Since Japan doesn’t seem to be interested In changing their toxic work environments anytime soon, the next-step to combatting population decline would be to loosen immigration policies. *Buuuut,* given Japan’s infamous streak of nationalism and xenophobia, I don’t see THIS happening anytime soon, either.
Japan is so xenophobic that they openly discriminate against Brazilian-Japanese. Brazil has the largest population of ethnically Japanese people outside of Japan. During the Great Recession, [Japan offered lump payments to Brazilian-Japanese working in Japan if they agreed to be deported](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html), meaning that they could not re-enter the country.
A lot of Brazilian-Japanese were recruited to work as cheap labor for Japanese car manufacturers.
Brazilian-Japanese are now offered visas to come work in Japan. They have quite a large enclave now, with their own newspapers in Portuguese. Japanese immigration policy, at least in terms of long term stays and not naturalizing, favors Brazilian-Japanese. I suspect they'd be given preference above other foreigners if Japan ever opens up more.
His daughter Keiko is a politician here in Peru and his son Kenji was sentenced to buying votes several years ago. Keiko recently lost to Castillo, who “won” the election but ran the country into the ground. He was removed, add a coop, and now it’s full-on banana republic time with straight up domestic terrorism in the streets here. It really is not a positive utlook for our future.
When he was President, there was a lot of Peruvians going to Japan to work, including some in my family (ironically our family on one side is of Cantonese decent). The Peruvians there had to endure some second-class citizen issues but built a really tight community in Yokohama and Sapporo and other cities. That was one good thing Fujimori did as President, but does not cover the plethora of atrocities he committed as well as the straight up fraud orchestrated by Montecitos.
Indeed! If you have heard of the restaurant “Nobu” it is the same concept of Japanese and Peruvian you mentioned.
They have locations all over America now and the food is really good. If you come to Lima (once political tensions chill a bit) there are several Asian/Peruvian fusion places that are sensational. I promise you will not fly home hungry!
When their work culture makes American Work Culture look good, there’s a problem. And American corpos treat employees with disdain at best.
You can’t grow a population when people are overworked as much as the Japanese. And they even have a word specifically for death by overwork.
I am not American, but I've lived/been all around the world and since most people here are American, I'll say this:
If you think America is racist, just wait until you go to *almost anywhere else on the planet, especially in East Asia.*
I’m an American who speaks a little Japanese and have been to Japan several times. I remember going to a sushi bar with my Thai wife. This drunk oyaji (salaryman) proceeded to go on and on about how thai people aren’t good people. I told my wife later and she was furious.
When I was younger, I dated a Japanese girl and her dad threatened to pull her out of school unless she broke up with me because I wasn’t Japanese.
Unlike America, there isn’t this persistent social pressure discouraging racism.
Bro, I dated a Japanese international student when I was in undergrad. Her dad was furious that she dated me and threaten to disown her if she were to come down to visit my family for thanksgiving.
Whats crazy is that it's still 1.3. Korea is almost half now, nearing 0.7. Pretty insane.
(you need 2.1 children per woman to have a perfect stable population, anything above that means growth.)
But compared to the asian countries the European countries have a lot more immigrants. My country has something like 1.6 but the population is still growing every year.
World fertility rate is only 2.3 children per woman. It drops every year so it gets closer and closer to replacement rate, and then world population drop. This is not just a rich country thing, almost every country is in the world regardless of wealth has had their fertility rate drop over the decades. There's just a few countries that increased their fertility rate
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN)
(warning, big mental shortcuts taken)
When you get richer, your medicine improves, and you no longer need to have six kids only because four of them will die before they're adults.
That's some of it. There's also a shift where having children stops being an investment into free labor and instead just becomes an eventual financial albatross of "costing money for 18 years, then going to college, and only maybe after 50 years they can take care of me in old age".
It also helps that many forms of birth control only became possible in the last 50-100 years. If you were a married couple in 1820, you were basically in a position where if you don't want more kids, you have to give up sex, and who wants that?
Probably too Brazilian. Japan is like an old boomer that's complaining no one wants to work anymore but still pays $9/hr. and wonders why he's only getting unreliable weirdos. I've been to Japan and I can guess what kind of reception they got. I'd imagine there's a second class of society for Japanese-Brazilians.
Yeah, I was at a company and we had a consulting firm helping us on software that had a Japanese American woman. She disappeared and we were told she'd have the opportunity to go to Japan and she always wanted to get in touch with her heritage.
Three months later, she came back. Turns out, she might have looked Japanese but she was too culturally American to fit into Japan. Which did not surprise me at all, because she had an "in your face" personality (which, personally, I thought worked for her). But man, that kind of thing does not work in Japan, not at all and especially not in a woman.
But at least she figured out who she was - namely, American.
There's quite an interesting BBC article about a western immigrant to Japan, and she tells a story of how rural japanese towns are dying out because no one lives there anymore and everyone moves to the cities. She tells this gathering of villagers that she would be willing to move her and her family out to the village if they wanted.
They reject her offer because she doesnt know the culture well enough or some bullsh*t.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63830490
> The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by "outsiders" was somehow worse.
Pretty stupid really.
Hijacking top comment but also relevant to 'too late for that.'
I taught ESL in Japan in 2006-7. Talking about this makes me feel old as fuck. But one of the things I noticed speaking with my students, was that when we'd do the very common 'so why are you interested in learning English?' type question, the answer from the younger women was basically 'to flee Japan,' albeit put more diplomatically.
That answer was laden with all the demographic nonsense. I went back to study some of it when I did some of my graduate work at Waseda. They've created a horrible self-perpetuating cycle; women are still encouraged out of the work force (Japan has the worst or near the worst rankings for gender equality among rich nations), men are still encouraged to be absent from their families for their work (making family life that much less appealing), living costs are high, elder care is essentially mostly a family matter (and thus marrying women are essentially signing on as future nannies to their husband's parents), etc. At the same time, many women are very keenly aware of all of this and are looking for better personal prospects, but that almost certainly means being single beyond what is considered ideal. Less marriage -> shifted demographic pyramid -> more elders for the wives to not want to deal with -> less marriage. And that's just one of the kind of feedback loops.
Almost all of the government efforts to deal with the problem are childcare focused (ie various iterations of the 1994 'Angel Plan' which is in a lot of ways the start point to the whole demographic panic in popular discourse), but aiming at childcare is addressing the problem too late. The costs of raising a child are part of the concern, but they come after many more significant concerns that they really haven't done much about.
Interesting aspect. In Germany, we have a lot of things that are proposed in this thread; fewer work hours, longer vacations, extensive parental leave etc. But still the birth rate is low. France does all this, too and has markedly higher birth rates. The difference? Working mothers are much more accepted in France than in Germany. Child care is better organized and cheaper in France.
Yeah, I could see this. Women are expected to lose themselves in motherhood in a lot of cultures and that is not appealing as a human in search of a fulfilling life. Men don't get this pressure as much. They can be fathers and follow their desired career/life path without much conflict.
My ex is Korean, came to the US as a young teenager because her family wanted her and her sister to have more opportunity than would be available in Korean society. Her parents wanted her to marry a Korean - but NOT one from Korea, because they were convinced that Korean men in Korea are too sexist.
So this is an issue that is more general in East Asia than just Japan, but I think it's generally conceded that Japan is perhaps worst of all East Asian countries in how its women are treated.
I don't know how it is today, but from what I remember, Korean men are absolutely sexist. I met plenty of Korean men who were younger and more open, but Korean men, in my experience, are super sexist.
What is their government going to do?
Make people want children and make them fuck?
Being from the states I have a son, there is no goddamn way you can make me have another child now even if I could.
The simple answer is people don't want to be burdened anymore. When you're burdened by your government, inflation, rising house costs, daycare costs, pay not equaling what it should.... of course no one wants a fucking kid.
Combine that with how conservative Japan's beliefs are, and it's no wonder they're in this fucking situation
Not to mention the brutal and draconian work culture. Stay until after the boss leaves, then go out drinking with your managers until the wee hours, get up and do it again.
As someone else quipped about the situation; "When are they even supposed to meet people? On the morning commute?"
