Japan: Can anything be done to stop population decline?
The latest numbers on Japanese population make for a dismal reading — the number of people who died in 2022 (1.56 million) was roughly twice as big as the number of newborn children (771,000). Based on residency registrations, the country's Internal Ministry estimates a total population loss of some 800,000 last year. This is the largest total drop in population since comparable statistics were first collated in 1968.
Japan now has 122.4 million nationals, down from a peak of over 128 million some 15 years ago.
But the issue of Japan's shrinking population goes much further into the past. Since the 1990s, successive Japanese governments have been aware that the population would start to decline and tried to offer solutions. And yet, the speed of the contraction has caught even the experts by surprise. In 2017, for example, the Tokyo-based National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast that the annual number of births would not fall below the 800,000 threshold until 2030.
With the news on Japan's population decline growing ever more grim, the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced a series of efforts to encourage more people to have children.
Japan ‘on the brink’
In January, Kishida warned that the nation is "on the brink" of a crisis and that his government would spend around 20 trillion yen (around €128 billion, $140 billion) on measures to support young couples who wish to have more children. This corresponds to around 4% of Japan's GDP, and is nearly double the amount that the government had earmarked for the same goal in fiscal 2021.
The prime minister also set up a panel to devise ways to spend the extra funds. He also hosted an event in Tokyo in late July to mark the launch of a nationwide campaign to support children and families. The government has agreed on increasing child allowances and putting in additional effort to eradicate child poverty and abuse. New fathers will also be encouraged to take paternity leave and additional funding will go into pre-school facilities so that working parents are able to return to work. Parents will also get greater tax breaks.
Kishida said he aims to win the support of society for children and parents.
"We hope that a social circle friendly to child-rearing will spread nationwide," he said at the launch event.
Critics, however, are not entirely convinced by the latest proposals. They warn that the previous government had also tried to use spending to encourage a baby boom, but Japanese society has failed to respond.
The population is rapidly aging, and the number of people over 65 is already at close to 30% in Japan. Japan's neighbors China and South Korea are facing similar troubles, and the number of senior citizens is expected to continue climbing in the next three decades.
Will funding be effective?
"The government is focusing very much on the economic aspect and while the budget they are allocating to the problem is very large and it sounds positive, we will have to see whether it can truly be effective," said Masataka Nakagawa, senior researcher with the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
Nakagawa agreed that the latest population statistics were worrying, but warned there are other factors that need to be considered, such as the falling number of marriages. People in Japan are typically getting married later in life and opting to have fewer children, primarily a result of financial pressures, he said.
Chisato Kitanaka, an associate professor of sociology at Hiroshima University, said governments have failed to devise effective policies to solve the population problem, despite knowing that a decline was inevitable.
"There have long been a lot of hurdles for young people who want to have children to overcome," she told DW. Those include financial and educational concerns, she said, but arguably the biggest problem is social attitudes.
"In Japan, having a child means that a couple has to get married," she said. "Only 2% of children are born out of wedlock in Japan, but other countries take a far more 'flexible' approach to the concept of a family."
"This is what is considered socially acceptable here and that makes raising a child as a single mother difficult because she has to work and earn money, while at the same time she is singled out by society," she added.
More foreigners in Japan
Kitanaka believes the government should dramatically increase welfare payments to families to help them raise their children and reduce the substantial costs of education, particularly at the tertiary level.
While looking into the population statistics, Japanese officials also found that nearly 3 million foreign residents were living in Japan, up by more than 289,000, or over 10%, from the previous year. The increase puts the number of foreigners in the Asian country at record high.
And yet, many Japanese are unwilling to seriously contemplate large-scale immigration as a way to solve Japan's population problem and provide a stable supply of workers.
"It is difficult," Kitanaka admitted. "There are clearly more foreign residents of Japan now but we as a society are not really thinking about it as a long-term issue. And there are many in Japan who are still not ready to accept foreigners. We need to discuss the sort of Japan that we want to live in for the future."
Maybe if they'd fix their work culture this wouldn't be as big of an issue.
It really is wild to me that the government isn't working to put restrictions on working hours. It seems that focusing on the benefits of having children, not focusing on building more marriages seems to be a miss from the government.
You mean like the the “Work Style Reform” laws they passed a few years ago aimed at exactly that?
Did it help?
The old guard refuses to change anything. Nothing will change in that country until the leaders either change or pass on. Culture and Tradition is so important in the business setting that it's overbearing and fundamentally inhibitive to social progress. The government can't do anything about unless the businesses change....and they won't.
That is always my first thought when this topic comes up. Often not just with Japan. It is a problem in many countries.
