
Actually, this is probably nothing more than FUD: http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-make-about-sexless-japan http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-make-...
- brianfearn 12y ago
  Well, that blog does still support the assertion that Japanese people have way less sex on average. They're by far the lowest on the graphs...
dkarapetyan 12y ago
What a silly analysis. Japanese are not having babies so the economy is doomed. Maybe less consumption and unmitigated infinite growth is not such a bad thing.
- maratd 12y ago
  > Japanese are not having babies so the economy is doomed. Yup. That's exactly how it goes. Our entire social structure is based on the notion that economies grow and will continue to grow, forever. The largest component of economic growth is not gains in productivity, which is what most people think. It's simple population growth. Each additional person means an increase in consumption of goods and services, and as a consequence, an increase in production not only for the sake of that person's consumption but also through that individual's labor. That's growth. Take away population growth and you'll have anemic growth at best and a spiraling depression at worst.
- gdubs 12y ago
  I'm reading Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" right now [1]. Prior to reading the book, I would have had a similar assumption. Turns out that population collapse is potentially very dangerous to the environment. Why? Because a rapid collapse in population would cause economic distress and wars over resources. During economic crisis, environmental conservation tends to (unfortunately) go out the window. And war is devastating for the environment. Anyway, Brand says the world population requires something like 2.1 kids per person to avoid a collapse in population, but is falling below that in many countries. The green movement of the 1960's was very effective at lowering population growth, averting a potential 'population bomb' that was so feared at the time. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline
  - anindyabd 12y ago
    I don't understand. Why would a collapse in population cause wars over resources? If there are less people, shouldn't that mean that there will be more resources to go around for everyone?
lmg643 12y ago
Let's try looking at birthrates another way: Japan might be one of the few rational countries in the world. If the economy is not growing in a way that supports having 3-5 kids per family, with a high quality of life (very important detail)... ...then perhaps the rational response is for birthrates to drop so the population can reach a natural size where quality of life is acceptable for the kids that are born. Countries that continue to grow their population over everything else wind up being pretty miserable places to live over time.
dang 12y ago

32 points by padobson 12y ago

It's really nothing sexual, rather economical. If you plot marriage rate by their income level, you'll see it's impacting heavily for lower income group. For women at least some good chunk of "cannot meet a suitable partner" is pretty much "can't find a suitable partner making good money" and it got to the point, that it's common things people joke about these days. :-) But here's some relevant data[1] about it from the post in the past. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574

shillster 12y ago

Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual.

notacoward 12y ago
Same point I was about to make. From what I can see of Japanese media and culture, there's no shortage of sexual desire or ways to act upon it. It's just acted upon in ways that don't lead to reproduction. In 2015 you'd think we might have moved beyond casually equating the two, but apparently not.
phkahler 12y ago
>> Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual. No, but this is: "More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34"
- notacoward 12y ago
  "Have never had sex" (usually construed as meaning "...with another person") and "lacking sexual desire" are still not the same thing. I find it extremely hard to believe that you're unaware of the possibility of solo sex (which highlights the distinction). Wouldn't be surprised if you're an expert, in fact.
- shillster 12y ago
  How does this statistic compare to other countries? I suspect its in the same ballpark everywhere.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

adamkittelson 12y ago

previous discussion, 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601

dang 12y ago
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755

nerdo 12y ago

> More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61 of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic relationship. So 12-24% of women are sharing men then? Or would this be an artifact of the age bounding and women pairing with older, not counted men?

tsotha 12y ago
Or maybe there's some disagreement between the sexes on what constitutes "a relationship".
- na85 12y ago
  Wouldn't that be shocking.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
A little of both, I'd guess. They're not immune to the "hooking up" phenomenon over there, are they?
- marktangotango 12y ago
  Does hooking up qualify as a 'romantic relationship'? Depends on who you ask apparently.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    "Romantic" is a euphemism in these things. When even apparently romantic relationships no longer result in marriage, how do you even test them anymore? About the only objective criteria is "did he pay for sex" which lets you rule out prostitution. Everything else is wishy-washy.
peterwwillis 12y ago
Or have more same-sex relationships. Or the men are overemphasizing on the lack of romance in the relationship. Or the unmarried women are seeing married men. Or the statistics are flawed. I think sharing is actually the most likely if you consider the "herbivore men" trend. If more men are unwilling to have a sexual relationship than women, it would figure that the left over "carnivore men" would need to pick up the slack, resulting in sharing. Poor carnivores.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Just wait until they discover virtual reality and the "appropriate accessories".