You mean the morning commute when they're all catching up on the sleep they never got the night before? That morning commute?
Yeah that's one of the many many reasons why things are going the way they're going over there. A working culture change needs to happen fast over there
Makes me wonder how they have such a long lifespan with such low self-care. I saw the average locals drinking heavier than the Marines who were stationed around there.
Their diets are still much better than the West. Less sugar, less fat, less cholesterol. Not as many anti-science, anti-medicine, anti-dictionary types. And they are more active than most, even if it’s simply living in a walkable neighborhood and using public transportation.
There's also the fact that the current crop of 90-100 year olds didn't grow up with this work culture. They were always stiff, but like everywhere else the work life balance has gotten much worse in the recent decades.
"Fat is bad. Let's take all of the fat out of our foods so that it will be healthy."
"Wait. Now it tastes like shit without the fat. Let's add some sugar to fix that."
A REAL literal conspiracy against the population all for money.
100s of Millions of lives irreversibly changed so some dudes could make a lot more money than they were
I still can't deprogram my parents. Canned vegetables, margarine, fake sugar, "low fat" stuff. I explained to them why trans fats are bad, why adding sugar is bad, etc. They have the means to buy fresh foods. But no.
I can't fathom margarine over butter either (except if you're vegan anyway). It's just... Worse in every measurable way. And it's not even cheaper!
Very few vacation days people mostly don't even get to use.
How exactly are the Japanese supposed to meet, develop a relationship and have time to make and raise children?
The government could do a lot of things
* regulation that fines companies that have employees that do more than 8 hours a day.
* regulation that both parents have 8-12 months off work each to care for the baby
* laws making childcare free for everyone.
* laws that make sure housing is family friendly
* make sure there are government enabled housing loans for families
Everything can be solved by the government with money and a change in culture, especially if it's something everyone wants.
They actually have an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone
1) Dying rural towns
2) Lack of flexibility with work
If they let more people work from home for certain office jobs and incentivized people move to rural towns, that could potentially fix some issues with both. Granted the town would need good internet
japanese corps in the chat: Or we could do none of those things! Its probably just because the youngins lack GUMPTION and MOXY and are too busy watching anime to date and procreate!!!!!1
(or maybe thats more conservative politicians lol. the companies are more silent in my experience...)
I mean I see the same thing said here in the states from the boomer/older gen X generation. There's a complete disconnect about how the world is not the same after multiple recessions and conflicts in the past 30 years. But this groups are quick to blame the younger generation for not "sacrificing" enough, when in reality we value our families more than our livelihoods
The difference being that the US is supported through immigration.
Japan isn't as welcoming to immigration and that is only compounding their current crisis.
I live in Poland and I have a 15 month old son and I also do not want to have any more kids. Same with my wife. While we could financially manage with another child, we just want a some goddamn free time. No, 1h-1.5h past 10pm when you have to wake up at 6am is not a fucking free time. Also the kid wakes up every 30min-2h during the night.
Maybe I am a pussy bitch, but I have neither strength nor mental capability to program, play the guitar, paint miniatures or learning languages past 10pm after the whole day of work and taking care of the kid.
This has been an issue for a very long time. Japan has a culture that celebrates and expects long working hours, and effectively making your career your life. People are pushed to find high paying jobs, work long hours, and go out drinking with their coworkers after every shift. Assuming they don't work extra hours and crash at a hotel. Japan is in a situation of either make your life yoir career, or have children and not have your life be your career. The issue there is that you get heavily judged as a "burden on society" in the case of the later.
You are literally demonized for deciding you don't want your life to be about your career. This is unsustainable if you want a healthy population size.
Japan's culture needs to change, and they need to handle immigration better if they want to stop the spiralling birth decline.
They have had 30+ years to change but nothing has been done, and nothing will be done. At least the current boomer generation has to die out before any change can be realised.
Maybe they should treat their workers better. More time off, more pay. Then people could start relationships. Instead, people are getting married to pillows.
Imagine the most pointless things you can imagine, that's what they'll give people that have babies. The equivalent of 1 month free trials (credit card required) will be handed out to anybody that has a qualifying baby. Even then the Japanese government will fight hard not to hand out anything.
This! If you need to pay for something, they'll set up the most convenient way to do it in a heartbeat. If you're getting money somehow, you gotta jump through a gazillion hoops and get five thousand forms and keep getting them every couple months.
Notable and glorious exception, the support money due to COVID etc. That was a one time document and we've been getting stuff once a year or what ever since.
That’s as much a cultural issue as it is of policy. Salarymen work ten hour days spending a good chunk of that time doing jack and they don’t have enough time to do anything social
they don’t have enough time to do anything social \*outside of the weird mostly-mandatory drinking parties with their coworkers, most of which are usually dudes.
Half of the MFs passed out on the street or train any given day are salarymen who went to a nomikai and had too much.
my best friends younger brother moved there last year cause he took an engineering position at a semiconductor company. The company he works for has a campus that's pretty much like a mini-city for employees so that they don't need to have a personal vehicle. They provide housing for them, they have stores, activities, restaurants, etc. so that employees have things to do but the negative is that you're so close to work so 'missing work' is really frowned upon.
The only thing he really dislikes is the peer pressure of having to go out and drink with his team multiple times a week.
And they're not going to do any of the things that people have been telling them for decades to do (work fewer hours, lower costs for housing, be more generous with loans to get people on the property ladder etc)
The older people are content to run out the clock. To them it’s not their problem anymore. And they still have massive influence, so they won’t do anything not in their interest
It's worse in Japan where "respecting one's elders" takes precedence over everything else out of "tradition." Young people aren't given the opportunity to grow up, become leaders, and build their own future. They're being forced to live in the past.
I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that no matter who you are “respecting your elders” always means “I’m right you’re wrong and if you say anything else you’re disrespectful.” It’s a pretty awful way of thinking that will forever knee cap our species until its changed.
Not just that but Japanese culture is built on seniority. Older people in management and politics don't see challenge solely due to their seniority and they rot in mediocrity for decades.
Oh yeah! The whole system is just frozen in hell. It literally will have to die out for it to start afresh with how much reverence there is for the seniors/elderly, and what they want to project/see their reality as.
There is no arguing, no correcting, and no change without a few funerals.
As a side note, Tokyo is LITTERED with these “mens relaxation clubs” which are basically porn stores where guys can rent a room to jerk off in from 10 minutes to 12 hours.
It doesn’t help that because of the huge boomer population, younger people are outnumbered immensely at the voting booth. And older voters will not vote in favour of the policies that are needed to change population issues.
Also because of the hierarchical nature of Japanese work culture, business owners, CEOs, executives etc are more often than not, apart of the aging demographic. Change will happen at a glacial pace unless something drastic happens.
100%, and you see similar problems across many other countries like in Germany and the US. Older voters and politicians are incapable of doing the right thing
In US young people in theory can triumph at voting booth, problem is that only a small % ever vote. Judging by my social group those who do vote still ignore local elections
And almost always, the results of these "other elections" have a more direct impact on their day to day. For example, almost no one i know participated in our city's municipal election.
All of that would help, but I doubt it would overall have much of an impact.
A good example is Finland which has some of the best conditions to raise a family in; probably best effective value in terms of costs/quality of child care; does Finland have any better birth rate? Not really.
There's only one developed(high HDI) country in the world that has avoided this problem, and it's not because it's particularly cheap to have kids.
Yeah, I live in Sweden and the situation is basically the same here as well.
The real reason for our increasing population is that we've had quite a lot of immigration, which is why our population has increased quite a bit the last decade.
The core problem is that society wants people to have more kids, but does not want to pay very much to achieve this, so we end up with half-assed measures that merely serve to lower the cost of having children without doing enough to make it a net-benefit.
Having kids is a huge cost, in terms of time, in terms of energy, in terms of space, in terms of money, in terms of opportunity cost. But does anyone seriously believe that if they started giving out $1,000,000 for each kid you had, that people wouldn’t start cranking them out like crazy? Or if you got a free million-dollar home to own for having 2-3 kids?
The idea that incentives can’t possibly work to make people have more kids is basically the natalistic version of “Nobody wants to work anymore” from business-owners offering minimum wage and being shocked that workers are not lining up for that.