I'm from Tokyo, so I'm saying this as someone with a direct stake in the matter, but is this really a problem? The Earth is on fire right now, the oceans are literally boiling, it is face-melting hot here. The consequences of the period of unsustainable growth are finally coming to pass. There was a report yesterday saying we'd passed the yearly mark for what the planet can provide, and we'd need 1.7 Earths now to meet everyone's needs. So maybe naturally reducing the population isn't such a bad thing.
Governments by and large occupy a mindspace that is "individuals must be subjugated for the needs community", but not "we must subjugate ourselves for the needs of the planet."
Well we put them into place
It's only a problem in the near term as those of us in middle age are going to face increasing taxes and cuts of social programs to support the older folks. I plan on retiring here (Japan). I agree we're way over-populated here for the resources we have and think it should decline, but it's going to be rough.
I think more remote work or companies moving out of Tokyo could help things as it would make getting into daycare and such easier for families with kids, but I don't see that happening.
How is it only a problem in the near future? The birth rate has been declining for a generation and is quite likely to continue doing so. It’s already going to get worse for decades, but what if it can’t be stopped?
It will hit an equilibrium point eventually. I hope sooner rather than later, but time will tell.
It's really an economic problem more than anything. If money were no object it would certainly make sense to simply reduce the size of villages and cities as population and therefore demand shrinks
You can even see this happening in places like Detroit where they've bulldozed blocks of abandoned houses from the hayday as the city population shrunk significantly and may not return to those previous levels for quite some time
The general population decline that Japan is experiencing is something every developed nation will likely experience sometime this century as poorer nations develop and modernize. The United States would be declining at a similar rate if not for how many people immigrate to the US. Canada even more so due to their extremely lenient immigration laws compared to the US.
If money were no object communities could take advantage of this shrinking to replace empty deteriorating single family homes with parks, affordable housing, green space, or community space. Blocks of empty suburbs could be far more easily converted into more sustainable land uses if most of the people who once lived there are gone
Overall it isn't a bad thing, but on a societal level it makes life harder for the working population supporting the elderly. From what I've read on working culture in Japan it's hard enough to begin with.
I taught English in Japan (JET) for one year, and at the end I said what a lot of people say: I'd love to visit, but I'm never going to work here again.
The work culture in Japan is fucked. The fact that the amount of time you spend at work, not your actual output, determines how "productive" you are is so fucking stupid. I worked my contract hours and I was seen as lazy. Despite the fact that everything I was asked to do was always done and done well, the fact that I didn't come in 2 hours early and nap at my desk meant I was lazy. Add onto that the fact that I only got a (generous for Japan) 15 days of nenkyuu (paid days off), which you can't actually use because what happens if you get sick. Sick leave exists, but does it? Does it really? The one time I tried to use it, I was told "it'd be better for everyone if you didn't", and then had to use my nenkyuu anyway.
And that was me working a pretty privileged position! If I was coming from Vietnam to work in a retirement home, I'm sure the working conditions would be far worse with the threat of deportation looming over my head. Immigration is a band aid at best. As soon as immigrants have the opportunity to move somewhere better, they will of course take that.
In contrast, I now live in the Netherlands, which shockingly has some of the least generous child benefits in the EU. And yet, we get about 100€/month from the government in support, plus about 50% the cost of childcare paid for. My wife gets 4 months of maternity leave at full pay (I only get 5 days which is super fucked), with up to 3 years at 60% pay with a guarantee of her job being there when she gets back. We each have 25+ days off a year, which are actually used for days off, if the kid gets sick, we can use sick leave to care for it, and sick leave is unlimited. Also, healthcare for children is 100% paid by the government. And with all of that, we're barely in a position to be able to consider having children.
I have to agree here. I was reading down this waiting for some sort of address of the work culture but its just not there. If Japan truely believes they can solve their population problem by throwing money at it the country is doomed.
Father parental leave has increased a lot this year though. It's now 5 weeks instead of 5 days.
You're talking about the Netherlands? It's 5 days fully paid.
I can take several months if I want it, but I have to take a 30% pay cut, which we can't afford. Paternity leave in the Netherlands sucks.
In Switzerland, until very recently it used to be 2 days of paternal leave. Basically, go to the hospital, catch up on some sleep, and get back to work men!
Now they extend it to a "very generous" 2 weeks!
Still, it used to be 2 days paid and that's it. So, it still sucks, but has gotten much better.
I wouldn't call 3 extra days "much better".
Well it's now 5 days 100% and 5 weeks 70% instead of 2 days 100%. I call that much better.
I'm curious, if you were in the office but obviously doing not-work activities like playing video games or table-top games with coworkers instead of napping would that be seen negatively?
For Japan, you could encourage growth in the economy again, and encourage population growth by simply requiring companies to give ample vacation time, and require people to use said vacation time.
It's fucking ridiculous how much time Japanese people are forced to work. They basically spend the entire day at the office, sometimes the entire night with staff because companies force staff into not mandatory but totally mandatory afterwork drinking parties, and by the time people get back to their tiny homes and apartments, they might get a Sunday off to sleep off the exhaustion, then it's back into the office.
