Japan’s demographic crisis is deepening faster than expected, with the number of births this year on track to fall below even the government’s most pessimistic projections.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20251228215131/https://slguardian.org/japans-birth-rate-set-to-break-even-the-bleakest-forecasts/
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Where my phone placed the new line was truly a rollercoaster:
Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even
Wow, breaking even? Finally looking up for japan!
… the Bleakest Forecasts
Oh no.
Wow, we’re lucky this whole AI thing will fix everything if we just give some tech bros a few more trillion dollars
Let me make it simple.
You can’t raise a fucking family if all you’re doing is barely surviving.
Yes you can. People do it all over the world.
Cool. Should they?
Yes.
I was watching a YouTube video yesterday with Jimmy Carr and I think he summarized it perfectly.
As humans we are amazing at quantifying all the negatives around having kids (costs, time constraints, behaviour changes) but we struggle at quantifying the positives (purpose, accountability, pride, humility).
My regret is having kids later in life and not in my early 20’s. The little secret we all know is you’re never ready for kids. You either dive in or you don’t. After that? In for a penny, in for a pound.
Cool. I disagree. You want to subject your kids to climate change then go ahead.
And we are allowed to disagree. That doesn’t however make your opinion any more valid. You can’t hold hands when you make fists.
That doesn’t however make your opinion any more valid.
Present and imminent state of the world make my opinion valid.
The world has always been fucked. The question is do you bend over and take it or do you fight for positive change?
Climate change is going to be the least of the next generation’s worries.
At least they won’t freeze to death outside in winter when likely none of them will have houses, jobs or access to healthcare (aside from the ones with inheritance of course).
Climate change alone is an absurd reason to advocate for antinatalism.
Climate change alone is an absurd reason to advocate for antinatalism.
Spoken like someone who has no idea what’s going on. Temps are already above 36°C where I live. Rains have gotten unpredictable as well and that is impacting food
I can only guess how damn hard it will be in the next 20 years.
My regret is having kids later in life and not in my early 20’s.
Reeks of boomer who doesn’t appreciate their kids.
GenX actually (48) and I have 3 kids I tell them I love them daily. 2 are on the spectrum and 1 realistically will never become an independent adult.
Your comment reeks of someone who grew up entitled and has never learned how to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The downvotes tell a diffeeent story, boomer.
You do realize that upvotes/downvotes are just populism in action and time and time again people have been proven to be dumb? I mean look at America.
I’m sure those kids all come out great and very alive.
Children do not need love attention homes or parents. These luxuries make them weak
So myopic.
Neglect is very healthy for a child.make sure yours gets enough!
Assuming that kids living in poorer parts of the world are neglected. Spoken like someone who has never once faced adversity in life.
No, none, only rainbows and butterflies for me. The world is a kind and warm place and I just believe in spreading that to more people. Is that so wrong?
It shows you lack wisdom and maturity.
“People do it all over the world.” False it should be “Uneducated people do it all over the world” Look into geography and sociology and let me know why it is that uneducated poor people usually get more children :D
Lol uneducated does not mean dumb.
I stand by what I said.
The future lies in those “uneducated” people.
Everything about this whole thread screams privileged white people who haven’t known an ounce of struggle in their lives and all of a sudden things get a little tight that they can’t buy butter instead of margarine and holy hell the sky is falling!
This is why all my friends now are immigrants lol.
Those uneducated people usually from poorer third world countries get a lot of children cause of environmental factors:
- high infant and child mortality
- shorter life expectancy
- they need their children to work in mines
- No sex education
Educated people usually from first world countries don’t get a lot of children because:
- housing is too expensive
- the country makes work/education and family are hard to combine
- childcare isn’t well organized
- there’s too little security
Countries like France and the Scandinavian nations do better:
- affordable childcare
- parental leave
- flexible work
- stable housing certainty
Result: higher birth rates than Japan, Italy, Spain, and formerly Germany. If you want a “younger” society → invest structurally in good family life.
This is like stuff from geography I was taught in highschool, don’t you have your high school diploma or what? 😂
I’m a high school dropout and I knew this shit. Dumbass has no excuse.