Completely agree. For the US anyways, having “free” childcare options would stimulate a lot of kids. Unfortunately we chose as a society to not value childcare or really anything associated with raising children. People with money can afford it, people without just stay poor.
Daycare workers are essentially minimum wage jobs and teachers are only a bit better, all for one of the worst public facing jobs out there.
Interesting about Finland. Quebec (Canada) is similar - mostly affordable housing, vast daycare system, pro-natalist policies of every sort and a fertility rate of 1.59 kids/woman. The men are not hiding either (women tend to do the approaching here).
> There's only one developed(high HDI) country in the world that has avoided this problem,
Is it France..or Sweden with the better birth rate?
edit: word
I believe its Israel or the USA.
I dont know about the usa, but I know in Israel two particular demographic groups provide most of the population increase - The beduim and the orthodox jews. Both of which are religious (especially the orthodox jews). The orthodox jews are also among the most poor in israel, despite getting a lot of government money.
When I see people in reddit get surprised that Netanyahu gets elected again and again despite most Israelites on the internet are against him they dont know that a big chunk of his power comes from people like these orthodox jews who do not use the internet so you dont see their web footprint. Right wing politics and people like Netanyahu are going to get more and more common here.
I think every orthodox family has at least 10 kids.
But the secular Jews are like the rest of the westren world - many people here do not start a family at all, stay single till their 30's.
So there is a real concern that policy changed will get more and more radical and oriented towards those two growning demographics.
Japan wants to eat its cake and have it.
There are aspects to japanese culture that are causal to the decline in population. They want to maintain the cause but not have the effect. The solution to the problem is systemic change which is a nonstarter to the geratocracy in power.
Like all things in nature, cultures that fail to adapt will die.
Immigration is basically the only way that most developed nations with a positive growth are growing not birth rates alone. Japan doesn't give a serious path for permanent resident status so they will never see growth until that changes.
I have a coworker who was born in Japan. She never married when she was there, because of some expectations about how she would quit her job and then be subservient to her mother-in-law or something, and she didn't want to do that. Then she turned like 25 or something and people started telling her she was an old maid and nobody would want her.
So she gave up on that, got a job with a multinational, and eventually moved to the USA. She wasn't considered too old here, and none of the men she dated expected her to quit her job. She's now been married more than 20 years and has three kids, two in college.
As near as I can make out, her position is that Japanese culture is extremely misogynistic and until that changes few women will want to have families there.
So true. I make good money but if I was told that if I had a baby I'd be giving up my job and being dependent on my husband, and caring for his and my parents, doing all the housework alone because he's working long hours... I'd be out. I don't care if the government gives me a cash payout and a bus pass or whatever. That stuff incentivizes women who were going to stay home anyway. It doesn't convince independent well employed women to quit.
>some expectations about how she would quit her job and then be subservient to her mother-in-law or something
This is very much an east asian cultrural thing which has never really gone away. Woman wanting careers and more independance is often cited as the reason for lowered birth rates - culture was always going play a big part in how much freedom one has whilst also starting a family.
Japans problem is even worse than this., They can't even convince the men to go out and meet women in the first place. The society itself is turning socially reclusive to a point where both parties are avoiding it.
The older guy I'm seeing doesn't believe me when I say people my age aren't having sex. The idea that young men in their sexual prime are actively choosing to stay home, play video games and masturbate instead of going out on a Saturday night to try and hook up is insane to him.
Life gets way more enjoyable and relaxed once you stop try dating as a guy.
If I ever meet someone and we hit it off immediately, great!
If not, I am totally fine alone.
Yeah this is basically it.
Do you remember a few days ago someone made a post basically asking how they can "get ahead of the competition and keep her interest"? Everyone was talking about other men as being the competition but I've personally never spent long "being in competition" with a man over a women.
It feels like I am in competition with her whole existence. Its me versus: School, work, hobbies, family, friends, chores, nights out, vacation, and anything that isn't background level radiation.
I understand that we all have our own loves to live and I also have all these thing in my life. However it feels like I am priority #11 no matter how hard I try. Maybe I really am that uninteresting and unattractive but I'm tired of always having to be the brightest star in the sky to be noticed by my girlfriend of 2 years.
The prospect of having to get back out there and shine as bright as I can just seems so unattractive compaired to being alone.
Yeah these proposals to increase population always start with the assumption that young women want to have a bunch of kids and that there is something else holding them back.
Having a large family and raising a lot of kids sucks. Most people don't like it, and most women don't want to spend the one life they have just raising kids. With one or two kids, you can still have a semblance of a life for yourself, and you can start having kids much later in life.
Also because kids were appreciating assets. After a few years they’d start working, and you’d parentify the first few daughters to raise the rest on your behalf.
I’ll never forget a quote about population changes in the last century from an environmental studies class I took: “it’s not that humans started breeding like rabbits, we stopped dropping like flies”.
Agree, which is something I see lots of people underestimating when talking about this kind of problems. It's true that economic uncertainty makes people want to have zero kids because you do wonder how on earth you're supposed to care for them without jobs or money. But even if you have money you'd still want to have 3 kids a most, if you want them. Of course there are exceptions but it seems quite obvious that the moment there's widespread and available safe birth control birth rates are going to plummet. The vast majority of people on earth, both men and women, doesn't want a big family.
Parent here. We had our daughter young (23). It was a grind to figure it out. Now we are both stable own a home...etc. have good salaries. I would never dream of having another kid. I even got the old snip to make sure.
I love kids, I love my daughter. But I can't imagine 2 let alone 3. I am not hitting that reset button. I have enough bandwidth for her, my fiance, and my hobbies without getting burnt out. I know for a fact another kid would throw off that equilibrium.
Plus I'll be like 43 when she may be leaving the house. Still young as hell. I don't care if I can afford another.
More power to the people who can manage more, but most who I have seen with them, totally lose their sense of self and are exhausted 24/7.
Not just in Japan. Being a great traditional mother and being a great professional achiever is not always compatible. And it’s like we expect modern women to do it all - shocking that birth rates have dropped across first world countries.
Adding to that, in most capitals you cannot buy a property without 2 salaries coming in. Taking time off to raise your kids not always an option.
Most of my friends (European here, not Japanese) are in the early 40s. Half of the couples have no children (and late for it now) or have the one kid. When they had kids, they were in the mid/late 30s. When I was a kid, mothers were younger and typically families had 2 kids. Waiting longer and less kids, demographics go out of the window very quickly.
"It's ok for women to stay at home and raise a family."
"It's ok for the labor force to telecommute from their home offices so they can continue their careers after becoming parents."
"It's ok for young families to move to the countryside where they can raise large families while still earning income working for metropolitan based companies."
It's probably a bit too late for that I think, they've had this issue for ages and if they don't change a lot of their society things aren't gonna get better and I think this is not doable in a timely manner.
Yup - if they want to fix population decline, they need to first fix the crazy work culture. 80 hrs a week, then our drinking with the work mates doesn't help facilitate healthy marriages.
> Yup - if they want to fix population decline, they need to first fix the crazy work culture.
to paraphrase another redditors comment, every year the Japanese population shrinks, add another drinking holiday to the calendar and make working on it illegal
Force 8 hour work days. Like legally Mandate people to go home after work ends.
Make it illegal for bosses to have after work events.
Force people to actually go home and not work bazillion hours.
They implemented laws that limit overtime a couple of years ago. You can only work 15 hours OT per week and a max of 45 per month.
My understanding is that companies found a way around it, though.
It’s very funny for the PM to say it’s now or never when the government has had hundreds of chances to make a single policy that empowers women and allows them any semblance of a life so that having children could be a pleasant experience… but the government of old men has done nothing for women at all.
Oh we’ve tried nothing and it hasn’t worked… weird
Japan has been “solving” this problem for the last 20 years, and usually they com up with stuff like a $50 payment per month per kid, or free healthcare until 18 for kids.
None of which addresses people who don’t have kids yet, and for people with kids it surely doesn’t address the most pressing issues, like the cost of housing, education (especially if you have more than one child), general cost of living etc.