Many Japanese youth never even see their father, meanwhile they themselves are relentlessly robbed of their time by schools, after school clubs, cram schools, English Schools, test prep, and stupid amounts of homework they're expected to finish on top of that. Many of my students are on summer holiday, but are just as busy as school time thanks to all the homework they're saddled with and the clubs and jukus certainly don't let up for summer.
Nobody respects other people's free time here, thus people don't have the energy to do anything outside of their daily cycle, let alone fuck. Why buy a game console, TV, or a nice car when you never have time to enjoy it. Why go to Okinawa, or Fukuoka or Hokkaido when you're only going to have 3 days tops to enjoy it, and if you do somehow get a week to blow, why not take the dream trip to Hawaii, and spend your money out of the country.
Japanese population and economic troubles ultimately cycle back to the end of free time that the miracle period encouraged, and the bubble economy drove into overdrive. They have tried everything but taken this issue seriously, and the only thing they've come close to resembling addressing this is creating more national holidays, which are always way off from any vacation period, and many companies try to get out of giving time off, ands those that can't expect workers to make all the time up the day after.
They are literally working themselves to death here.
I'm from Tokyo and have been working 20+ years, the idea that all Japanese work themselves to death is meme nowadays. Yes, it was like that before, and there are still a few companies like that now, but it's not representative of the whole anymore. We do get vacations. There are 16 public holidays a year, 10 vacation days required by law with an extra day for each year of service at the company, and the government will fine companies that don't force their employees to use at least half of them every year.
"Overtime" is also a bit of a joke. The average salaryman does probably 2 hours real work every day. The rest is just trying to look busy while dicking around on facebook. And attitudes about that are slowly changing too. I rarely see anyone younger than 35 hang around the office late to look busy anymore, they know there's no point because it's not going to get you a raise or a promotion anyways.
I’m also in Tokyo and happy to say that I’ve seen the culture of overtime work changing even over the last 5 years. Young people don’t want to do it. Companies that don’t allow it are more loved by the people https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-12/itochu-overtime-ban-offers-solutions-for-japan-birthrate-decline
And there’s also the rise of remote/hybrid/flex work that many people don’t want to go back from
Japan is changing and I’m very optimistic about its future!
Is it now acceptable to leave the office on time and not join the after work nomikai?
What after work nomikai? The few companies that were still doing that stopped after covid.
Ha, yeah, Japan working yourselves to death ……. With more holidays and higher minimum vacation ion than US
16 holidays and 10 vacation days a year and spending all your time at the office dicking about on Facebook is not even close to the same as "a reasonable amount of personal time". Fuck the Japanese work culture, and reform for real. Read what AgentGoldfish said below for better context.
Mate, please, he taught English here for 1 year. I've been in engineering, marketing, and finance roles for over 20. So I've got a pretty good feel for what it's like here and don't need any additional "context". Do I think we should get more time off? Yes. But go take a look at what Americans get and how much OT they work and then tell me Japanese work culture is so bad. I'll give you a hint, they get fuck all and average more OT hours than us (9 hours weekly compared to 6 in Japan). And have you ever heard of 996? That's literal slavery in China. Could Japan do better? Sure, but it's not the 80s anymore for christ sake, it's different here now.
Dude. I never said American work culture isn't garbage. But let's not be idiots and say that makes it so we can't criticize Japan's. Not to mention how much worse Japan's is, and the fact that Americans at least are trying to resist this nonsense and fight back.
What good could possibly come from unlimited population growth?
From 1973 to 2023 the world population doubled. If that trend continues, doubling every 50 years, by the year 2123 there will be 32 Billion people on Earth.
We can't even house and feed the 8 billion we have now, not to mention the ecological damage that would be inevitable due to expansion and urbanization.
Even if we just double the current population to 16 billion people 100 years from now it won't be sustainable. We need to find a new system that isn't reliant on the next generation being bigger than the previous generation because we're less than a century from it collapsing anyway. We have finite space on this planet and infinite growth will fill that up very quickly.
The main problem in Japan is the birth rate basically doesn't even replenish the outgoing population. Japan also have one of the longest life expectancy. Tell me how can you take care of 10 seniors in a retirement home if there's only 1 working age person to take care of them?
Robots!
Half the people are hand-wringing about robots taking all the jobs. The other half are hand-wringing about population decline leaving too few working-age people to do all the jobs.
Seems like these 2 problems cancel each other out.😎
The easiest way is to make sure it's not a 10:1 ratio to begin with. And, You don't need 1 nurse per person, if you give a nurse 2 patients for the day for a 2:1 ratio it's better care than most people get right now.
"The easiest solution is to simply not have a problem"
Wow thanks.
