Japan's declining births on track to fall below 700k

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15497062

by rntn • 2 years ago

71 165 2 years ago

jimbob45• 2 years ago

Are there any Japanese people here that can shed any light as to why government interventions aren't helping?

elric2• 2 years ago

Not Japanese myself, but have some Japanese friends. From what I understand, the cost of living is very high, and women are typically expected to stop working after marriage or childbirth, meaning the men have to bring in a fair amount of money in order to support a family, especially a family with multiple children. Given the price of larger dwellings in larger cities, this is not easily accomplished.

For obvious reasons, the countryside is far cheaper, but very few young couples want to start a family out in the middle of nowhere.

schmidtleonard2• 2 years ago

Market Imposed Labor Quota is so high that people aren't allowed to raise their own children. Amazing.

bobthepanda3• 2 years ago

also, working hours remain unofficially very long with things like after-work activities, so it has the double whammy of making it nearly impossible for women to balance career with housework and also making it hard for men to contribute to housework at all.

unscaled3• 2 years ago

Not Japanese either, but I have lived and worked in Japan long enough.

From what I understand, the cost of living is very high

The cost of living in Japan is not as high as it used to be and lower than many other countries. There is relatively high inflation now, but that's due to a weak Yen and relatively low interest rates. If anything, Japan's cost of living has hit rock bottom in absolute terms.

Women are typically expected to stop working after marriage or childbirth

That's also quite outdated. This is called "kotobuki taisha" (can be roughly translated as "Congratulatory quitting") and it used to be the norm, but nowadays most of the women return to work, usually after taking a maternity leave and childcare leave, which are guaranteed by law[1].

There is still an issue of old (or old-fashioned) bosses and colleagues who either push women to quit after childbirth or passive-aggressively hint them that they should be taking better care of their children by being full-time moms. That behavior is called "matahara" (maternity harassment) and its frowned upon, but unfortunately still quite common[2].

men have to bring in a fair amount of money in order to support a family

The cost of raising a child is high and probably a factor in choosing to have fewer children, but I don't think Japan is different from most other developed countries here. Public education is quite comprehensive in Japan, and private spending on education is lower than OECD average[3].

Given the price of larger dwellings in larger cities

Large dwellings in Tokyo and other central metropolitan areas are expensive, but you have to keep in mind modern Japanese houses are quite small by international standards, even in rural areas where land is cheap. Old Japanese houses were larger, but this is just the standard for new Japanese houses. The norm is probably somewhere around 70-120 square of meters of floor space (i.e. all floors combined). I've yet to see any Japanese person complain about the size of Japanese houses, this doesn't seem to be a concern for anyone (except for us foreigners, who got used to a different standard of living).

If you're fine with a not-too-large house, you could get a house in the suburban area around Tokyo with a 2 hour commute, with mortgage for a while. But land prices rose quite a bit recently (not sure if this is true for all areas), and with the recent interest rate hikes, Japanese mortgages are not quite the nearly-free money they used to be.

In short, I think most of the factors above are outdated. High cost of living for single-income families and workplace hostility towards double-income families were probably strong factor in the previous decades, but not now.

I don't know if there is any accepted conclusion on the most relevant factors that affect Japan, but for me the following factors ring true:

1. Lack of daycare facilities (hoikuen): Japan has two types of pre-primary education: preschools (youchien) and daycare centers (hoikuen). Youchien end too early for working parents, and they traditionally structured around the assumption of having a full-time housewife. The mother is expected to do a lot of busywork like making bento (lunchboxes), sewing uniforms, attending various events, handling regular feedback the teacher, etc.

Hoikuen is a better fit for working moms, but there seems to be a shortage, and there are long waiting lists for daycare centers in some areas. The situation seemed to have improved significantly over the last couple of years, but this was a big issue in previous year. If you can't find a daycare center, it's kinda hard for a mom to return to employment after childbirth.

2. Nomikai Culture: Japanese companies tend to constantly have Noimaki (drinking parties) after work. Depending on the company and role, these can range from once a month to 3-4 times a week, and from optional fun to implicitly mandatory. In many companies, they could be optional in theory, but schmoozing during these parties is important for promotion and relationship with your customer. This culture took a strong hit during COVID-19, and seems to have never fully recovered since. So this is another factor that may be improving, but still affected birthrates over the last 10 years.

