Japan's annual births fall to record low as country's 'silent emergency' deepens
Japan's annual births fall to record low as country's 'silent emergency' deepens
The number of newborns in Japan fell below 700,000 for the first time since records began in 1899. The government data released Wednesday showed a 16th straight year of decline and it's faster than had been expected.
We made everything super expensive and created a toxic work culture that weighs on your every waking moment while cutting salaries so that both people in a relationship need to work full time... why is no one having kids?
When did everyone collectively stop freaking out about overpopulation?
Ohhh "replacement" in this context means "replacement minimum wage workers for the factories".Might be worth noting that this is a huge swing from a bygone era of high infant and child death, such that women were expected to have children early and often in hopes that they could outperform the mortality rate. Population rates in Japan had been low and relatively flat for centuries. Then the industrial revolution and modern medicine dramatically reduced mortality rates, causing populations to climb rapidly for around a century.
Now we're settling into a new normal of sub-replacement rate births (not no births by any stretch, just births slower than the post-40s boom years) and everyone's freaking out like Japan won't exist in another generation.
The Japanese people could likely support a higher population via socialist public policy. But they could also just have a smaller population going into the 21st century. It's not like 123M is a magic number the nation needs to persist. If Japan's population fell into the 80M mark, what's the horrible thing that could happen? Koreans and Philippinos and Italians and Egyptians might be legally allowed to immigrate at last? Oh no!!!! Death of a nation!!!
Philippinos
Filipinos. We're not a cucumber.
I agree that immigration is a big part of fixing this.
I think if the population (replacement rate )declines too swiftly, you have a lot of old people and few young people. At some point it become exponentially harder to even keep your last generation's replacement rate, and you have spiraling population decline. See South Korea for the Speedrun.
If Japan steadily declines to 80M it could be fine. If Japan goes to 80M in a generation, that's very very bad for the chances of there being any Japanese people left in a few more generations
We've tried everything but moving away from a capitalist system or allowing immigrants into our country and we're all out of ideas
I'm really interested on how you think they should move away from a capitalist system, what the actual steps are. If you're saying that they should treat their employees better and make the work culture more accommodating for families, I get your point.
Now that you mention it, the lunatic fringe right wing that calls every social benefit or progress "communism" is a little bit correct.
The state, and private ownership of the means of production, withers away the more we have things like retirement benefits and weekends and universal healthcare and livable welfare payments.
Each increase in public services reduces the profits of the owner class. As we deal with the oligarchic stages of late capitalism there will probably have to be a lot of nationalizing, or monopoly breakups. Eventually, as governments take on more and more 'essential' services, including housing, public ownership becomes normalized.
So, assuming continuing "progress" in economics away from capital worship, and that we survive both energy overshoot and rapid A.I. development:
Co-operatives etc. will eventually take over as the most common economic organization, globally. Co-ownership in many variants. Nationalized industries and assets will likely devolve into more local control. Traded and private companies will have to adapt to less opportunity to skim surplus labour, and innovate more. Fewer rentier activities for passive income will likely be a common policy in many regions. Many will do just fine as gig workers with automated administrative systems, and that time freedom will come to be normalized.
U.B.I. in some forms will be a bridge in a lot of regions, I expect.
[note: this scenario does not appear to be the current timeline for much of the world... work to be done]
We tried something? They barely tried anything
thatsthejoke.jpg
We definitely do let in immigrants. My wife, for example, is one. But I have to say, it's really difficult to integrate into the culture, especially for work unless you're very well versed in Japanese or don't mind working in low wage positions.
Ban anime.
Surely the solution to Japan's population crisis is to introduce American style prudish protestantism.
We need to rethink the whole global economy. This "problem" is only an issue in a society that demands forever growth. And shocker alert, the only way to mitigate the short term effects of population decline is immigration!
It is not only an issue due to forever growth. Birthrates are so low in some places (like Japan), that the new generations will just be crushed by the (economic) burden of the older ones.
Older people don't contribute much to the economy, but they spend a lot. It's just how it is. Older people are usually less healthy, and less healthy people eventually consume more resources than they can provide. This burden means that the younger generations will demand change to the government, and that will make retirement either worse or harder to achieve. Which will lead to the old days of working until you drop dead. Or distopian-like situations where old people willingly die to not be a burden, or even worse, they are killed by the government.
And as you say, immigration just fixes the short-term effects. That future is inevitable with birthrates so low. Inmigrants usually adopt to the birthrate of the country very fast.
As always, this is only a problem for capitalism and billionaires needing more workers to exploit. I see no issues here.
You're 100% correct. And capitalism is going to fight tooth and nail to come up with capitalist explanations and capitalist solutions, whatever those may be.