We can house and feed everyone, but we don't because it is not profitable to do so. Destroying the planet by selling and using fossil fuels makes a lot more money.
Why do these people always want to promote unlimited growth? Oh wait, higher profits
The problem with Japan right now is that it's in and heading toward decline. They can't even sustain. Wage are low, price are high. They seriously need to relax on the immigration policy.
Yep, with 0.8 birth rate there's no way to sustain the population. IIRC you need to have a birth rate of 2.1 to maintain the population.
0.8 population growth is what the earth needs. It isn't what bankers want so it isn't what we will get.
It seems stupid to be concerned with maintaining growth given the abysmal outlook of the sustainability of human society if it continues on it's current course.
But social/medical security for the elderly is also funded by workers, so I can see why population decline warrants concern.
It just seems to me that we should be focusing on things like automation and healthcare to actually solve the problem rather than trying to brute force it by increasing population everywhere. That's just not sustainable in the long term, for us nor the planet. But I am not an expert on this subject
Hospitals need workers too.
I don’t think anyone here is proposing continued growth. We’re concerned about not maintaining current society. We’re concerned about rapid (relatively) drops in population in places like Japan
If by "we" you mean people on Lemmy, then perhaps. If by "we" you mean human society then there is definitely a financial reliance on the idea of yearly GDP and company growth sheerly through population growth and corresponding efforts to maintain those growth levels.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2023/01/18/how-population-growth-matters-for-business/?sh=4254119f347c
We need to be careful to balance avoiding population decline with unchecked growth because there are definitely powerful entities that have a vested interest in promoting the latter with little regard for the consequences.
Because economics, and more specifically fractional reserve banking, require continuous growth. Without growth the whole system comes crashing down. So politics have the option to reform the financial system from the ground up but bankers have historically a tendency to assassinate those that try this, or to force the country into more growth. So they go for the second option.
Japans attitude to foreigners who decide to try and live there isn't helping this problem either.
Immigration isn't a fix. It's a permanent fix to a temporary problem
What are you trying to say here? It is or is not a fix?
Yes.
Its a bad fix that will cause more problems in the long run.
Why is that, because you think multiculturalism is bad?
For Japan? Yes.
I have so many questions to ask you...
Shoot.
A lot can be done, but their culture and traditions simply won't allow it.
They seem to rather die off as a nation rather than alter their thinking. It's sad to see, but at the same time that stubbornness to change is the most Japanese thing ever. Their culture revolves around tradition and they rather keep those traditions than open their country up to fresh, new ideas and people.
I kinda wonder if AI takes over the job market and they get universal basic income if we would see a shift back to an increasing population.
This would be almost like it's out of an Asimov novel.
Not to much. For people living in places lo Tokyo space is also a factor
It's not a problem. The system requireing growth is the problem
Ya we should all be aspiring to stop growing the population, the real issue is no one seems to be looking for solutions to making smaller populations work rather than trying to stop the decline.
Endless growth is not possible within a finite system. Population dips are inevitable and should be celebrated and accounted for.
Japan being a super racist country will now lead to their old ones rotting away without any care or help, and their social security system falling apart for the rest.
Apart from that a decreasing population is 100% positive for the planet. Especially in the case of such a wasteful and polluting country per capita like Japan.
Source on the last point?
I'm not the person you are responding to, and in general I don't agree with their post, but there are some rather strange practices in Japan which are absolutely wasteful.
Years back I used to work in the tradeshow industry. Think CES, FABTECH, SEMA and a ton of smaller industry shows. There are tradeshows all over the world but Japan was different. Japan has a "build and burn" policy. Most booths are designed to come apart, get stored in the off season in a warehouse, and are typically used many of times. They'd be used for a few years and then reskinned to cha ge their look and keep them fresh.
That's not what would happen in Japan. After every show, they would burn the booths for that show. Every. Single. Show. It was wildly inefficient. Some of these shows are massive - a little mini city put up a few weeks prior to an event, then the event runs for about a week, and then in Japan they'd take all those booths and just burn them. It's wild and I can't imagine the environmental impact of doing that after every show.
Now this was years back, so things might be different, but with how slow Japan is to change, I'd be surprised if that is the case.
I think similar with their houses. While most houses in the US can last up to hundred years. It is common in Japan for houses to depreciate to worthless in a matter of a decade. So it's common there to buy old house, demolish, and rebuild from scratch. Repeat after every 10 to 20 years.
What I've read on forums is that culturally they don't keep close ties to buildings and see old buildings as just old & obsolete buildings, so the structures are considered disposable.
This was also largely the case in America until around the time of the second world war and current historic preservation laws gained popularity after Penn Station in New York was demolished
Excellent example. They also are incredibly backwards when it comes to basic technology. Like they seem to love endless paperwork and still use fax machines. It's such a weird dichotomy where they have such advanced tech such as robots, but still are stuck in the 80s for other things.