3. Matahara: As I've mentioned above, women who choose both career and child-rearing might still suffer some harassment at work. Women who don't need to rely solely on their husband's income. Naturally, stay-at-home-dads are barely a thing in Japan.

4. Limited unskilled labor immigration: Most western countries have accepted a large number of unskilled immigrants who by definition tend to be less educated. Women education is widely accepted to be the number one factor in determining birth rate, so having high unskilled labor immigration artificially pumps up your country's birth rate as long as that immigration trend continues (the original immigrants would typically get closer the country's birthrate within a generation or two).

Until recently, Japan severely restricted immigration of unskilled employees, but that has been changing too over the last few years. There are still many limitations that keep education levels higher than "completely unskilled", such as requiring Japanese language proficiency and professional exams and training, and visa recipients cannot bring their family to Japan until 5 years later (and even then with some restrictions). So I don't expect seeing big shifts in that direction for the next 10 years.

[1] https://archive.is/yPcOF#selection-1581.143-1581.149 https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/

[2] https://mataharanet.org/en/what-is-matahara/

[3] https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/private-spending-on-...

idunnoman1222• 2 years ago

Sorry, which country with declining birth rates has government interventions that are working?

Iulioh• 2 years ago

France, and not even by much

endtime• 2 years ago

None, by definition, right? Because the ones where policy works don't have declining birth rates.

kelipso4• 2 years ago

There is a theory that urban living and culture results in lower fertility, and Japan is very urban. It's happening everywhere, so probably not something easily fixable without some kind of revolutionary changes.

WorkerBee284745• 2 years ago

Just wait a few centuries and evolution will have fixed this.

bell-cot• 2 years ago

Here's a story (from the same web site) about a small Japanese town which is enjoying success on this front:

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14730746

My (non-Japanese) take: With a few local exceptions, the Japanese governments' interventions are all politicians eager to be seen "doing something"...without having to do anything particularly difficult. For deep, complex socioeconomic problems, "do something" interventions almost never succeed.

lotsofpulp8• 2 years ago

Problem is that it is hard to measure if a person is raising a future productive member of society, so a government cannot simply pay for one.

The government can pay for babies, but incentivizing the production of just babies while not being able to incentivize the raising of the babies such that they become productive members of societies is going to be very counter productive.

AlotOfReading• 2 years ago

I don't think that's the problem. It's the same issue insurance faces when setting prices. The government knows how to price insurance and hire actuaries.

conjecTech• 2 years ago

Most of this decline isn't driven by a change in current fertility rates, but instead by a persistent trend downward in number of reproductive-aged adults. That was locked in by the fertility rates 20-40 years ago. These things move in the timescale of decades. Even if policy were reasonably successful, it would be a quarter of a century before things stabilized.

systems• 2 years ago

how is this bad?

with technology and automation, any nation, will need less and less people

plus rent in japan is super high, and the country seem over crowded

why be alarmed by low birth rate, as long as its voluntary and not caused by an endemic health concern

soperj2• 2 years ago

plus rent in japan

Is that all of Japan? or just select cities?

CapricornNoble• 2 years ago

Just select cities. I had a decent bachelor pad from 2014 to 2020 that was 55,000 yen (~$550 at the time) with no rent adjustment over that time either, and I'm in an urban area of ~1 million people. Current place is ~82,000 but with the Yen getting body-slammed by the US dollar it's not that much more expensive.

onlypassingthru• 2 years ago

The desirable cities with lots of jobs. OTOH, some rural towns are so desperate for people they'll give you a house for free (or nearly free).

https://www.rethinktokyo.com/free-houses-japan-countryside

knodi123• 2 years ago

How is it bad? Economically, it's a burden. Older people are more expensive, and the ratio of young to old people has certain economic implications too. As you pointed out, there are good and bad aspects to it, but the bad aspects are real and not histrionic mirages.