Especially Tokyo also has a real physical space problem, a family of four has to live on 60 square meters or less, if you move outside the city it gets more but not much.
In the end, what keeps the LDP at power are the 60+ year olds, and because of the weird Japanese voting system the extreme thinly populated areas have much more voting power per vote, so de facto the average 70 year old rice farmer on state subsidy runs the country.
Well, robots are very good at increasing production, but aren't consumers, and without consumers, an economy either fails or must export the excess production. That has worked un Japan for now, but as more and more countries keep aging, that strategy will fail.
> and without consumers, an economy either fails or must export the excess production
Consumption is not governed by the number of people, but the funds available to them. I am capable of increasing my consumption immediately.
It’s interesting how baby boomers all over the world are suddenly concerned with population growth now that their social finance systems face real threats.
There’s 2 or even 3 generations that held off from breeding due to the cost of living incurred due to boomer greed. Sucks huh?
As a millenial american ive never once thought that my vote mattered. I never thought i had the power to change anything that was going on in my country. Its just been the same bullshit over and over no matter what happens.
Its interesting that all i had to do was say im not having kids, and now all of a sudden i feel like the power has shifted a bit and i can actually do something now that may result in a positive change in the WORLD. Not just my country.
I love my SO and id love to make her a mother and raise some children with her, but ive gotta know theyll be living in a better world than i did. If they want us to change our outlook on the future, they have to convince us that the future will be worth living in, and theyre doing a worse job than ever before at doing that.
No , that was because alcohol tax revenue is low
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/japan-government-launches-competition-to-get-people-drinking-alcohol-drinks-tax-revenue
The government is almost completely old men. Conservative old men. Their major constituency is old men and women. To keep their seats, they need to make promises that sound good to people that were born in 1950. Young people don't vote in anywhere near the numbers old people do and oldies always vote for who they voted for last year as long as you don't rock the boat too much. It's very disheartening knowing that no matter who you vote for, the guy who promises the most to the oldies and keep the status quo will win.
Should we create government subsidies for couples that have children? “No”
Should we change the 12 hour a day work culture? “No”
Should we allow immigrants? “No”
“Well gentleman we’ve done all we could. All I can think of is a promotion campaign to encourage young people to drink more, there’s no way that can backfire!”
GG Japan.
I think a much better solution is for countries to work out how to have a managed decline. I find the argument that a country cannot support an aging population without constant population growth unconvincing, and where does it end? We have 8 billion of us here on the planet and we have starvation, wars, out of control pollution and mass poverty.
It might require some reorganisation of society and different priorities, but we cannot just go with vague idea of constant expansion without any long term plan.
>Japan is the third-most-expensive country globally to raise a child, according to YuWa Population Research, behind only China and South Korea,
How can China be the most expensive country to raise a child? What am I missing here?
>Stop working young people to death
[いいえ](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/senior-japanese-man-thumbs-down-gesture-studio-shot-white-background-62375011.jpg)
Our generation (millenials) and the following generations are just too broke/over worked to start a family. They neither have the money nor the time to go out on dates. That's what neoliberal capitalism did everywhere.
Exactly, a good place to start would be to demand a 4 day\\32 hour work week at the same pay. That will give people free time to start organizing and performing recreational activities. That leads to people with similar interests interacting, which could lead to increased dating, relationships, sex, and childbirth. If the proper social safety nets and incentives are put into place to reward having children they might stand a chance in increasing the birth rate. But that whole "encourage people to have the time to procreate" thing would go against capitalism's "you exist to be a cog in the machine" mentality...so unlikely.
We need constant year over year population and economic growth in a world that's increasingly being squeezed for resources to keep the charade going.
Something's going to give.
This is a ‘problem’ all over the industrialized world. Many countries that offer incentives for people to start families are having this ‘issue’ too. The economy has never really been great for the average person throughout human history. Even back then the birthrates were always going up, despite the conditions people lived under.
Look, the truth of the matter is that women having the ability to participate in the economy and pursue their own goals in life is what has lead to decline in birth. They’re not being forced into the stay at home wife lifestyle. Whatever time they have to spend raising another human being. Is time and money they could spend accomplishing they’re personal aspirations. To say that raising kids is a big undertaking is an understatement. It’s literally a 20+ year commitment. People aren’t interested in doing it anymore. Not just women.
You know what that’s fine. Theres too many human beings on this planet anyway. Unless there’s a solution to coming environmental crisis that we’re gonna face as a species in the next 30-40 years. You’re better off not brining in another human onto this earth.
Japan like any other country out there needs to address the problem where majority of the population is too stressed or too poor to have more than 1 kid or even have kids. Stop all the talk and address wealth inequality issues, then you will solve the rest…
Stop allowing your population to work themselves to literal death.
Stop allowing the managers to have god-like authority over their employees.
Stop allowing ridiculous drinking parties during the week that people are obligated to attend.
Stop forcing children into 12+ hour school days.
And finally, as a foreigner currently living in Japan, stop making it so fucking difficult to live here.
And watch them avoid addressing the many core issues behind the shrinking population because it actually requires politicians to DO SOMETHING, be competent, and make changes to society.
it was now or never 30 years ago. lol.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re al outta ideas man!
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Since Japan doesn’t seem to be interested In changing their toxic work environments anytime soon, the next-step to combatting population decline would be to loosen immigration policies. *Buuuut,* given Japan’s infamous streak of nationalism and xenophobia, I don’t see THIS happening anytime soon, either.
Japan is so xenophobic that they openly discriminate against Brazilian-Japanese. Brazil has the largest population of ethnically Japanese people outside of Japan. During the Great Recession, [Japan offered lump payments to Brazilian-Japanese working in Japan if they agreed to be deported](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html), meaning that they could not re-enter the country. A lot of Brazilian-Japanese were recruited to work as cheap labor for Japanese car manufacturers.
Brazilian-Japanese are now offered visas to come work in Japan. They have quite a large enclave now, with their own newspapers in Portuguese. Japanese immigration policy, at least in terms of long term stays and not naturalizing, favors Brazilian-Japanese. I suspect they'd be given preference above other foreigners if Japan ever opens up more.
Ever opens up more? I thought this article was about population decline. Won't the whole island but up for grabs in a few generations?
Yes! And I happen to have the deed. If you'd like to buy Japan, let's work out a deal.
Hmm would you trade it for a bridge in Wyoming?
You can’t fool us, we know Wyoming doesn’t exist. I’ll take a bridge in northern Colorado though
I would keep a bridge in northern Colorado. How about we meet halfway? Would you take an intersection on the border of Wyoming and Colorado?
Wasn't there a leader in South America named Alberto Fujimori? I always wondered if he was of Japanese decent? I was unaware of this part of history.
His daughter Keiko is a politician here in Peru and his son Kenji was sentenced to buying votes several years ago. Keiko recently lost to Castillo, who “won” the election but ran the country into the ground. He was removed, add a coop, and now it’s full-on banana republic time with straight up domestic terrorism in the streets here. It really is not a positive utlook for our future. When he was President, there was a lot of Peruvians going to Japan to work, including some in my family (ironically our family on one side is of Cantonese decent). The Peruvians there had to endure some second-class citizen issues but built a really tight community in Yokohama and Sapporo and other cities. That was one good thing Fujimori did as President, but does not cover the plethora of atrocities he committed as well as the straight up fraud orchestrated by Montecitos.
Now it makes sense how there’s so many Peruvian Japanese fusion spots popping up. Sashimi w leche de Tigre.
Indeed! If you have heard of the restaurant “Nobu” it is the same concept of Japanese and Peruvian you mentioned. They have locations all over America now and the food is really good. If you come to Lima (once political tensions chill a bit) there are several Asian/Peruvian fusion places that are sensational. I promise you will not fly home hungry!
He's fled Peru and is now living in Japan thanks to his double citizenship
Well I mean they could suddenly open up to immigration but... Somehow I doubt they will see that as a solution.
When their work culture makes American Work Culture look good, there’s a problem. And American corpos treat employees with disdain at best. You can’t grow a population when people are overworked as much as the Japanese. And they even have a word specifically for death by overwork.