To be fair, that's the US too. Just not the exact same things. Can't speak for other countries.
EVERY country has its idiosyncrasies but the bizarre cross between super old fashioned and bleeding edge is very much a Japanese thing. In the US a lot of that stuff wouldn't fly simply because we just don't really follow tradition. We don't usually give a shit about how things were done back-in-the-day. We aren't a particularly history focused country - for better or worse. In this case, very much for the better, for other things not so much.
I getcha and I agree. I'm being pretty vague and talking about different nuances. ^^
Fax machines?? Seriously? Do they use them so they look busy sending off faxes or something? So bizarre.
Looking busy seems to be a common theme from the many videos I've seen of Japanese work environment.
Jeez, that’s interesting!
That sure was an interesting industry to work in. Nothing quite like it, quite honestly. Learned a bunch of crazy shit like the "build and burn" stuff and a whole lot more shady business stuff as well. Don't think it will ever recover in our post-COVID world though. Those days are long done now.
Not the one you asked. I don't have any statistics, but from what I've seen of YouTubers living or visiting Japan is an obscene amount of plastic on the food wrapping/packaging. You open a cardboard box and then there's a plastic bag inside with small individual portions wrapped in plastic for instance.
While being an environment issue, the plastic wrappings have a practical purpose: protect food from roaches. In many japanese cities you cannot have food open without attracting gokiburi within a few hours. This is also why the japanese keep everything as clean as possible. Even in the shadiest places there is someone with a vaccuum and a stickytape floor roller(!) to prevent the smallest crumb from staying on the floor too long. Eating on the move in the streets is frowned upon, because fallen down crumbs attract roaches. Public trashcans are rare, because - you guessed it - roaches. You are expected to carry any trash back home and put it in a sealed bag in your trashbin. The typical size of japanese houses and flats does not offer much space for storing large food containers, so you buy your food in small portions.
Of course a more environment-friendly wrapping would be better, but it has to be able to withstand a roach nibbling on it, which is not the case for various organic-based polymers.
Climate change and global warming. Less people = less warming.
The feedback loop is already positive so no the warming will only keep incrementing. For what you say to happen the whole world population should be decimated to about 8 million people over a night. And it better be in a miraculous way, because if not, with the rotting bodies we will get disease levels that will make the black death a cakewalk.
The feedback loop is positive? I've not read that anywhere, are you sure? There's a number of tipping points, some which we may have passed already but I don't think there are any beyond the ability of mankind to counter by simply reducing emissions. Seeing as we're the greatest contributor to greenhouse gases by a mile.
Hope you're first to go! 🤞
Says the person wishing someone would die lmao
Get a grip
Super racist with the lowest crime and safest streets
Nah no correlation, let's continue to flee blue states for no reason
It's too expensive to have a kid in Japan. There aren't enough childcare to take care of the kids so one parent usually ends up staying home, making household income low.
Japan can't fix this by having bandage solutions like paying couples to have children, or subsidizing deliveries or schools. Yes, they help, but only in the short term. Prospective parents will think about long term prospects and opportunity cost in having kids. Japan has change the whole system to make it work for couples to have kids.
This problem will fix itself once all these geriatric morons die off. That goes for basically all problems in the whole world.
New geriatric morons are created daily.
nice ageism.
Remind me again what age group has more captive wealth? Twenty somethings or the elderly? Who is banned from public office? Twenty somethings or the elderly?
Give me a fucking break.
There are sadly plenty of people who are both old and poor.
Your real issue is with capitalism, not the elderly.
Could you tell me the age range that controls the gears of capital and governance?
This is like saying all Americans are the problem because the average wealth is high compared to the rest of the world when you count all the insanely rich assholes in the US in that average.
Again, I thought it was the youth that didn’t vote?
I don't know who you're responding to, but it couldn't be me since I said nothing of the sort. You'd do well not to paint with such broad brushstrokes.
Babies.
Kill them all.
Are you looking forward to the day when you're elderly and future generations blame you for events you lived through but didn't personally cause?
I thought the youth were the ones who didn’t vote?
If you're not giving up luxuries and comfort to prevent it, then you are complicit.
Bullshit, people are not just measured by their suffering, nor is life uni-dimensional.
What are you even trying to say?
If the luxuries are causing the harm, and you keep taking them, then you are complicit. End of story. Stop trying to pretend it was some kother teresa bullshit or justify your killing of current and future generations by saying life is "not dimensional".
I really wish the lemmy feature to see the conversation thread worked, so I could reply to this. Somehow I’m logged in enough to reply directly but trying to see the thread fails saying I’m not logged in
Oh? What luxuries and comforts are you giving up for the sake of future generations? It's presumptive of you to assume future scapegoating enthusiasts will care enough to carve out an exception for you when they blame huge groups of people collectively for the problems of tomorrow.