Go into any rural and/or poor area in America or Canada and you’ll find poor uneducated people and they’re having kids just fine even in wealthy countries with a lot of environmental factors pushing against it.
It’s a matter of want. Own your decision don’t blame it on external factors. If you want to blame external factors for your not having kids you’re weak. My girlfriend is Kenyan. She has a 11 year old son back home she hasn’t seen in a year. She had a kid in a small rural town halfway around the world and moved to Canada to make a better life for her and her family. You know what she’s never done? Push blame outwards.
Yes, structurally we can be doing a lot better to make it easier and more attractive for people to have kids but that was and is not my point. My point is if you want kids just fucking do it. The reward far outweighs the risk and long term you’re going to be much, much better off because you’ve just grown your team.
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 Get this guy a geography class RIGHT NOW “Why dont homeless people just buy a house” “Why dont poor people just work more”
You are sooooo limited in your thinking it’s really a shame. You don’t even know the conditions some people live in even in dense urban areas like Toronto while still having kids.
immigrants
Oh shit! There’s another solution!
If Japan capped working at 28 hours a week and anything after that required double the pay (for overtime), this problem would taken care of.
Working all the time makes people miserable. It’s an externality that impacts society in all sorts of horrible ways. It would be proper for the government to institute a rule like this.
It would definitely lower GDP of Japan and cause some economic issues, but the alternative (living in a world where people are so miserable that they don’t fall in love as much and want to reproduce) is worse for their economy.
Will they do this? No, because it would require thinking outside of the box too much and would be seen as too extreme.
Yup. It is so weird to me how little the destroyed work-life-balance is mentioned whenever declining birth rates are discussed (not only in Japan).
They don’t even have to pay overtime for work over 28 hours. If they just paid overtime for the actual or time work that is done, that would make an enormous difference. When I worked in Japan (25 years ago, but I have read/heard nothing to suggest that the situation has changed), it was normal for people to work 60 or 70 hours, but not claim any overtime.
The situation has changed. Overtime pay is now mandatory, and so is the reporting of the number of hours worked. Whether the hours are accurately reported or not is another matter. 25 years is a long time to assume that nothing has changed, I must say.
I did a quick search, and it appears that it is still very common for Japanese companies to expect unpaid overtime.
Even when I was there, overtime pay was mandatory. The thing is, you get a lot of peer pressure to do unpaid overtime because everyone around you is doing it. If I recall correctly, the government made a big deal about limiting overtime, only to reveal sheepishly that their own employees had worked tons of unpaid overtime to bring in the new legislation.
One of the advantages of being a foreigner in a Japanese company is that you don’t have the same kind of pressures or expectations.
also one of the other problems is mysogyny, women are expected to give up thier careers when they get pregnant, and recieved very little maternity care.
That sounds like a bit of an improvement since I was there. At that time, women were not even given the chance to be on the career path, because it was assumed that they would quit when they started a family.
We had two children when I was in Japan, and the prenatal care was pretty good. The births themselves were not great examples of medical care, I have to say. Still, it’s normal for women in Japan to stay in the hospital a week after a typical birth. I suspect that’s because if they went home, they would still have to do all the housework.
Here in the USA, employers just avoid overtime and benefits by hiring two people to work 35 hours/week, who each have two jobs.
Or make them salaried employees
Yep, everyone’s a manager, even if they’re not managing anyone.
Will they do this? No, because it would require thinking outside of the box too much and would be seen as too extreme.
That still won’t work. There is no develooed country on the planet eg Sweden, Australia etc thay does not have a less then replacement birthrate. When given agency outside of a patarchial and/or religious society, most women will choose 0,1 or 2 kids, all below replacement.
For every women choosing 0 you need another choosing 5 just to tread water. That Japans and Koreas are less again may be work related but it would still be less then replacement, no matter yours, or any other suggestion.
None of this is a probelm, it’s just differnt.
Growing the population is just kicking the can down the road because you can’t grow it forever anyway… We already have a over strained biosphere; pollution, resource depletion, climate change, accelerated species extinction etc
This entire thing is a nothing burger.
In other words, if people have a decent standard of living and freedom of choice, they would help mitigate the overpopulation problem.