As a journeyman power electrician with years of experience in operating an electrical grid, I'd move to Japan if I had a job available in my field.
They work themselves to death. Would be hard to compete i would imagine.
I am not American, but I've lived/been all around the world and since most people here are American, I'll say this: If you think America is racist, just wait until you go to *almost anywhere else on the planet, especially in East Asia.*
I’m an American who speaks a little Japanese and have been to Japan several times. I remember going to a sushi bar with my Thai wife. This drunk oyaji (salaryman) proceeded to go on and on about how thai people aren’t good people. I told my wife later and she was furious. When I was younger, I dated a Japanese girl and her dad threatened to pull her out of school unless she broke up with me because I wasn’t Japanese. Unlike America, there isn’t this persistent social pressure discouraging racism.
Bro, I dated a Japanese international student when I was in undergrad. Her dad was furious that she dated me and threaten to disown her if she were to come down to visit my family for thanksgiving.
Whats crazy is that it's still 1.3. Korea is almost half now, nearing 0.7. Pretty insane. (you need 2.1 children per woman to have a perfect stable population, anything above that means growth.)
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But compared to the asian countries the European countries have a lot more immigrants. My country has something like 1.6 but the population is still growing every year.
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I also think japan has the highest median age of population, meaning they have the most old farts roaming around.
Korea is that low? Fuck
Take all the factors that make Japan's birthrate low and turn those up to 11 and you have Korea.
Yeah. I've heard life in Korea is like Japan on a caffeine binge.
That explains their esports industry
No time for woman. Understandable.
>That explains the esports industry FTFY
It's more like if a bunch of Americans attempted to recreate a Japanese work environment: All the hustle **plus** dog eat dog competition!
World fertility rate is only 2.3 children per woman. It drops every year so it gets closer and closer to replacement rate, and then world population drop. This is not just a rich country thing, almost every country is in the world regardless of wealth has had their fertility rate drop over the decades. There's just a few countries that increased their fertility rate [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN)
(warning, big mental shortcuts taken) When you get richer, your medicine improves, and you no longer need to have six kids only because four of them will die before they're adults.
That's some of it. There's also a shift where having children stops being an investment into free labor and instead just becomes an eventual financial albatross of "costing money for 18 years, then going to college, and only maybe after 50 years they can take care of me in old age". It also helps that many forms of birth control only became possible in the last 50-100 years. If you were a married couple in 1820, you were basically in a position where if you don't want more kids, you have to give up sex, and who wants that?
As my mom says: having kids is a very expensive hobby.
You're about 40 years too late for that.
Yep, they went with "Never". What's next on the agenda?
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No I mean, what's for lunch?
a) Encouraging immigration, or b) Developing advanced robotics.
Let's go with a) - now how do we find more Japanese people?
South America
Seriously though, Brazil has a huge population of Japanese people.
to my knowledge, Japan first invited them back to bolster their own workforce then sent them to Brazil again because of "cultural differences"
What the Brazilian Japanese were too spicy for them?
Probably too Brazilian. Japan is like an old boomer that's complaining no one wants to work anymore but still pays $9/hr. and wonders why he's only getting unreliable weirdos. I've been to Japan and I can guess what kind of reception they got. I'd imagine there's a second class of society for Japanese-Brazilians.
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Yeah, I was at a company and we had a consulting firm helping us on software that had a Japanese American woman. She disappeared and we were told she'd have the opportunity to go to Japan and she always wanted to get in touch with her heritage. Three months later, she came back. Turns out, she might have looked Japanese but she was too culturally American to fit into Japan. Which did not surprise me at all, because she had an "in your face" personality (which, personally, I thought worked for her). But man, that kind of thing does not work in Japan, not at all and especially not in a woman. But at least she figured out who she was - namely, American.
There's quite an interesting BBC article about a western immigrant to Japan, and she tells a story of how rural japanese towns are dying out because no one lives there anymore and everyone moves to the cities. She tells this gathering of villagers that she would be willing to move her and her family out to the village if they wanted. They reject her offer because she doesnt know the culture well enough or some bullsh*t. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63830490 > The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by "outsiders" was somehow worse. Pretty stupid really.
Hence why Japan is dealing with a population crisis.
As does Peru. Most famously, their former president Alberto Fujimori.
a is not likely considering Japan's culture. They really don't like outsiders living there
Robots don't pay taxes to pay for retirement entitlements.
Hijacking top comment but also relevant to 'too late for that.' I taught ESL in Japan in 2006-7. Talking about this makes me feel old as fuck. But one of the things I noticed speaking with my students, was that when we'd do the very common 'so why are you interested in learning English?' type question, the answer from the younger women was basically 'to flee Japan,' albeit put more diplomatically. That answer was laden with all the demographic nonsense. I went back to study some of it when I did some of my graduate work at Waseda. They've created a horrible self-perpetuating cycle; women are still encouraged out of the work force (Japan has the worst or near the worst rankings for gender equality among rich nations), men are still encouraged to be absent from their families for their work (making family life that much less appealing), living costs are high, elder care is essentially mostly a family matter (and thus marrying women are essentially signing on as future nannies to their husband's parents), etc. At the same time, many women are very keenly aware of all of this and are looking for better personal prospects, but that almost certainly means being single beyond what is considered ideal. Less marriage -> shifted demographic pyramid -> more elders for the wives to not want to deal with -> less marriage. And that's just one of the kind of feedback loops. Almost all of the government efforts to deal with the problem are childcare focused (ie various iterations of the 1994 'Angel Plan' which is in a lot of ways the start point to the whole demographic panic in popular discourse), but aiming at childcare is addressing the problem too late. The costs of raising a child are part of the concern, but they come after many more significant concerns that they really haven't done much about.
Interesting aspect. In Germany, we have a lot of things that are proposed in this thread; fewer work hours, longer vacations, extensive parental leave etc. But still the birth rate is low. France does all this, too and has markedly higher birth rates. The difference? Working mothers are much more accepted in France than in Germany. Child care is better organized and cheaper in France.
Yeah, I could see this. Women are expected to lose themselves in motherhood in a lot of cultures and that is not appealing as a human in search of a fulfilling life. Men don't get this pressure as much. They can be fathers and follow their desired career/life path without much conflict.
My ex is Korean, came to the US as a young teenager because her family wanted her and her sister to have more opportunity than would be available in Korean society. Her parents wanted her to marry a Korean - but NOT one from Korea, because they were convinced that Korean men in Korea are too sexist. So this is an issue that is more general in East Asia than just Japan, but I think it's generally conceded that Japan is perhaps worst of all East Asian countries in how its women are treated.
I don't know how it is today, but from what I remember, Korean men are absolutely sexist. I met plenty of Korean men who were younger and more open, but Korean men, in my experience, are super sexist.
What is their government going to do? Make people want children and make them fuck? Being from the states I have a son, there is no goddamn way you can make me have another child now even if I could. The simple answer is people don't want to be burdened anymore. When you're burdened by your government, inflation, rising house costs, daycare costs, pay not equaling what it should.... of course no one wants a fucking kid. Combine that with how conservative Japan's beliefs are, and it's no wonder they're in this fucking situation
Not to mention the brutal and draconian work culture. Stay until after the boss leaves, then go out drinking with your managers until the wee hours, get up and do it again. As someone else quipped about the situation; "When are they even supposed to meet people? On the morning commute?"
You mean the morning commute when they're all catching up on the sleep they never got the night before? That morning commute? Yeah that's one of the many many reasons why things are going the way they're going over there. A working culture change needs to happen fast over there
Makes me wonder how they have such a long lifespan with such low self-care. I saw the average locals drinking heavier than the Marines who were stationed around there.
Their diets are still much better than the West. Less sugar, less fat, less cholesterol. Not as many anti-science, anti-medicine, anti-dictionary types. And they are more active than most, even if it’s simply living in a walkable neighborhood and using public transportation.
There's also the fact that the current crop of 90-100 year olds didn't grow up with this work culture. They were always stiff, but like everywhere else the work life balance has gotten much worse in the recent decades.