FeteCommuniste• 2 years ago

For a while I've also had the gut feeling that the average age creeping up does something to the general mood of a culture. Young people are naturally more restless, ambitious, daring, and when the median person is very "settled" in their ways and closer to death than birth I think a certain vitality is lost.

dingnuts• 2 years ago

putting the problem in terms of economics isn't incorrect, but I think it can be framed in a slightly more human and horrifying way:

As a fact of nature, young adults must do the hard labor necessary to keep the world operating. Historically, there have always been more of them than there were people physically incapable of doing that work: the old and very young.

If there are too many old people and not enough young people, who will take care of the old people?

derefr• 2 years ago

It's also a political burden, in two senses:

1. directly: in a democracy where the majority of voters are 60+ years old and retired, politicians will end up seeing the old and retired as their base and pandering to them; and this will lead to them implementing policies that serve the old and retired, to the detriment of those of working age. (See: literally anything about Japan's work culture.)

2. indirectly: social mores evolve over time, but this mostly occurs within the more-flexible, still-identity-forming minds of people of young ages. You can think of "modern" social mores as viral memes that spread easily between the "young" nodes in a social network; but which won't spread to/through the "old" nodes of the network. A a "top-heavy" society, where the old greatly outnumber the young, doesn't have the mean virality coefficient necessary to allow "modern" social mores to spread and achieve fixation. This in turn means that younger generations will feel they are living in a society that is "stuck in the past", with "outdated" thinking, where they cannot affect meaningful social change, despite everyone in their own (usually generational-cohort) social circles agreeing with them.

tiffanyh• 2 years ago

Said differently, many government programs for citizen retirement benefits (eg Social Security) are structured as Ponzi Schemes that require population increases over time so later generations can pay for earlier generations.

If population is declining, it breaks how these programs are funding because there’ll be less n the younger generation to pay for the more people in the older generation.

cdiamand• 2 years ago

I think a cascading series of negative economic effects from less consumerism, leading to societally destabilizing conditions is a concern.

toomuchtodo4• 2 years ago

The socioeconomic system is broken, not the people. Population boom only happened because women weren't empowered, contraceptives weren't wildly available. For the human, this is great, if it is their choice (we should want to support agency and autonomy imho). For the systems? Bad for them. Build better systems. If your economic system requires a total fertility rate floor above what a combination of desired and realized fertility is, you're gonna have a bad time.

People will argue about the cost of caring for the elderly, sovereign debt that will need to be paid back, and so on. Well, perhaps consider the obligations you're originating and foisting on a future that may not pay for them.

Comments I've written with robust citations for this thesis:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41799048

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41661724

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41225389

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41035224

everybodyknows• 2 years ago

83% of young korean women think of south korea as “hell”

The page shows 78% of young men with same opinion. But -- what other countries do they think would be better?

yoyohello133• 2 years ago

There is always this uncomfortable undercurrent of misogyny in all these fertility discussions along the lines of "how do we coerce women to have more children?" or "it's a woman's duty to breed." I'd like to hope we are more enlightened than that, but the sentiment is worryingly pervasive.

The doomsayers are probably right, we are in for hard economic times as birth rates decline. But maybe that is a good thing, and we can finally come up with a system that doesn't depend on exponential population growth.

b112• 2 years ago

No. Pollution, likely microplastics are preventing and interfering with reproductive behaviour.

Understand, we are complex beings. The desire to reproduce is not conscious. It is innate and compulsive. And if you interfere with that hormonally derived urge, this is the result.

It's not about money. That's on the conscious side. People had scads of kids during depressions and recessions, even when the pill was available, having kids was more important than not.

And if you looka around the world, the amount of children has nothing to do with the country, or culture. Women oppressed or not, it doesn't matter.

And what culture is more unique than Japan compared to the West? It's not culture, for the entire planet has a collapse in birthrates.

We're going extinct.

WorkerBee284745• 2 years ago

how is this bad?

It's bad when a species goes extinct. Especially when that species is humans.

gruez3• 2 years ago

Humans aren't going extinct any time soon. The world population is projected to level off at 10 billion near 2100.