Growing the population is just kicking the can down the road because you can’t grow it forever anyway… We already have a over strained biosphere; pollution, resource depletion, climate change, accelerated species extinction etc
This entire thing is a nothing burger.
you’re right
This is the average amount of monthly hours (male/female)worked since 2013, i do not see an honest effort to help the population growth.
Source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/
Which line’s male and which line’s female?
The blue line is male and the blue line is female.
The lower averaging one is the female one, but one must remember that japan is deeply conservative and that means household and caring for kids/elders are womens duties - additional to the working hours. I couldn’t find data for the amount of unpaid work done, but i found participation surveys, which show the difference in what percentage of men/women are involved in unpaid work on any given day in the working populace (data from 2021):
source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?stat_infid=000032224111
40 hours a week is 160 hours in a month, which the male average seems to dip below regularly and the female average is always below. That doesn’t seem worse than my situation in the US.
- This is the official working time, which does not include the obligatory overtime where bosses require their employees to accompany them going drinking and stuff
- They want japanese babies, and no immigrants - so their working time MUST get below other western countries (which keep their population at a stable level by immigration) or it will never happen.
Edit: 3) I forgot to mention that stuff like household chores, shopping and caring for the eldery is a womens domain, with embarrassingly low engagement by men. Everyone knows how much work that is - i postulate that the women work on average MORE than the men.
I completely agree. This is all about people not enjoying life because they work too much. Regulate the problem as an externality and this problem would go away. But government leaders in Japan would never have the guts to radically regulate the problem, such as requiring double the pay for overtime after 28 hours of work per person in a week (and this would need to be per person, not per job, to avoid people then just doubling up on jobs to get more hours; the externality could only be brought under control by having it apply to everyone with no way to circumvent it).
Amazing how the people in positions to have kids are screaming at the top of their lungs what would help the situation and the geritocracy just ignores them and has the fucking nerve to whine about low birth rates.
Wipe your own asses boomers, we’re done propping up this dead society
I love that people who just second before told me they DO NOT CARE about my future (bc of climate change), try to force me to have kids because I supposedly SHOULD care about their future lmao
Yeah honestly, this wolrd has done nothing but tell me it hates me and wants me to die. And I’m doing much better than most people.
This isn’t a world I would feel ok subjecting a child to.
Surely more austerity and social alienation will solve it
MORE WORK HOURS!!!
The beatings will continue until the Japanese cum
korea is actually worst off than japan.
Italy’s not doing great either but it never comes up in the “look at japan” discussions
The birth rate discussion is mostly centered around “can we continue making money?”
Japan and Korea have low immigration rates, so the population falls and capital is unhappy about the prospect of a shrinking and more elderly workforce and domestic market to sell things to. Italy on the other hand has subsaharan and arabic immigration (and the actually larger eastern European and Chinese immigration - but they’re not as fantasy inducing for the far-right), so the population decline isn’t as fast. There are more workers to replace the dying ones, and capital is happy. Plus, you can use this fact to fuel chud paranoia about “the great replacement”
Immigrants are seen as a tool everywhere. Right wingers want us, only as long as we become loyal servants with 0 political power and living in fear of the state and society’s iron fist. Liberals want us, because “who will clean the toilets?”.
And the fact that something is happening to cause people to consider reproducing as outright harmful to their well-being among people who would otherwise have wanted offspring is a crisis of bourgeois society that few people actually want to talk about.
Probably because, compared to those 2 countries, Italy is easier to immigrate to.
Japan’s easier than most people think. As long as you have a college degree you can get a shit job pretty easily.
Is that right? Maybe if you look a certain way that’s socially acceptable to them. If you aren’t (white, Asian) you’ll get temporary work that pays like shit, and companies can not hire you because they don’t like that you’re not Japanese with no legal or social protections to aide you. Even shit jobs have social requirements. That’s really the biggest problem.
These days even the white folk are stuck in shit jobs because everyone and their mom wants to live in Japan. You need more than just a bachelor’s in whatever to make it long term.
Granted it’s probably still more difficult for non white or Asian people, but I wasn’t really taliking about long term prospects. Even still, it’s way easier to immigrate if you get married than somewhere like the US.