Red meat, dairy, most other animal products, driving, cheap electricity, a large house, 24/7 climate control, and cheap new clothes. Cheap imported food. Bought-new electronics. Higher paying jobs I am qualified for, higher paid jobs that require a car for no reason. Not having my face in a facial recognition database my local police makes of people recorded at protests which is used to screen public servant applications (in spite of nothing illegal happening). Just to name the most significant that immediately come to mind.
I also still own my culpability for not doing more rather than narcissistically trying to deflect blame.
Your turn, asshole.
I appreciate that you walk your talk, asshole, (since that's what we're evidently calling each other now.) Now if only you could do it without being so abrasive. I doubt future generations will look at our time in history books and say, "those jerks in the early 2000's ruined the planet, but @schroedingershat was cool." You will likely be lumped in with everyone else, just like is being done to previous generations in this thread.
I also avoid driving, flying, don't use climate control, minimize my waste, and use far fewer resources than average, but I also don't assume everyone in generations older than the one I'm part of are to blame for the ills of the world. Regardless of what groups they were born into, one should judge individuals by their own merits. Otherwise, you'll be lumping huge amounts of people together inappropriately and showering blame on them because of when they were born, without regard for the individual choices they made.
This is fine. If there is anything I can be doing differently to stop murdering current and future generations and am not, then I share some culpability. I also share blame for not reducing my impact more, sooner and for tolerating those around me who are doing far worse.
Defending the actions of the majority who do not care, or who actively care to make the problem worse is where I have an issue. You are sharing rhetoric created to help those in power amass more power and ruin the world.
I thought I was just speaking up against ageist scapegoating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Can’t force people to have kids. When the environment simply can’t support a population, it stops growing. It’s in basic biology. People can’t afford it anymore, we’re at a limit.
We’re not at any such limit. Sure overall there may be too many people, and there are certainly regions overcrowded well past sustainability. However we’re talking about developed countries, who do have resources.
Most importantly, this is not about population growth. This is about population implosion, shrinking fast enough to be a problem for their society, and all anyone is advocating gfor is a way to stabilize
I'll say it again. Pay people to have kids. A lot. Include healthcare. It's stupidly expensive to raise a kid in a developed nation and if you want to raise the birthrate you're gonna have to offset the costs. Especially since we live in a capitalist hell where must people live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Or just you know improve living conditions and people will naturally want to have kids
Many people will not have kids if that significantly effects their career prospects. Because why would you do that? I've seen with my borthers wives what it meant for them to have children and it was basically the end of their careers, no matter how hard they tried.
I'm not sure there's any way to change that for many professions - I could afford to take a few years off, but if I did then I would be a software developer who hasn't worked for years in a field that advances rapidly every year. I'm sure I would be able to find a job of some sort, but it wouldn't be as interesting, prestigious, or well-paid as what I had before.
Right, there will always be a subset who don’t want kids but there are plenty of people that I personally and no personally know of that have tried for years to have kids, that’s not for lack of interest! (I guess it’s pretty easy to perform tho haha)
All stats say the opposite. Birth rates decline as wealth of a country goes up.
No. Birth rates decline as people stop being able to afford to live— and food is the biggest factor. There is a big difference between "a nation's wealth" and "the wealth of the people".
Why not both tho
so we get professional breeder families?
why not? economy of scale or whatever
Why would we want to stop population decline when the world is already overpopulated?
We don't have an overpopulation problem. We have with resources being hoarded by a small handful of billionaires.
I walk around the supermarket. Look at the amount of plastic. Then multiply that by all supermarkets in the world. We have many problems. Many.
Yes, we have an overpopulation problem. This has nothing to do with resources being hoarded by a small handful of billionaires. I mean thats a problem, but that's and additional problem to overpopulation.
We cant continue generating trash the way we do, nor consuming earth resources, generating toxic gases. We are destroying the earth and populating the earth more is just going to accelerate that.
No, it's just a waste of resources problem. Have a look at all the stuff packaged in plastic in a supermarket, as someone else further up the comments mentioned.
Imagine all these things just not being packaged in plastic, like it was just a few decades ago.
People in the global south are consuming mere percentages of what people in the global north consume, per capita. If we were to actually cut down on the resources we waste for convenience, fun and sheer negligence, Earth could easily support much more than the current population.
At the current rate we consume ~1.7x the resources that the Earth is able to provide each year. Cut the per capita consumption by 80% (which is easily possible) and we can fit much more people onto this planet.
Not saying we shoud fit more people here, but currently we don't have overpopulation, we have overconsumption.