Finnucane• 2 years ago

All of the other species on the planet might disagree.

fwip• 2 years ago

What do you mean by "need less people?" Normally, technology/automation is thought of as reducing the need for labor, but the total amount of labor needed is still proportional to the total number of people.

lotsofpulp8• 2 years ago

Only bad if the country has promised the old a lot of benefits that need younger people’s hands to deliver.

red0162• 2 years ago

It’s like asking why suicide is bad, you have a civilization without the will to propagate itself.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

It’s bad because at this rate South Koreans will literally be extinct within 100 years.

yamazakiwi• 2 years ago

It doesn't matter that we increase the birthrate if quality of life is continually degrading.

lxgr3• 2 years ago

It's also backwards.

Structure society and economy in a way that makes it appealing to have children (both in that the hypothetical parents feel safe in doing so without endangering their own quality of life, and in that they can imagine the hypothetical children to be happy too), and people will have them.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

Change isn't necessarily bad, but rapid change usually is. And reproduction rates that more than halve the population per generation is an extremely rapid change.

itake• 2 years ago

There are many roles that haven’t been automated yet, including elder care.

I’m skeptical that nurses could be enhanced by automation to the degree of them managing more patients, but with the same quality of care as they do now.

stonesthrowaway2• 2 years ago

why be alarmed by low birth rate

Cause it signifies national decline.

as long as its voluntary

"Voluntary" is such a tricky word. The low birth rate was entirely manufactured by societal norms instituted by the elites. Not just in japan, but in much of the world ( US, china, russia, EU, etc ).

and not caused by an endemic health concern

Declining population is an endemic health concern. If you don't put a stop to it, the nation eventually ceases to exist.

M95D• 2 years ago

Who tf cares about "the nation". There's only one thing that matters: me.

lawgimenez• 2 years ago

Not enough workforce to fund the retirees pensions is one thing.

red-iron-pine• 2 years ago

capitalism expects growth, and has a big ole problem when that doesn't happen.

structurally we're not set up for it.

indigo0086• 2 years ago

Because people make societal level choices that lead to low birth rate when things are terribly wrong with the society that demands less people for one reason or another

warner253• 2 years ago

I'm fascinated by declining birth rates, especially where it's sharpest like in Japan and South Korea. Trying to imagine all the long-term consequences of it, or how it ends, is mind-bending. I do hope that it ultimately leads to places like Japan and South Korea becoming more open to immigration, especially if they also become more affordable (although even if real-estate becomes more affordable, that might be canceled out by increased costs due to labor shortages).

toomuchtodo4• 2 years ago

From a recent Astral Codex Ten monthly links email:

54: Koreans are not okay:

https://x.com/airkatakana/status/1847964003416543478 ("83% of young korean women think of south korea as “hell” and 80% of them want to leave korea. if your mental model of south korea does not match this, it’s your mental model and not the data that is wrong")

Extrapolate to forward looking fertility rate. South Korea total fertility rate as of 2023 is 0.72.

matthewbauer2• 2 years ago

Not just young women, but older people too (~64%). Seems hard to believe they literally think it's hell, without serious societal breakdown. Are immigration and suicide sky high?

warner253• 2 years ago

Interesting, and that's a shame. When I lived in Seoul as an American 10 years ago[1], I loved it. Everything there seemed nicer, more functional, and safer than in any city that I've ever experienced in America. It had an attractive mix of shiny new stuff and ancient stuff. There was natural beauty even just outside of the city, easily accessible by public transit. I'd like to see them open up to immigration because my wife and I would actually consider moving our family there permanently one day if it were an option.

[1] For just a year, and on the US government payroll, so obviously a very different experience from growing up there as a Korean.

IG_Semmelweiss2• 2 years ago

declining birth rates are not a problem unless you are an aspiring empire, or if you are surrounded by enemies, or if you have a huge debt.