That’s crazy man
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Trust me, a growing elderly population with a shrinking working-age workforce to sustain them is very much not a good thing.
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long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity.
No. This has been brought up and debunked by experts. Despite the rapidly falling birth rate, it will take centuries to overcome population inertia. Changes will not happen anywhere close to fast enough to save us from the environmental crisis we are facing. If anything, it may make things worse as an aging elderly population means the young generation is preoccupied trying to take care of them instead of dealing with the shit they left behind.
Our ideal birth rate would be between neutral to very gradual decline, not the cliff jump we’re currently facing.
Not sure if ‘brought up and debunked by experts’ is the best argument out there. For example, ‘population inertia’ would cover only one lifespan, not centuries. That is to say, whatever the population is now, it could be 10 people to 100 billion people within 100 years. This is not discounting cultural and psychological factors, but if we’re talking human behaviour, that’s literally everything.
Secondly, the population decline is hardly a cliff. It is decreasing in some countries like Japan, but when added into the global picture, we’re not even at neutral. We’re still growing.
You are absolutely right that a larger aging population is something that must be addressed. However, if increased population pressure leads to a tipping point, like a shift in the AMOC or immigration pressure from hotter areas to cooler areas, our current treatment of old people doesn’t fill me with confidence. I think in a crisis, we would sacrifice them anyway. We would write some sympathetic think pieces about it though.
population decline is hardly a cliff.
Population decline in Japan and similar countries is absolutely a cliff right now, hence the article.
We’re still growing.
That’s largely due to said population inertia. The current best estimates of actual worldwide fertility rate has us anywhere from 2.0 to 2.2. There’s a possibility we’ve already dropped below replacement rate worldwide.
Not sure if ‘brought up and debunked by experts’ is the best argument out there.
Unless actual scientific data showing otherwise is brought to a discussion, ‘appeal to authority’ is NOT a fallacy.
Appeal to authority is neither a fallacy nor proof. It is rhetoric. It proves nothing, and disproves nothing.
For example, your authorities debunk “long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s (sic) a necessity.” My authorities, like William Catton or Meadows, et. al. would say otherwise. Invoking them doesn’t prove my perspective. It does prove there is much debate about the subject.
In such instances, defining metrics and showing your work, as the math teachers say, is the best way forward.
The article in question, for example, relies on hype like ‘670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.’ Level of what? Percentage of population? Actual number of people? Compared to how many? With the priviso, for example that ‘The expected figure, … excludes children born to foreign residents”. How many of those? I suspect not many, but it’s necessary to know.
What the article could have stated are actual metrics such as replacement rate, which in Japan is 1.20. South Korean is considerably lower, at 0.72-0.74. We could use words like ‘cliff’ I guess, but I prefer numbers, and I would encourage their use in articles such as this.
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It’s hard to say what the actual carrying capacity of earth is, if we were trying to optimise for sustainability and not profit or special interests. Would we be sustainable today, if we were full on renewables and batteries, vat grown meat, no plastic waste, etc? There’s so many things that could be done for major impact but aren’t, for all we know we aren’t even anywhere close to earth’s carrying capacity with current or near future tech.
not good for a countries, culture, and people, and this also devestate the economy eventually
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That’s only if they keep their current system though. Why would they do that if they can see it won’t work out going forward? Their economic system will need to evolve and that’s ok.
Why should people change their behaviors to suit the economy instead of just changing the economy?
But AI told me AI can solve that.
Can you define what sustainability looks like? One farmer has never been able to produce more. Maybe a country makes less widgets, but I don’t all the doom and gloom when taking care of the basics has never been more attainable for all.
not for 1 country though, thier culture could become extinct. they need immigration, plus countries are not even trying to solve thier underlying problems, HCOL, and job prospects, they are doing adjacent.
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Malthusian myth. Might as well argue for eugenics while you’re at it.
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There are three solutions to adjusting the so-called ‘replacement rate:’
- Reduce death rate (ie improve health outcomes for elderly to extend lifespan).
- Make more babies.
- Allow immigration.
Options 1 and 2 haven’t worked too well, and option 3 can cause a lot of political issues.