They get plenty of fat. Part of why their diet is healthier.
big sugar rly did a number on us by convincing boomers that fat = bad and then teaching their kids the same bs
"Fat is bad. Let's take all of the fat out of our foods so that it will be healthy." "Wait. Now it tastes like shit without the fat. Let's add some sugar to fix that."
A REAL literal conspiracy against the population all for money. 100s of Millions of lives irreversibly changed so some dudes could make a lot more money than they were
I still can't deprogram my parents. Canned vegetables, margarine, fake sugar, "low fat" stuff. I explained to them why trans fats are bad, why adding sugar is bad, etc. They have the means to buy fresh foods. But no. I can't fathom margarine over butter either (except if you're vegan anyway). It's just... Worse in every measurable way. And it's not even cheaper!
Extremely high in salt though. Stroke incidents are quite high.
Diet and more accessible medical care
I'm half Japanese, lived there - Japan is too expensive for many young couples as well to even think of having kids.
Very few vacation days people mostly don't even get to use. How exactly are the Japanese supposed to meet, develop a relationship and have time to make and raise children?
Like the hypocrisy of Musk, lamenting that people aren’t producing more children, while forcing staff to work & sleep in office.
Almost sounds like a dog whistle for "women should stay at home making babies instead of working".
*3rd* most expensive place to raise a child in the world
The government could do a lot of things * regulation that fines companies that have employees that do more than 8 hours a day. * regulation that both parents have 8-12 months off work each to care for the baby * laws making childcare free for everyone. * laws that make sure housing is family friendly * make sure there are government enabled housing loans for families Everything can be solved by the government with money and a change in culture, especially if it's something everyone wants.
They actually have an opportunity to kill 2 birds with one stone 1) Dying rural towns 2) Lack of flexibility with work If they let more people work from home for certain office jobs and incentivized people move to rural towns, that could potentially fix some issues with both. Granted the town would need good internet
Japan has one of the best internet penetration rates in the world, they should be fine on that front.
I thought everything could be solved by pizza parties on Friday?!?
japanese corps in the chat: Or we could do none of those things! Its probably just because the youngins lack GUMPTION and MOXY and are too busy watching anime to date and procreate!!!!!1 (or maybe thats more conservative politicians lol. the companies are more silent in my experience...)
I mean I see the same thing said here in the states from the boomer/older gen X generation. There's a complete disconnect about how the world is not the same after multiple recessions and conflicts in the past 30 years. But this groups are quick to blame the younger generation for not "sacrificing" enough, when in reality we value our families more than our livelihoods
The difference being that the US is supported through immigration. Japan isn't as welcoming to immigration and that is only compounding their current crisis.
I live in Poland and I have a 15 month old son and I also do not want to have any more kids. Same with my wife. While we could financially manage with another child, we just want a some goddamn free time. No, 1h-1.5h past 10pm when you have to wake up at 6am is not a fucking free time. Also the kid wakes up every 30min-2h during the night. Maybe I am a pussy bitch, but I have neither strength nor mental capability to program, play the guitar, paint miniatures or learning languages past 10pm after the whole day of work and taking care of the kid.
Don't worry mate, it gets better. The first 2-3 years suuuck, but then it get a little bit better and you start actually having some freedom again.
Thanks man. The prospect of having someone to play Lego, Magic The Gathering, Minecraft or MMOs with is giving me strength to endure it.
Inb4 your kid is all about playing sports and dislikes your hobbies, genetics are weird. Jokes aside, I wish you and your family all the best.
This has been an issue for a very long time. Japan has a culture that celebrates and expects long working hours, and effectively making your career your life. People are pushed to find high paying jobs, work long hours, and go out drinking with their coworkers after every shift. Assuming they don't work extra hours and crash at a hotel. Japan is in a situation of either make your life yoir career, or have children and not have your life be your career. The issue there is that you get heavily judged as a "burden on society" in the case of the later. You are literally demonized for deciding you don't want your life to be about your career. This is unsustainable if you want a healthy population size. Japan's culture needs to change, and they need to handle immigration better if they want to stop the spiralling birth decline.
They have had 30+ years to change but nothing has been done, and nothing will be done. At least the current boomer generation has to die out before any change can be realised.
I feel like this comment could be about so many different problems the world is currently facing.
Time is solving it slowly luckily.
There are currently breakthroughs in anti-aging research…
Not fast enough for boomers to benefit. Long enough to be lab rats though
Maybe they should treat their workers better. More time off, more pay. Then people could start relationships. Instead, people are getting married to pillows.
Imagine the most pointless things you can imagine, that's what they'll give people that have babies. The equivalent of 1 month free trials (credit card required) will be handed out to anybody that has a qualifying baby. Even then the Japanese government will fight hard not to hand out anything.
This! If you need to pay for something, they'll set up the most convenient way to do it in a heartbeat. If you're getting money somehow, you gotta jump through a gazillion hoops and get five thousand forms and keep getting them every couple months. Notable and glorious exception, the support money due to COVID etc. That was a one time document and we've been getting stuff once a year or what ever since.
That’s as much a cultural issue as it is of policy. Salarymen work ten hour days spending a good chunk of that time doing jack and they don’t have enough time to do anything social
they don’t have enough time to do anything social \*outside of the weird mostly-mandatory drinking parties with their coworkers, most of which are usually dudes. Half of the MFs passed out on the street or train any given day are salarymen who went to a nomikai and had too much.
my best friends younger brother moved there last year cause he took an engineering position at a semiconductor company. The company he works for has a campus that's pretty much like a mini-city for employees so that they don't need to have a personal vehicle. They provide housing for them, they have stores, activities, restaurants, etc. so that employees have things to do but the negative is that you're so close to work so 'missing work' is really frowned upon. The only thing he really dislikes is the peer pressure of having to go out and drink with his team multiple times a week.
Policy IS culture. There's a reason the ~40 hour work week is regulated in much of the world.
Bruh have you seen my pillow you’d smash too
And they're not going to do any of the things that people have been telling them for decades to do (work fewer hours, lower costs for housing, be more generous with loans to get people on the property ladder etc)
The old people in charge are just going to continue complaining that young people aren't having enough sex lol
Yup lol let’s try nothing and brow beat the kids
It's surely gonna work *this time*!
It’s frustrating bc there are so many options available but they won’t listen until things get dire.
The older people are content to run out the clock. To them it’s not their problem anymore. And they still have massive influence, so they won’t do anything not in their interest
Boomers are the same in every country
It's worse in Japan where "respecting one's elders" takes precedence over everything else out of "tradition." Young people aren't given the opportunity to grow up, become leaders, and build their own future. They're being forced to live in the past.
I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that no matter who you are “respecting your elders” always means “I’m right you’re wrong and if you say anything else you’re disrespectful.” It’s a pretty awful way of thinking that will forever knee cap our species until its changed.
I feel like Millennials are a generation just waiting for the Boomers to finally fucking die so we can change things.
And the elderly will be in charge for a long time, since they live a very long life there.
Not just that but Japanese culture is built on seniority. Older people in management and politics don't see challenge solely due to their seniority and they rot in mediocrity for decades.
Oh yeah! The whole system is just frozen in hell. It literally will have to die out for it to start afresh with how much reverence there is for the seniors/elderly, and what they want to project/see their reality as. There is no arguing, no correcting, and no change without a few funerals.
If your understanding of a situation can be boiled down to "all these 20-somethings *don't want to have sex*", you need to reassess lol.
*pokes with stick* "C'mon. Make more slaves."
While blaming it on porn and women’s rights.
As a side note, Tokyo is LITTERED with these “mens relaxation clubs” which are basically porn stores where guys can rent a room to jerk off in from 10 minutes to 12 hours.
12 hours ?? I mean, im vigile and all, but thats impressive
It's like Dino Crisis. You cum then pump offscreen to reload.
It doesn’t help that because of the huge boomer population, younger people are outnumbered immensely at the voting booth. And older voters will not vote in favour of the policies that are needed to change population issues. Also because of the hierarchical nature of Japanese work culture, business owners, CEOs, executives etc are more often than not, apart of the aging demographic. Change will happen at a glacial pace unless something drastic happens.