As GPD falls, the share of debt becomes greater and the burden falls on fewer people. So taxes must go up, productivity must go way up (death loop, adults working more and not seeking families), or welfare spend must go down

This is why debt its called generational theft.

warner253• 2 years ago

Yeah, "surrounded by enemies" comes to mind for South Korea. I served there as an American in defense of the ROK, as generations of American troops have done since WWII, and I think it's ironic that in 100 years they might cease to exist not because of a North Korean and Chinese invasion but because their birth rate simply led to a collapse. (Although North Korea and China have their own demographic problems - I'm not sure if that defuses or heats up the situation.)

lxgr3• 2 years ago

unless you are an aspiring empire, or if you are surrounded by enemies, or if you have a huge debt.

Or if you depend on future generations to take care for older ones once they reach retirement age, which is all of them. (A savings account can't care for the elderly, so debt doesn't really have much to do with it; you can see the problem entirely while staying in real economic terms without looking at money.)

You can make up for some of that with immigration, but whether people will be very accepting of something like a >50% immigration rate over a single or two generations is also questionable.

pyuser5832• 2 years ago

Or you have pension obligations. Or are concerned about your dependency ratio.

faangguyindia10• 2 years ago

Any man in those countries i can guarantee you can marry and have kids today, provided they fly to a poor country and find a woman (who is attracted and willing)

All men in well off countries have it tough.

I was shocked when I first arrived in Europe and US - how many hoops an average man has to jump through to just get shot at dating.

Men were trying to be 6ft+, 6 figure and Comedy King just to get dates with average women.

My FAANG friends (both whites, black and Asians) make lots of money when compared to average person, they are interesting and have a high IQ too. Guess what?they had zero luck with women.

It was ruthless - I just told my FAANG bros, you know what? You can skip all that and just be fit and decent human being and fly to a poor country and treat the woman with kindness, generosity and love and respect and you'll get the kids and wife you want within a few months.

And soon enough now most of them are married who took action.

You can cry as much as you want but women in developed countries have lots of options and are super risk averse and very demanding in what they want.

It's not about economy when FAANG bros who make 6 figure income are crying for basic level of attention and affection. So I'll never buy into this argument (well houses are expensive you know)

There are tons of men in country who don't even have 6 figure income yet they are married and have kids.

In West, how attractive, popular and bad boy you are matters more than how much money you've.

beeflet5• 2 years ago

IDK about east asia but the US population is still growing year over year, so I think it is more specific to eastern culture.

clpm4j• 2 years ago

I just recently spent some time in Japan (Kyoto), and I frequently travel to Tokyo. It always interests me to see these Japanese birthrate articles because anecdotally you might never know it while walking around the cities - you'll see so many young parents with babies strapped to their chests / in strollers / on bicycles.

Analemma_• 2 years ago

I mean if you're in Tokyo you won't really notice - the effect of Japan's demographic shift has been that everyone moves to the largest cities and the countryside gets emptied out, which is why afaik Tokyo's population is still increasing even as Japan as a whole has shrunk in the last few years.

To notice the effects you have to go out into smaller prefectures and notice things like elementary schools closing and towns merging because they no longer have enough people to support public services for both individually.

tkgally• 2 years ago

everyone moves to the largest cities

Anecdotal evidence in support of that:

I have lived for the past twenty-five years in Japan’s second-largest city, Yokohama, in an area convenient for shopping and mass transit. While the neighborhood immediately around my home hasn’t changed much during that time and is still a mix of single-family houses and two- and three-story apartment buildings, along the main streets and waterfront there has been steady construction of high-rise condominiums. The local public elementary school, which my two daughters attended and which my grandson will enter in 2026, is facing a critical shortage of classroom space as families with children move into the area [1]. Parts of Tokyo are facing a similar crisis [2].

I haven’t traveled much outside the major cities since before the pandemic, but the steady depopulation in many areas is said to be equally apparent.

[1] https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/kosodate-kyoiku/kyoiku/sesak...

[2] https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASRDW7QGQRDNOXIE03K.html

rendaw• 2 years ago

Tokyo area population falls for first time (2022): https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14691787

Ministry officials said deaths outnumbered births in the area by a wider margin than in previous years, fewer people entered the country from abroad amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and more people moved from the capital to other prefectures.