Not sure there’s a good way to avert the end-game.
Edit: actually there are two other solutions: cloning, and senecide (killing the elderly). It’s dystopian SciFi and totally unethical, but they’re there.
I’d argue that Japan has historically done pretty well at the first. I don’t find the healthcare system here perfect, but I have many elderly in-laws who get great care. There’s probably going to be a decline in quality and/or availability as the issues persist, though.
3 leads to more than just “political issues”, you are replacing your country’s people and culture with others that will in all likelihood have far higher birth rates
Not “replacing” unless you bring in like 50k+ immigrants per year and give them disproportionate power over everything. Immigrants bring their culture, but they’re always the ones who have to adapt.
Currently Japan brings in 153k in the last year, and 175k in the year before - and these are net stats
More culture is good…?
Some people are afraid of having a proper amount of seasoning in their food.
And? Where does this xenophobic train of go?
You can’t complain about a birthrate crisis when the world is full of immigrants and there is a domestic cost of living crisis unless you are a eugenicist on some level.
Throwing rocks from the glass house that is the US I know
Japan is super racist despite the polite facade. It also doesn’t help that they have a “work and drink yourself to death at the expense of having a life” culture.
America certainly does similar things, but we don’t bother polishing the turd with politeness.
It also doesn’t help that they have a “work and drink yourself to death at the expense of having a life” culture.
Americans, on average, work more hours per year than Japanese people (1765 vs 1691). Per capita alcohol consumption is also higher in the US than it is in Japan.
It was different in the 80s, but that’s now it is now.
And that’s bad. It’s bad here. This culture should not reproduce and anyone who brings a child into this should be taken out back and shot.
Doesn’t really change what I said? Just because we drink more and work more doesn’t mean what I said isn’t happening.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/karoshi-deep-look-japans-unforgiving-working-culture
The difference is in the US we probably do it because we get paid poorly and are stressed out due to societal and economic reasons. So we work a lot and become alcoholics because stress, advertising, whatever.
In Japan, it’s expected you work a lot and drink with the boss.
i think the niceness is for tourist sake, and not for everything else.
So not having babies would be extra pressure to fix at least one of these things.
I don’t see the problem.
I remember living it in Mexico like a free soul as a kid. We had poor people but I think I never really saw homeless people. Even the poorest person I knew had a little house where he lived with a few donkeys. We called him Toño La Muerte because his eyes were deep into his very thin looking skull eye sockets. He also lived right outside of the city pantheon. His little house burnt down once and besides the time my father died I can’t remember having such a sinking feeling. Anyway his house was promptly rebuilt With community help. We didn’t just let Toñito die out in despair having nothing. Anyway, now things are bleak for all kids out there. How can they ever dream of owning a place to live? And so if you can only focus on that problem, there’s no room for the having kids problem. Its simple, you got no place to live so bring no kids until you do. Okay so let’s say 50 year old men can finally afford a house so they start courting 20 year old women. That’s a big gap. Maybe their sperm is not great. But then it also means that they are easily outcompeting young men for women who can have kids. Ofcourse for women this all means that they can’t have a future of their own. They live so they can make bsbies with 50 year old men shooting blanks. Some of this might be true. My wife and I are similar age and married close to our 40’s. We knew we had to make some babies asap or we would miss that chance. 5 years and you’re done. Once women hit 40, its very hard to be pregnant. Having kids within 5 years is a lot of pressure.
They live so they can make bsbies with 50 year old men shooting blanks
Lmfaoo
Thanks for sharing your unique perspective on the matter, I agree with much of what you said.
Japan before WWII
- high infant and child mortality
- shorter life expectancy
- many people didn’t live to old age
- there was population growth, but it was slower and much younger
So:
→ lots of children
→ many young adults
→ few elderlyJapan after WWII
→ baby boom
→ improved healthcare- better nutrition
- rising prosperity
- vaccinations
- medical technology Japan becomes world champion in life expectancy (over 80 years on average).
→ Japan gives women more freedom to study and work. But… the system around family, work, and care barely changes.