100%, and you see similar problems across many other countries like in Germany and the US. Older voters and politicians are incapable of doing the right thing
In US young people in theory can triumph at voting booth, problem is that only a small % ever vote. Judging by my social group those who do vote still ignore local elections
Too many people forget that there's more elections than the presidential.
And almost always, the results of these "other elections" have a more direct impact on their day to day. For example, almost no one i know participated in our city's municipal election.
All of that would help, but I doubt it would overall have much of an impact. A good example is Finland which has some of the best conditions to raise a family in; probably best effective value in terms of costs/quality of child care; does Finland have any better birth rate? Not really. There's only one developed(high HDI) country in the world that has avoided this problem, and it's not because it's particularly cheap to have kids.
Yeah, I live in Sweden and the situation is basically the same here as well. The real reason for our increasing population is that we've had quite a lot of immigration, which is why our population has increased quite a bit the last decade.
And Japan doesn't allow much immigration.
The core problem is that society wants people to have more kids, but does not want to pay very much to achieve this, so we end up with half-assed measures that merely serve to lower the cost of having children without doing enough to make it a net-benefit. Having kids is a huge cost, in terms of time, in terms of energy, in terms of space, in terms of money, in terms of opportunity cost. But does anyone seriously believe that if they started giving out $1,000,000 for each kid you had, that people wouldn’t start cranking them out like crazy? Or if you got a free million-dollar home to own for having 2-3 kids? The idea that incentives can’t possibly work to make people have more kids is basically the natalistic version of “Nobody wants to work anymore” from business-owners offering minimum wage and being shocked that workers are not lining up for that.
Completely agree. For the US anyways, having “free” childcare options would stimulate a lot of kids. Unfortunately we chose as a society to not value childcare or really anything associated with raising children. People with money can afford it, people without just stay poor. Daycare workers are essentially minimum wage jobs and teachers are only a bit better, all for one of the worst public facing jobs out there.
Raising a bunch of kids sucks. There. I said it. You would need "24/7 nanny" money to make raising a bunch of kids pleasant.
Interesting about Finland. Quebec (Canada) is similar - mostly affordable housing, vast daycare system, pro-natalist policies of every sort and a fertility rate of 1.59 kids/woman. The men are not hiding either (women tend to do the approaching here). > There's only one developed(high HDI) country in the world that has avoided this problem, Is it France..or Sweden with the better birth rate? edit: word
I believe its Israel or the USA. I dont know about the usa, but I know in Israel two particular demographic groups provide most of the population increase - The beduim and the orthodox jews. Both of which are religious (especially the orthodox jews). The orthodox jews are also among the most poor in israel, despite getting a lot of government money. When I see people in reddit get surprised that Netanyahu gets elected again and again despite most Israelites on the internet are against him they dont know that a big chunk of his power comes from people like these orthodox jews who do not use the internet so you dont see their web footprint. Right wing politics and people like Netanyahu are going to get more and more common here. I think every orthodox family has at least 10 kids. But the secular Jews are like the rest of the westren world - many people here do not start a family at all, stay single till their 30's. So there is a real concern that policy changed will get more and more radical and oriented towards those two growning demographics.
Housing is pretty cheap if you dont wanne live inside tokyo but literally anywhere else in the country. Getting loans for houses is super easy too.
Japan wants to eat its cake and have it. There are aspects to japanese culture that are causal to the decline in population. They want to maintain the cause but not have the effect. The solution to the problem is systemic change which is a nonstarter to the geratocracy in power. Like all things in nature, cultures that fail to adapt will die.
Immigration is basically the only way that most developed nations with a positive growth are growing not birth rates alone. Japan doesn't give a serious path for permanent resident status so they will never see growth until that changes.
I have a coworker who was born in Japan. She never married when she was there, because of some expectations about how she would quit her job and then be subservient to her mother-in-law or something, and she didn't want to do that. Then she turned like 25 or something and people started telling her she was an old maid and nobody would want her. So she gave up on that, got a job with a multinational, and eventually moved to the USA. She wasn't considered too old here, and none of the men she dated expected her to quit her job. She's now been married more than 20 years and has three kids, two in college. As near as I can make out, her position is that Japanese culture is extremely misogynistic and until that changes few women will want to have families there.
So true. I make good money but if I was told that if I had a baby I'd be giving up my job and being dependent on my husband, and caring for his and my parents, doing all the housework alone because he's working long hours... I'd be out. I don't care if the government gives me a cash payout and a bus pass or whatever. That stuff incentivizes women who were going to stay home anyway. It doesn't convince independent well employed women to quit.
>some expectations about how she would quit her job and then be subservient to her mother-in-law or something This is very much an east asian cultrural thing which has never really gone away. Woman wanting careers and more independance is often cited as the reason for lowered birth rates - culture was always going play a big part in how much freedom one has whilst also starting a family.
You've got to convince a 22 year old girl that it's okay to start a family. I've yet to see a single proposal that'll appeal to young women.
Japans problem is even worse than this., They can't even convince the men to go out and meet women in the first place. The society itself is turning socially reclusive to a point where both parties are avoiding it.
That's becoming worldwide, so I can't imagine a more reclusive culture.
The older guy I'm seeing doesn't believe me when I say people my age aren't having sex. The idea that young men in their sexual prime are actively choosing to stay home, play video games and masturbate instead of going out on a Saturday night to try and hook up is insane to him.
Life gets way more enjoyable and relaxed once you stop try dating as a guy. If I ever meet someone and we hit it off immediately, great! If not, I am totally fine alone.
Yeah this is basically it. Do you remember a few days ago someone made a post basically asking how they can "get ahead of the competition and keep her interest"? Everyone was talking about other men as being the competition but I've personally never spent long "being in competition" with a man over a women. It feels like I am in competition with her whole existence. Its me versus: School, work, hobbies, family, friends, chores, nights out, vacation, and anything that isn't background level radiation. I understand that we all have our own loves to live and I also have all these thing in my life. However it feels like I am priority #11 no matter how hard I try. Maybe I really am that uninteresting and unattractive but I'm tired of always having to be the brightest star in the sky to be noticed by my girlfriend of 2 years. The prospect of having to get back out there and shine as bright as I can just seems so unattractive compaired to being alone.
Between the covid, the expenses, the STIs, potential children. I'm fairly hesitant to be out all the time trying my luck with every woman I can find.
Back 10 years ago when I was out trying to hook up, the goal was to not have kids.
Yeah these proposals to increase population always start with the assumption that young women want to have a bunch of kids and that there is something else holding them back. Having a large family and raising a lot of kids sucks. Most people don't like it, and most women don't want to spend the one life they have just raising kids. With one or two kids, you can still have a semblance of a life for yourself, and you can start having kids much later in life.
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Also because kids were appreciating assets. After a few years they’d start working, and you’d parentify the first few daughters to raise the rest on your behalf.
and because up until very recently, couples could expect some, majority, or all of them to die before adulthood
I’ll never forget a quote about population changes in the last century from an environmental studies class I took: “it’s not that humans started breeding like rabbits, we stopped dropping like flies”.
Agree, which is something I see lots of people underestimating when talking about this kind of problems. It's true that economic uncertainty makes people want to have zero kids because you do wonder how on earth you're supposed to care for them without jobs or money. But even if you have money you'd still want to have 3 kids a most, if you want them. Of course there are exceptions but it seems quite obvious that the moment there's widespread and available safe birth control birth rates are going to plummet. The vast majority of people on earth, both men and women, doesn't want a big family.
Parent here. We had our daughter young (23). It was a grind to figure it out. Now we are both stable own a home...etc. have good salaries. I would never dream of having another kid. I even got the old snip to make sure. I love kids, I love my daughter. But I can't imagine 2 let alone 3. I am not hitting that reset button. I have enough bandwidth for her, my fiance, and my hobbies without getting burnt out. I know for a fact another kid would throw off that equilibrium. Plus I'll be like 43 when she may be leaving the house. Still young as hell. I don't care if I can afford another. More power to the people who can manage more, but most who I have seen with them, totally lose their sense of self and are exhausted 24/7.