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Its depicted in Wolf Children animated movie, where newly widowed mum sees a "we pay you to live in this village house" as best for her limited savings and she teams up with 5 fellow mums to commute her kids to school to a town with one.

nine_zeros• 2 years ago

anecdotally you might never know it while walking around the cities

The decline is entirely in rural areas. Entire villages emptying out. Defunct buildings, no municipal coverage or money to demolish them. No workers at all. Bathroom not working?

Yeah, take a dump in the forest.

Want to see a doctor? Drive 50 miles if you are lucky.

Not all of it is negative but it is noticeable.

unscaled3• 2 years ago

Rural areas and smaller cities.

And it's not really a matter of low birthrate at these places. In fact, Tokyo has consistently had the lowest birthrate of all Japanese prefectures over the last few decades. The problem is that young people are migrating to large metropolitan areas in search for better opportunities.

It's also worth noting that despite the image, Japan's birth rate is HIGH for its region and among developed countries it is the almost the highest. Japan's fertility is higher than China's, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The only arguably developed state in Asia which has a higher fertility rate is Brunei and I don't really know if it counts - it's very conservative and the economy is mostly based on oil and gas.

Japan's problem is that it has industrialized earlier than its Asian neighbors and the effects of low birth rates are already very evident (in the countryside). It also got the attention in western media as the poster child for low birth rate, but it shouldn't be — that honor should probably go to South Korea (fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023).

englishspot• 2 years ago

we recently traveled to Kaga and that's where I saw what appeared to be the "aging population" in full effect. it was a pretty big city around the Kagaonsen station, and it did look like it _used_ to be bustling and full of life at _some_ point. now, you can drive around and you'll barely see anyone around. if you do see someone, it's likely someone at least 50.

though the caveat is that maybe we visited at the wrong time (it was a weekday). maybe the youth only show up on the weekends.

inSenCite• 2 years ago

I'd love to see a more granular view of the birthrate specifically urban vs. rural

patrickhogan1• 2 years ago

Extending these trends to 2124, the population could potentially fall below 50 million from the 124 million today.

However, life extension technology could vastly change this.

beeflet5• 2 years ago

life extension technology will only increase the parasitic senior population and will the nail in the coffin for society at large

akomtu• 2 years ago

The answer probably lies in the wealth distribution in Japan. In the US 50% of the nation owns 2-3% of the nation wealth. For Japan I haven't been able to find this number, but I bet it's closer to 0.5% and that's why common folk there are permanently stressed and cannot afford kids.

There's an interesting analogy between lifecycle of nations and stars. When there's few people, they are dispersed over the land - that's the gas cloud stage of a star. As the number of people grows, the gravity pulls them together, they are forced to interact more and form a society with rules. Further growth of density starts amplifying certain animalistic traits, and a government is created to prevent the descent into anarchy. The gov essentially cools down the society, slows it down, and prevents certain runaway reactions. But the mass of the nation keeps increasing and its star slowly turns into a white dwarf: a super dense and rigid structure where not much is happening.

RGamma2• 2 years ago

The [white dwarf]'s low temperature means it will no longer emit significant heat or light, and it will become a cold black dwarf. Because the length of time it takes for a white dwarf to reach this state is calculated to be longer than the current age of the known universe (approximately 13.8 billion years), it is thought that no black dwarfs yet exist.

Might get lucky there, unless

A carbon–oxygen white dwarf that approaches this mass limit, typically by mass transfer from a companion star, may explode as a type Ia supernova via a process known as carbon detonation

kalleboo3• 2 years ago

The US a pretty big outliner in inequality, it's much worse than any other developed country. https://g.oxan.com/analysis/GI267313/2022-02-14-JAPAN-capita...

The bottom 50% are at 5.8% wealth share in Japan (same as in, e.g., Sweden) https://wir2022.wid.world/category/glossary/#tab_672cf68aa3d...

naveen992• 2 years ago

Wealth is savings. If you don’t save, you don’t have any wealth. But by income, the bottom 50% are responsible for 20% of the productivity / income. They are probably more than 20% of consumption, given the others save more than they consume out of their income.

naveen992• 2 years ago

So distribution of consumption from bottom 50% is closer to 33%.

https://www.bls.gov/cex/pce-ce-distributions.htm

Japan's declining births on track to fall below 700k

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