We have both tho. Even if we didn't have over consumption, our current total population would produce a lot of waste and consume a lot of earth resources that would be damaging to the planet
All trends point to over-population being fixed already. You just need to wait 100 years for it to manifest. But it’s not expected to stop, or stabilize, but drop “rapidly” (in a generational sense)
This is a long term problem, like global warming in the 1970’s. Our lack of action then, locked in what we are seeing now. Similarly, the forecasts for when global population peaks and begins to decline are all in this century but with too many unknowns. Given human lifetime and fertility period, this is already locked in.
Sounds good, right? The problem is population and resources are not uniform across the globe. We still have too many areas with unsustainable growth and crowding and suffering, before those stabilize. However we also have developed countries passing peak early, despite plenty of resources. The problem is that it’s not stabilizing. It’s not even a slow and steady decrease. This I jumping into cold water levels of shrinkage. This is a serious problem for stability of a society.
Imagine all the developed countries halving their population in a generation or two. This is not just about wealth, either. Consider infrastructure, consider investment and research, consider entertainment and technology, consider even conservation actions. Every part of modern life is affected by having a mature enough society to deeply specialize in niches and crannies and temporarily profit-less endeavors.
We can prevent these problems for our grandchildren now, with relatively easy steps to stabilize the population. Otherwise there will be no quick fix, and we can be leaving a disaster for a next generation You too will be one of the next “boomer” generation who doomed society for the young
What do you mean overpopulation problems were solved already? I see it otherwise.
You talk about economical problems, what about environmental problems? If you are just ignoring those, then I see what your stand is.
In a general sense, ever-increasing population is solved. As countries develop, cities and states get wealthier, fertility rates drop. Every time.
If we change nothing, population will peak, and start decreasing.
— https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth
Because it's not good for productive economies that can produce solutions to current problems to stagnate and die. Japan should make moves to encourage a sustainable population growth rate.
Overpopulation is a problem mostly in struggling economies.
Overpopulation is a problem overall. The problem with Overpopulation has nothing to do with money. It has to do with consuming earth resources, which cannot be renewed with money
Let’s give trees as an example of resource over-utilization solved by money …
North America chops down a vast amount of trees every year. For paper and wood products, building and fuel, etc. even as a temporary holiday decoration. We destroy a mind-boggling amount of trees every year. Sustainably (mostly). As a mature society with sufficient resources, we are doing a decent job of managing our forest resources for sustainability
Otherwise …. We all see the headlines screaming about “de-foresting the Amazon” and the global impact.
Do we want to focus on making the world mature enough to shepherd their resources for sustainability, or are we good with “slash and burn” farming by people desperate to survive?
But we do see headlines of de-foresting the amazon.
Its not really hard to understand. More people means more green areas need to be removed to make new homes, more spaces need to be dedicated to create food for those people, more greenhouse gases are going to be generated thus accelerating the climate change.
Population isn't the issue. It's bad management of resources and the creation of too many not-truly-disposable resources that is the issue.
What the hell to you think an overpopulation problem looks like? Jesus, talk about not understanding the problem
I mean realistically the most obvious thing to me is that something has to be done to make the prospect of having children less daunting. I can't speak to Japan, but for my friends here, in our early 30s, we're only just now getting to a place where moving out of our parents/a 5 person roommate situation is feasible. Many of us don't have long-term romantic prospects, and work all the fucking time. Ok top of that, having a kid just sounds terrifying. The cost, and amount of effort needed to see a kid not have a terrible life is daunting (I'm a teacher. Just imaging the amount of effort I, as a parent, would need to put in to have a average kid succeed in a school environment is horrifying)
I imagine a real intervention for this sort of thing looks like less work; good, free child care; our cities building culturally relevant community spaces that people actually want to go to outside of the internet; and creating a culture of community-oriented sharing of the responsibilities of caring for children. In short, we'd need to make our society one that's less hostile to having kids. That seems pretty obvious, and from my understanding, a lot of these factors are worse in Japan than in the US.
You allude to some of this, but in addition, and as a precondition, we need to make our society one that's less hostile to the people that currently exist in it.
So basically be more like northern EU.
Probably, but give us the numbers. Did it work? Does whichever Northern EU country you’re talking about, whose social programs we can all be jealous of, have stable population?
They also have less children because of the reasons mentioned above. Being good at your job and simultaneously being good as a parent is almost impossible to do.
At least one parent will have to take significant cuts to their career. Even if you are a person who would like to do that, you probably still won't because it's incredibly risky. When you get divorced or when you are old it almost certainly means being poor when you didn't focus on career.
It's been becoming like how they describe in Northern Europe over the last 15 years though. Things are better than the US in terms of statutory rights and work culture, but people are worse off in real terms than pre-2008. Especially so in the UK, which has become a low-wage high-CoL country for the overall majority of people.