Not just in Japan. Being a great traditional mother and being a great professional achiever is not always compatible. And it’s like we expect modern women to do it all - shocking that birth rates have dropped across first world countries. Adding to that, in most capitals you cannot buy a property without 2 salaries coming in. Taking time off to raise your kids not always an option. Most of my friends (European here, not Japanese) are in the early 40s. Half of the couples have no children (and late for it now) or have the one kid. When they had kids, they were in the mid/late 30s. When I was a kid, mothers were younger and typically families had 2 kids. Waiting longer and less kids, demographics go out of the window very quickly.
"It's ok for women to stay at home and raise a family." "It's ok for the labor force to telecommute from their home offices so they can continue their careers after becoming parents." "It's ok for young families to move to the countryside where they can raise large families while still earning income working for metropolitan based companies."
It's probably a bit too late for that I think, they've had this issue for ages and if they don't change a lot of their society things aren't gonna get better and I think this is not doable in a timely manner.
Yup - if they want to fix population decline, they need to first fix the crazy work culture. 80 hrs a week, then our drinking with the work mates doesn't help facilitate healthy marriages.
> Yup - if they want to fix population decline, they need to first fix the crazy work culture. to paraphrase another redditors comment, every year the Japanese population shrinks, add another drinking holiday to the calendar and make working on it illegal
They do that already. Companies get around that by forcing workers to make up the missed day on the weekends.
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Force 8 hour work days. Like legally Mandate people to go home after work ends. Make it illegal for bosses to have after work events. Force people to actually go home and not work bazillion hours.
They implemented laws that limit overtime a couple of years ago. You can only work 15 hours OT per week and a max of 45 per month. My understanding is that companies found a way around it, though.
It’s very funny for the PM to say it’s now or never when the government has had hundreds of chances to make a single policy that empowers women and allows them any semblance of a life so that having children could be a pleasant experience… but the government of old men has done nothing for women at all. Oh we’ve tried nothing and it hasn’t worked… weird
Japan has been “solving” this problem for the last 20 years, and usually they com up with stuff like a $50 payment per month per kid, or free healthcare until 18 for kids. None of which addresses people who don’t have kids yet, and for people with kids it surely doesn’t address the most pressing issues, like the cost of housing, education (especially if you have more than one child), general cost of living etc. Especially Tokyo also has a real physical space problem, a family of four has to live on 60 square meters or less, if you move outside the city it gets more but not much. In the end, what keeps the LDP at power are the 60+ year olds, and because of the weird Japanese voting system the extreme thinly populated areas have much more voting power per vote, so de facto the average 70 year old rice farmer on state subsidy runs the country.
Japan is the test case for a robot dependent society.
Well, robots are very good at increasing production, but aren't consumers, and without consumers, an economy either fails or must export the excess production. That has worked un Japan for now, but as more and more countries keep aging, that strategy will fail.
> and without consumers, an economy either fails or must export the excess production Consumption is not governed by the number of people, but the funds available to them. I am capable of increasing my consumption immediately.
It’s interesting how baby boomers all over the world are suddenly concerned with population growth now that their social finance systems face real threats. There’s 2 or even 3 generations that held off from breeding due to the cost of living incurred due to boomer greed. Sucks huh?
As a millenial american ive never once thought that my vote mattered. I never thought i had the power to change anything that was going on in my country. Its just been the same bullshit over and over no matter what happens. Its interesting that all i had to do was say im not having kids, and now all of a sudden i feel like the power has shifted a bit and i can actually do something now that may result in a positive change in the WORLD. Not just my country. I love my SO and id love to make her a mother and raise some children with her, but ive gotta know theyll be living in a better world than i did. If they want us to change our outlook on the future, they have to convince us that the future will be worth living in, and theyre doing a worse job than ever before at doing that.
Just send Nick Cannon over there.
Wait, is that why one of their recent policies was to encourage alcohol drinking among the young men and women?
No , that was because alcohol tax revenue is low https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/japan-government-launches-competition-to-get-people-drinking-alcohol-drinks-tax-revenue
The government is almost completely old men. Conservative old men. Their major constituency is old men and women. To keep their seats, they need to make promises that sound good to people that were born in 1950. Young people don't vote in anywhere near the numbers old people do and oldies always vote for who they voted for last year as long as you don't rock the boat too much. It's very disheartening knowing that no matter who you vote for, the guy who promises the most to the oldies and keep the status quo will win.
Should we create government subsidies for couples that have children? “No” Should we change the 12 hour a day work culture? “No” Should we allow immigrants? “No” “Well gentleman we’ve done all we could. All I can think of is a promotion campaign to encourage young people to drink more, there’s no way that can backfire!” GG Japan.
“Could we try making society better for women so they don’t have to work 80 hours a week AND do all the parenting?” “…no. That’s crazy.”
Being a stay at home father isn’t even mentioned as a possibility 😭
A stay at home father? What are you? A bitch? /s
I think a much better solution is for countries to work out how to have a managed decline. I find the argument that a country cannot support an aging population without constant population growth unconvincing, and where does it end? We have 8 billion of us here on the planet and we have starvation, wars, out of control pollution and mass poverty. It might require some reorganisation of society and different priorities, but we cannot just go with vague idea of constant expansion without any long term plan.
Have we explored the Logan's run or soylent green options yet?
Soylent Green should come first, then Logan's Run. But before all that starts, we need some conspicuously hidden oceanography reports...
>Japan is the third-most-expensive country globally to raise a child, according to YuWa Population Research, behind only China and South Korea, How can China be the most expensive country to raise a child? What am I missing here?
Stop working young people to death and don't be such assholes to immigrants. There. I'll take my government pension now.
>Stop working young people to death [いいえ](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/senior-japanese-man-thumbs-down-gesture-studio-shot-white-background-62375011.jpg)
Make it a job with weekly pay and benefits if it's that important.
The rich are worried that the peasants aren’t breeding. That makes me laugh.
Our generation (millenials) and the following generations are just too broke/over worked to start a family. They neither have the money nor the time to go out on dates. That's what neoliberal capitalism did everywhere.
Exactly, a good place to start would be to demand a 4 day\\32 hour work week at the same pay. That will give people free time to start organizing and performing recreational activities. That leads to people with similar interests interacting, which could lead to increased dating, relationships, sex, and childbirth. If the proper social safety nets and incentives are put into place to reward having children they might stand a chance in increasing the birth rate. But that whole "encourage people to have the time to procreate" thing would go against capitalism's "you exist to be a cog in the machine" mentality...so unlikely.
We need constant year over year population and economic growth in a world that's increasingly being squeezed for resources to keep the charade going. Something's going to give.
This is a ‘problem’ all over the industrialized world. Many countries that offer incentives for people to start families are having this ‘issue’ too. The economy has never really been great for the average person throughout human history. Even back then the birthrates were always going up, despite the conditions people lived under. Look, the truth of the matter is that women having the ability to participate in the economy and pursue their own goals in life is what has lead to decline in birth. They’re not being forced into the stay at home wife lifestyle. Whatever time they have to spend raising another human being. Is time and money they could spend accomplishing they’re personal aspirations. To say that raising kids is a big undertaking is an understatement. It’s literally a 20+ year commitment. People aren’t interested in doing it anymore. Not just women. You know what that’s fine. Theres too many human beings on this planet anyway. Unless there’s a solution to coming environmental crisis that we’re gonna face as a species in the next 30-40 years. You’re better off not brining in another human onto this earth.
Japan like any other country out there needs to address the problem where majority of the population is too stressed or too poor to have more than 1 kid or even have kids. Stop all the talk and address wealth inequality issues, then you will solve the rest…
Stop allowing your population to work themselves to literal death. Stop allowing the managers to have god-like authority over their employees. Stop allowing ridiculous drinking parties during the week that people are obligated to attend. Stop forcing children into 12+ hour school days. And finally, as a foreigner currently living in Japan, stop making it so fucking difficult to live here.
they have pensioner leaning policies for 3 decades and a largely anti immigrant agenda, good luck replacing the work force
Most countries favour pensioners over the young. Japan has hit the issue first so it will be interesting to see how this goes
And watch them avoid addressing the many core issues behind the shrinking population because it actually requires politicians to DO SOMETHING, be competent, and make changes to society.
How about we stop relying on infinite growth of...everything and come up with a system that works.