Submitted 2 weeks ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to globalnews@lemmy.zip
https://slguardian.org/japans-birth-rate-set-to-break-even-the-bleakest-forecasts/
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: archive.is/…/japans-birth-rate-set-to-break-even-…
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.
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.
I’m sure those kids all come out great and very alive.
“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
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 as 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.
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.
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
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
Trust me, a growing elderly population with a shrinking working-age workforce to sustain them is very much not a good thing.
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?
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.
But AI told me AI can solve that.
not for 1 country though, thier culture could become extinct. they need immigration, plus countries are even trying to solve thier underlying problems, HCOL, and job prospects.
Malthusian myth. Might as well argue for eugenics while you’re at it.
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:
hxt9ONT8LblsHvG.png
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.
1) 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
2) They want japanese babies, and no immigrants - so their working time MUST get below other western countries or it will never happen.
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.
This isn’t a world I would feel ok subjecting a child to.
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.
That’s crazy man
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.
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.
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.
Surely more austerity and social alienation will solve it
MORE WORK HOURS!!!
The beatings will continue until the Japanese cums
Another stupid article assuming that a population reduction is a bad thing.
No, no, of course, just keep increasing the human population until it crashes. Then it’ll be an actual problem.
The numbers look bad because increasing population increases the GDP, and GDP has become the archetypal example of what happens when you turn a metric into a goal.
It’s not just about GDP, if your retired population starts to outnumber your working population by a large amount, who will support all those old people? Nowadays children can’t care for their parents because they have to go to their 9-5 every day, so we rely on other people to do that job for us, and if they disappear then what? The problem isn’t the deflating population per se, it’s the inverted demographic pyramid and our work culture
The problem is made up. We’re more productive than ever and should have plenty of leisure time and plenty of safety nets for old age…but that wealth has all been siphoned off by a very few. The solution to this is tax the wealthy.
So the problem isn’t “not enough babies” it’s “not enough babies to keep both our xenophobia and our toxic work culture”?
Oh no. Whichever you choose, I’m sure the world will mourn the other with you.
Kurzgesagt had an nice video about this, it has a huge imact on culture too. With old people not able to transmit their knowledge and crafts.
‘It’s only a problem for economics.’
‘But what about the economics?’
There are three solutions to adjusting the so-called 'replacement rate:'
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.
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.
Japan before WWII
So:
→ lots of children
→ many young adults
→ few elderly
**Japan after WWII
**
→ baby boom
→ improved healthcare
→ Japan gives women more freedom to study and work. But… the system around family, work, and care barely changes.
Fertility collapses + a huge adult generation (from the baby boom) From the 1970s onward, the birth rate drops dramatically due to:
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
Countries like France and the Scandinavian nations do better:
Result: higher birth rates than Japan, Italy, Spain, and formerly Germany. If you want a “younger” society → invest structurally in good family life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dropping dead on the factory floor only to be replaced hours later isn’t very motivating I’d imagine
japan has a forced drinking after work hours problem,.
Japan does not get enough hate for being a racist anti-immigrant conservative hell hole.
Didn’t they have a program a few years ago inviting foreigners to come and have (effectively) anchor babies?
That doesn’t seem right. Japan is very conservative of its “genealogy” and would treat “halfus” very differently than people who look Japanese regardless of mastery of the language. They also have strict immigration laws because, they don’t view immigration as a positive. It would be a threat to their homogeneous culture and society.
I don’t see the problem. What’s the problem here?
Old people unable to find caregivers and dying alone, often many years younger than they would with basic care. In isolation, I do find countrywide systemic elder neglect to be a pretty big negative. I am old enough my future need for care is starting to feel pretty real, and I really appreciate having enough nieces and nephews to have decent odds of support.
In Japan’s specific case, there are large numbers of people in nearby countries that would jump at the chance to immigrate and work in elder care, but most Japanese are so racist they would rather die alone and early. So, I guess leave them to it.
I said the same thing but used the word race and the whole forum bashed me for being a “Nazi.” I swear sometimes I think the bots have already taken over Lemmy.
If one of the most intelligent races in the world is going extinct due to not reproducing, it’s a good sign that reproducing in this world is a terrible and selfish idea. Good for them. Just die out and break the cycle of suffering.
Most intelligent race huh? hitler-detector beeeeeeeep
“race” has no basis in science or biology and is completely made up, so go ahead and fuck right off with your Nazi shit.
Geriatocracy is a good word. Putting it in my active vocaulary.
The word is “gerentocracy”
Anyone obsessed with birthrates is an asshole until proven otherwise.
We went straight from ‘there’s too many people!’ to ‘there’s not enough people!’ on a dime. Even rates drastically below replacement aren’t Children Of Men. There’s just fewer kids and more old farts. So… Florida?
Oh god, maybe we should be worried.
The “economy” can go fuck itself.
What matters is the resources available per person, and naturally you would expect that to go up when there’s fewer children.
The only way for Japan to survive is to shut down all immigration.
The 1% can make their own wage slaves
I’d love to be told otherwise if this is untrue, but from what I understand the largest causes of birth rate decline in Japan are social, not economic, requirements. People want relationships, but they don’t want the hassle of Japanese dating. For example, as I understand it, as a man asking a woman on a date in Japan would typically entail bringing both your friends and their friends out on the social outing and paying for everyone’s meal. Because of this people don’t want to date because it could mean having to pay for 4-8 people’s meal.
Japan also has a lot of other cultural weird-isms like refusing to buy perfectly functional houses if they are more than 20-30 years old because their traditions expect houses to be torn down and rebuilt in that time frame.
Also I’ve heard that caring for the elderly is expected to be an all or nothing affair. You either bring your elders into your house and take care of them extensively or you do nothing.
Like I said, if someone has more information I’d love some insights, but the impressions I’ve historically have gotten is that their problems are more than economic.
xxd@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Where my phone placed the new line was truly a rollercoaster:
Wow, breaking even? Finally looking up for japan!
Oh no.
besmtt@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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