- women can pursue careers
- but the country still expects women to:
- run the household
- raise children
- often care for in-laws
- and employers still expect:
- extremely long working hours
- almost no flexible schedules
- full-time loyalty to the company
→ Conclusion: children are discouraged
Fertility collapses + a huge adult generation (from the baby boom) From the 1970s onward, the birth rate drops dramatically due to:
- career-focused culture
- high cost of living
- marrying later
- limited childcare
- women working + conservative family structure
→ Japan falls to about 1.2 children per woman → structural population decline.
Lessons / Conclusion: Japan shows what happens when you don’t make structural changes for a long time. Too few workers + too many elderly = shortages of labor, money, and care.
Solutions
- More children (slow solution) Birth rates usually don’t fall because people don’t want kids, but because:
- housing is too expensive
- work and family are hard to combine
- childcare isn’t well organized
- there’s too little socioeconomic security
Countries like France and the Scandinavian nations do better:
- affordable childcare
- parental leave
- flexible work
- stable housing certainty
Result: higher birth rates than Japan, Italy, Spain, and formerly Germany. If you want a “younger” society → invest structurally in good family life.
- Raising the retirement age (helps a bit)
- Robots and automation (already implemented by Japan)
- Immigration / controlled immigration (the fastest solution)
Without immigration → extreme population decline and extreme aging.
In Europe: immigration + integration makes aging far less severe.Japan can insist “we don’t want immigration,” “we are homogeneous,” “we’ll manage through discipline,” but eventually this collides with simple math. If we want to preserve our way of life, we have to take demographic reality seriously, with better childcare, higher productivity, and controlled immigration.
Article claims they expected these numbers but in 16 years. Numerically, its not that far off from the expected number of 750k births. Its 90%. I dont think thats too much of a difference to be alarmed about until you read into it more. Taxes will increase and pensions will be effected if this continues. To make matters worse this is after they already dumped billions into policies like extra free money (63$ per month🤣) until child is in high school proving that current efforts are not enough. Shame they cant address the root cause:
real reason is that they were victims of the ‘ice age generation (job shortage generation)’ and the stagnation of economies that followed, which prevented them from marrying or having children if they wanted to,” she said quoting research data.
Shame they cant address the root cause:
Thw root cause is giving women agency. Careers education etc and mostly free of religious indoctrination (eg Quiverful etc)
If women have a choice, the majority choose 0,1 or 2. For every woman that chooses 0, you need another woman choosing 5 just to tread water. Hungary and Poland are throwing a fortnue at it and gerting no where, as is Russia. Australia, Sweden etc all have less then replacement, the only reason Australia keeps growing it’s population is immigration. You either do that, or you take away womens right to choose, or your population goes backwards. (Or aim for some sort of stasis where deaths = births + immigration)
You can’t grow the population forever, so you have to address the issuie at some stage anyway.
There is actually another way: Make sure that having more children increases your economic security and social standing (not just lip service!). As long as having children results in a setback in any of those 2 categories, nothing will change. Sadly, I do not know of any country that has tried this approach yet, so i do not know if it works.
I was thinking It was capitalism but I do agree your points are a contributor.
It’s wild how much pearl clutching goes on about birth rates, and how it isn’t common knowledge that this shit is a cyclical pattern. People get antsy about birth rates any time there’s economic contraction happening.
The Japanese are not going to die out and Japanese society is not going to collapse.
Whovis going to take care of all the 80 year old Japanese people in 50 years when they have less medical staff? What happens to all the empty and decaying buildings that have no one left to maintain them all? What happens to the smaller rural cities with a current population between 75,000-200,000 people when the only job options are hospice care because the local employers can’t operate anymore? Decreasing population by 50,000 a year over a few decades is manageable. Japan and Korea are way past that point and there simply won’t be enough people to care for the ageing population and shrinking pool of working people and children.
All the MBAs and politicians throwing their hands up about birth rates because the real answer is the unthinkable “number might go down”
Systems keep chugging along with minimal maintenance if conditions stay the same, say like an increasing population.
Systems need a lot of well-thought-out adjustments to keep working if conditions change, say population changes from increasing to decreasing. It’s not that the change is inherently bad, but it means many pieces of society need to make changes to adapt. Writing to help explore the impacts and inspire adaptation is part of the process.