At the end of the day, the masses go to jobs for long hours that they hate, even if they "followed their passion". Capitalist hustle adds overwork, and takes from the joy of some work you may have potentially enjoyed. Not to mention jobs that are very necessary, yet very unenjoyable like construction or factory work or whatever. The pay is only enough to cover costs, so you have to keep working and can never escape.
All of this to prop up the billionaire class so they can enjoy giant mansions, Lamborghinis, yachts, and whatever.
Have a kid? I don't have the money, nor do I want an innocent child living this life.
It's an issue in any economic system. No economy built with any current or near future technology functions without human labor, which people can no longer supply once they get old enough for their health to decline, regardless of who owns what.
Its not as if there's a lack of humans.
If they don't want their population to collapse they can accept immigration and change their culture to be more welcoming to outsiders. Or don't and keep on the same path.
Noone is putting a gun to politicians heads and making them do any of this. Nothing they can do will naturally increase the birthrate.
Don't worry, they will find a way to make it our problem
A large elderly population that needs benefits but isn’t producing labor’s requirements are met how in alternate systems if those needs require medicines that Japan must buy from other nations?
Remember in Japan’s case there are not enough workers paying into the system to maintain benefits for the growing elderly population which is expected to increase.
Give up nationalism, change immigration policy, they will be fine in one year with folks from their Asia neighbors.
You know that their Asian neighbours also have low birth rates, right? Then it's simply shifting the issue to another area.
It's funny all these countries promoting nationalistic policies are actually used a distraction from their lower birth rate problems. Eg, threatening or commiting wars
Low birth rates are only a crisis for the capitalists (and actually not even that, see below). They increase wages and improve living standards for the population.
We're gonna hit an unemployment crisis in 10-15 years, partially due to AI replacing white-collar workers. If we have a lot of unemployed people, capitalists are gonna complain about how much unemployment money costs. It's actually better to have lower birthrates for capitalists as well, they only didn't realize it yet.
Also, it increases wages because wages are determined through supply and demand of human labor. If there's less supply, prices for labor (wages) are higher.
Really depends on the society. South Korea, for example, is definitely genuinely threatened by its way too sharp decline - including culturally. Otherwise I agree that negative effects are generally overexaggerated and that the future will inevitably demand less human labour.
Oh no, more space and resources for one of the most crowded and resource-constrained countries on earth.
They need more workers paying taxes into their system than retirees taking benefits out if the system. As Japan is the oldest nation on average this is a huge problem.
- Money is made up and not real.
- As the population ages it will spend more money.
- Japan has a chronic under- and un-employment problem, and an extremely inefficient economy. An ageing population would increase employment in the healthcare sector.
- The aged will not live forever.
- If Japan has to print money to make the accountants happy, it will be inflationary, which might get them out of their decades-long deflationary funk.
The problem solves itself.
I'm noticing a pattern here. Not just about Japanese society but many others as well.
It's never "we want to have a child so we will"
It's always "this is a series of rules, procedures and conditions to fulfill before you can have a child"It should never be just “we want to have a child so we will”. That’s self centered, short sighted and irresponsible.
Anyone looking to have children should think through at the minimum:
- do we have the money to raise a child?
- who will be able to raise and care for them
- will the child have the ability to grow and succeed in the environment we’re bringing them into?
- will the above to be to the standard we would want for the child?
To bring a child into a bad environment, with no time or money to spend on the child, is to bring the child into this world setup for failure and would only put a drain on the system, the resources, the climate, the relatives, etc.
People are choosing (in Japan and elsewhere around the world) to not have children because of the less than favorable conditions outlined above, and many others.
As a resident of a developing country, having spent time observing different socio-economic classes and lurked in my country's subreddit, I noticed that the most vocal opponents of natalism are mostly from the younger upper-middle class due to those aforementioned issues plus the fear of losing the ability for self-fulfillment (they would rather choose having a better career and/or excel in their interests/passion projects than traditional domesticity which they see as boring, stressful, and mundane). Unfortunately, some of them also happen to harbor a disdain towards the lower classes they see as "less civilized", a strain on resources, and purportedly reproduce more than necessary.
Govts around the world think like prolifers, they only want them to be born but have no idea or even care how they will grow up.
That's true. My argument is that before, when people had more children, they didn't care about bringing them into a bad world. Even 100 years ago it was expected some of your children will die.
Now, children dying is not a nice thing. Luckily we solved it and these days if you behave like our ancestors you will have too many children for society to be sustainable.
But if you're in a situation where there are too few children for a sustainable society, encouraging risk would help.
All being said, I actually believe we need to reduce the human population. But we don't know how to handle a sudden decline, or if we can level it out later. So a gradual decrease would be preferable.
How did you notice that pattern? It seems none of the rest of us have ever heard of that before...lol