VLM 12y ago

Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population, the same problem the USA has, but worse? In that case they can either suffer eternally, shrink their population to match their economy, or expand their economy. Apparently #1 is unappealing, they're carrying out #2, and #3 has proven impossible for the past couple decades. One way to report on the future is to make a "questioning" article that asks what will happen if ... and carefully point out there is no answer. So, much like CO2 emission, this isn't a "if" or "unless" story, this is the inevitable future. Best start thinking about how to handle the Japanese bond defaults, because they're coming. Other than that, there appear to be no real problems at a worldwide scale.

john_b 12y ago
> "Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population" I'm not sure what you mean. These are apples and oranges you are comparing here.
- VLM 12y ago
  Supply and demand. Much like the various ecological simulations of predator/prey or food/consumer. So if you have an economy that only has space for 90M people as participants yet have 100M population, you've got a very big problem. Immigration, starvation, revolution, they'll find something to do. Or if they're mellow they'll just sit out the supposed societal mandates, after all, what else could they do?

adventured 12y ago

"Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy." The premise of this article is absurd, and flat out wrong. Japan's big problem is debt, currency destruction, a collapsing standard of living due to the prior two items (zero savings rate, trillions in loans to the government being paid back in debased currency, high taxes, ~45% of tax revenue being eaten by debt servicing costs, and so on). All of that debt is eating a large portion of the available capital for investment. Without enough private sector investment, you can't grow an economy, you can't bring in higher tax revenue, and so on. You don't primarily grow an economy through massive reproduction anyway, you do it through innovation and productivity gains. If population gains were the key to massive economic gains, Nigeria would be a leading economy, and Sweden / Denmark / Norway / Switzerland would have spent the last 20 years languishing. Or take Germany, their population has hardly moved in 40 years. Their GDP has increase nine fold in that time (and is still a dramatic increase accounting for inflation). Japan's nominal GDP hasn't moved in 20 years. In that time their population has remained essentially flat (+2m). In those same 20 years, Germany's population has actually declined. And in that time Germany boosted its GDP by 77% roughly. By this article's logic, Germany's economy should have spent the last 20 years in dire condition. The age of robotics is upon us. The last thing you're going to want in the next century is a vast oversupply of human labor. Japan should allow their population to continue contracting, while they focus on replacing human labor with robotics and artificial intelligence / software. That's where a large portion of the economic growth in the next several decades is going to come from, the vast productivity gains to be found in those two areas.

stcredzero 12y ago
So the problem is not that they don't have enough people. The problem is that they won't have enough people to form a sizeable enough tax base in the future, given demographic trends and the situation of debt/currency destruction. The demographic trend isn't the underlying cause, but it comes at a particularly bad time.
- adventured 12y ago
  You don't need more people, you need economic growth via capital investment, innovation, productivity gains, and government that isn't wildly fiscally irresponsible. Again, see: Germany If your theory were true, Germany would be in terrible financial trouble just like Japan. Their population decline over the last 20 years would have reduced their financial tax base, but the exact opposite happened. You do not need more people to grow your financial tax base. Also, without productivity gains and a competitive private sector when it comes to innovation (see: South Korea and China taking Japan's growth by out-competing them), an expanded labor pool will not boost your tax base, it'll make everything worse - you'll still have the social welfare costs of an ever greater number people, meanwhile you'll primarily stagnate existing labor through wage pressure that comes with more workers.

glittershark 12y ago

Actually, this is probably nothing more than FUD: http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-make-about-sexless-japan http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-make-...

brianfearn 12y ago
Well, that blog does still support the assertion that Japanese people have way less sex on average. They're by far the lowest on the graphs...

dkarapetyan 12y ago

What a silly analysis. Japanese are not having babies so the economy is doomed. Maybe less consumption and unmitigated infinite growth is not such a bad thing.

maratd 12y ago
> Japanese are not having babies so the economy is doomed. Yup. That's exactly how it goes. Our entire social structure is based on the notion that economies grow and will continue to grow, forever. The largest component of economic growth is not gains in productivity, which is what most people think. It's simple population growth. Each additional person means an increase in consumption of goods and services, and as a consequence, an increase in production not only for the sake of that person's consumption but also through that individual's labor. That's growth. Take away population growth and you'll have anemic growth at best and a spiraling depression at worst.
gdubs 12y ago
I'm reading Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" right now [1]. Prior to reading the book, I would have had a similar assumption. Turns out that population collapse is potentially very dangerous to the environment. Why? Because a rapid collapse in population would cause economic distress and wars over resources. During economic crisis, environmental conservation tends to (unfortunately) go out the window. And war is devastating for the environment. Anyway, Brand says the world population requires something like 2.1 kids per person to avoid a collapse in population, but is falling below that in many countries. The green movement of the 1960's was very effective at lowering population growth, averting a potential 'population bomb' that was so feared at the time. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline
- anindyabd 12y ago
  I don't understand. Why would a collapse in population cause wars over resources? If there are less people, shouldn't that mean that there will be more resources to go around for everyone?

lmg643 12y ago

Let's try looking at birthrates another way: Japan might be one of the few rational countries in the world. If the economy is not growing in a way that supports having 3-5 kids per family, with a high quality of life (very important detail)... ...then perhaps the rational response is for birthrates to drop so the population can reach a natural size where quality of life is acceptable for the kids that are born. Countries that continue to grow their population over everything else wind up being pretty miserable places to live over time.

dang 12y ago