In the US, we do have a similar problem, but not as bad, and covered by immigration. A significant part of our society seems caught by xenophobia and isolationism, without comprehending they are choking off their own lifeblood
However, this really needs to get more attention: Japan and Korea are just the “canaries” where most developed countries are trending. I do feel like this could be disastrous for societies, and requires long term thinking to stabilize population. I feel like the 1970’s again, trying to persuade people about global warming: if we act now, relatively cheap and minor changes can prevent the worst effects. We all know how that went
Busting nuts in Japanese ladies, probably.
I'm ready to enlist for this service.
https://media.tenor.com/An7o31StRbcAAAAd/starship-troopers.gif
Ah, I knew I'd find this coomer response somewhere in here. There's always the genius with sperm for braincells ready to make this response to these kind of articles.
Sounds like you've got me all figured out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's not hard to move to Japan. It's hard to move to Japan and earn a decent wage. I am in a high earning career when working for US companies. If I were to do the exact same job in Tokyo, I would earn less than half of my current base pay, no bonus or stock options. I know this because I was living there and interviewing a lot.. Finding work was not hard. Taking that kind of pay cut would be stupid.
The main jobs that the Japanese are happy to allow foreigners to have is mostly around teaching English. I dated many English teachers when I was there and the general consensus was that if you had a working face, you could teach English. Anyone who is unemployable in their home country can move to Japan to teach English. The catch is that you're going to earn $15-20k per year.
I deeply love living there and miss it daily but it's just not a good deal in the global labor market. If they made a remote worker visa though, I would be the first person in line to apply for it.
This is not true by any stretch of the imagination, my friend. Foreigners do all kinds of jobs over here, including jobs in manufacturing, healthcare, and service. If there were a pie graph of all the jobs foreigners do, teaching English would be a teeny tiny slice.
The top five origin countries of foreign residents coming to Japan are Vietnam, China, Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia. These people are not being employed in teaching English. The US is next, but Americans work in a lot of industries--especially IT--and not just English teaching. After that comes Thailand, Brazil, Taiwan, and Nepal to round out the top 10. Also not English teachers.
Just do what South Korea tried: Give people the "option" of working 69 hours a week.
Opening up options for immigration that allow a reasonably easy path to citizenship would help.
Short term. As a ‘Murican where our own population drop is hidden by immigration, but half our population is xenophobic and isolationist, hating all imigrants ……. Don’t steal our bandaid from us. Keep blocking immigration so our own keeps going a little longer
Well fuck.
That's what the man requested.
The anti-immigrant racism in this thread, man. Not sure if it's because the racists are Japanese, or if it's because the racists are weebs.
Genuine question, what are the upsides to population decline?
Japan is massively overcrowded. This population decline is only a bad thing if you look at population in terms of capitalism: growth growth growth!
Houses here are tiny, people don't have yards, most places don't even have sidewalks. Parking is a huge issue, especially as more families own multiple cars. Newly constructed houses often have more parking space than floorspace.
Instead of trying to come up with newfangled ways to raise the population, what we should really be doing is preparing for a future with a smaller population. The population decline is not a permanent trend; it is a correction resulting from overpopulation.
There is the very real problem that there won't be enough workers to support the retired non-workers.
Bingo. This is the problem we should be working to solve, rather than trying to convince women to squeeze out babies they don't want to have or can't afford to have. We need to come up with plans to address the changing facts, not desperately try to salvage a status quo that no longer exists.
Japan's population density is around 340/km^2 about the same as Massachusetts.
What you're describing is a lack of sprawl, which is a good thing unless you try to cram cars into it.
The only real problem you've identified is an increase in car ownership. This takes massive amount of space away from people and makes infrastructure like sidewalks necessary where previously people could just walk along the road safely.
People in Japan basically live in 5 plains and a bunch of small valleys between all the mountains...
On paper it might be 340, but that's not what it is in practice.
Japan is quite mountainous, and the land is very difficult to build on in much of it. It's not really comparable to Mass.
This is like "Tell me you've never been to Japan without saying you've never been to Japan."
I suggest coming here and seeing for yourself before you say Japan is like Massachusetts or that there is a lack of urban sprawl. This is so far from an accurate description of reality.
I would visit but my waifu body pillow scolds me when I suggest we travel.
"The Japanese people all live in one place but are spread out everywhere" isn't even a coherent statement.
And who said that? Or are we just being dishonest and not actually trying to have a discussion?
Sprawl is the opposite of high population density. You're asserting that there is both.
So yes, you are doing the former.
No, man. I didn't say that at all. And I'm not playing dumb games with dishonest people. Peace out.
Cheaper housing?
Unlike China there are tonnes of people who want to live in Japan. The only problem is that the immigration laws are extremely restrictive. They could solve this issue today, if politics gets in the way of doing so then it's on them.
Sure. Find a group of people who benefit from having more children in your country and prioritize them over everyone else to win elections.
I didn't say it was a good solution.
Democrats taking notes on how to cull the native population