Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-age/
(Prefrozen or surrogate embryos can make it into their 50s)
Japan looks like a kindergarten compared to Portugal.
From personal experience there are a number of professionals at early stages in their careers that return but quickly they realise that the opportunities are still rather limited and reverse their decision within a few years.
The situation is changing, but slowly.
I don't see any of that.
The only people that came back, were those that went to Angola before the oil crash that halted the country.
If they get back. And will most probably leave their descendants back.
Source: lives here. Most of the 30 and above working mothers I’ve encountered in my time are part time workers without benefits.
I don't know all the details but she is concerned we won't be able to get our son into a close enough child care to be able to return to work.
It's not a massive problem for us, as we can survive on one pay, but it's still a big worry.
As for support for young children, well the cost to have our son was quite high(compared to Australia - and this is purely subjective mind you, didn't really research it, just asked family members).
If anyone has any specific questions I can ask my wife and reply tomorrow (10pm here).
Child care is partly such a monetary incentive (being subsidize and/or enabling parents to earn more), but women will still lose out greatly by giving birth. From what I know of Japanese culture, all these factors must be even worse than in the West...
Transfer payments don't consume resources, they only reallocate them. If you enact a larger child tax deduction, people with children will pay lower taxes and people without children will pay correspondingly more. The result will be more consumption of childcare and childhood education and less consumption of tourism and luxury cars, but that doesn't harm the local economy -- if anything it helps it, because the things children need tend to be locally produced, rather than your citizens spending money they earned locally to vacation in the Caribbean.
The argument you would have to make is on the other side, that the economy can't afford people to spend time rearing children that they could have spent working. But at a world average level that can't possibly have been true or humans would already be extinct, and economies have much more surplus now than they had in the past. And the cost is inherently short-term, because the net work done by the average human is more than the cost of raising them, so in the long term you get much more from having a working adult than it costs to raise the child.
You also don't have to provide enough in tax incentives to cover the entire cost of the child, only enough to push enough potential parents at the margin over the threshold to raise the fertility rate to the population replacement rate. This may still be a significant amount, but nowhere near the entire cost -- and you only have to offer it during the years when the child is in the care of the parents, not for the parents' entire working life, much less the child's, by which point you're already making dividends -- the now-adult child is working and paying taxes that more than pay for the next generation.
Just kidding, of course...
>Japan will open up its doors to about two lakh IT professionals from India, and issue green cards to settle down in Japan and support the country's rapidly expanding IT infrastructure, said Shigeki Maeda, Executive Vice President at Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), a government body, here on Thursday.
https://m.indiatimes.com/news/india/forget-america-japan-has...
Well, worked for the US with H1B/20 year wait time for EB2
>The Japanese government, Maeda said, will be issuing Green Cards for highly skilled professionals, the first of its kind in the world, thereby, providing people to get permanent resident status in as short as one year. This is one of the fastest granted right of residence in the world.
However, financial incentives have never worked. In fact, I don't know of a single political measure which has significantly raise birth rates. The only way that might work would be to discourage women's education, which of course nobody wants (I hope...).
Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.
Economic freedom, and getting rid of pervasive and extreme rent-seeking (especially at the local level) which raises the cost of caring for kids, and for the kids themselves to start a new household when they grow up. You can see this in places as different politically as the Scandinavian countries (e.g. Denmark), and the U.S. "Red" states. It just works, it's simply anathema in every way to all sorts of out-of-touch elites.
As for the US "Red" states it gets even more complicated, and part of that equation is the religiosity and that those who can afford it, and maybe would have fewer children anyway, just flee those areas in mass...
So, essentially, no reasonable person would have children. Instead we should have an underclass of people who were, in your words, "irrational" enough to have children to move to another country to work for very low wages and serve and literally change the diapers of the aging, enlightened elite who were rational enough to not have children.
Raising birth rates to a sustainable level is a long term investment and stable solution. Mass immigration just kicks the can down the road. And currently, only two neighboring countries have birth rates above replacement rates: Indonesia and the Philippines. Their birth rates will likely drop below the replacement rate by 2050, in which case mass immigration from those countries to other countries deprives them of a stable future and royally screws countries who were dependent on immigrants who will no longer exist.
I don't believe that getting children for the greater good is a massive thing.
And again, there still is no proven way to increase birth rates short of authoritarian measures.
I think there may be something fundamental in the human psyche that refuses to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, reducing global population growth (or at least freezing it in place) is essential to prevent an eventual catastrophe.
Of course, this is the definition of a self-correcting problem. It's just a shame that it is going to result in so much suffering.
"When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." -Thomas Hobbes
Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby.
Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby.
Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desired threshold (1.8 in this case) at which point it starts going down again.
Edit: or just go the other way and tax people if they’re not having babies. Same principle as above but with taking money away.
If you have a child, you get a tax deduction (or credit? I forget). That is effectively the same as a tax for not having a baby.
Someone with a child pays less taxes than someone without.
It’s both actually! I get a deduction for each of my kids. Many people also get a tax credit of $1,000 for each of their children. I don’t qualify because of having too high of an income.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/ten-facts-about-the-child-tax-c...
When we are old, we will need taxpayers to pay social security, well trained healthcare workers, emergency personnel, maintained roads, etc.
Parenting is also especially expensive: child care, safety equipment, larger homes, larger vehicles, etc.
Without getting in the weeds on putting a better dollar figure on it, that's the case for subsidizing families.
When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whole culture seemed: lots of "kawaii" anime everywhere, in advertisements, on product wrapping, etc. Signs everywhere telling you how to act (in grocery stores they have footprint markings on the floor to tell you what path to follow...). Grown men watching anime about little girls. I wonder if all this is creating a masculinity crisis in Japan.
Funny how they went from Samurais to this.
I don't know but Tokyo is probably similar.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/higher-rent-fewer-babies-housing-...
The last time Japan had a population close to replacement rate was 1974, with the population at 109.5m.
Japan will reach that population again in 2046, so maybe we can hope for a recovery by that stage?
Part of the solution certainly needs to be voluntary Euthanasia for the elderly. If you're above 80 and decide you've lived a good enough life, you should be free to go out on your own terms, even without a terminal disease.
So you know, familly and kiss not being priority might not be shocking outcome of such culture.
That being said, why is grown man watching anime about girls something bad? Men were consuming entertainment with girls in it in many cultures ... heterosexual men don't naturally mind watching opposite sex, especially when framed cute or sexy.
Something else I have read is that traditional Japanese marriage is very oppressive for women, and as new work opportunities have opened up in recent decades a large proportion of women have just decided to stay single. In addition in recent decades there are few jobs for young men that would give them enough income to support a family.
On one hand, being upset that women have financial independence seems fairly sexist. But on the other hand, if you're seeking affection and someone to raise your children and nobody is offering that, then ...
Basically it seems to me like both sexes are asking too much, while also being victims of the culture and the economy.
If you want to pay people to have babies then you should pay poor people because they might be the ones not having babies because they lack money.
If you don't want poor babies then when the baby is born in poor family buy for them the best education, healthcate, toys, food and other activities and you have a good chance that you turn poor baby into rich baby and then rich adult.
If you just want to have rich folks to have more kids you should give them what they lack. Most likely time. So limit work week to 30 hours top. Make overtime paid 200% and unpaid overtime highly illegal and heavily fined. Pay people to not work for a year or more after they have a child.
I think the solution with poor parents is actually cheaper.
Regarding birthrates/immigration: Help without conditions is wrong, I now think. NGO's should not be allowed to 'help in Africa' (and Afghanistan, ...) without making sure that the birthrates drop significantly. Providing modern medicine without enforcing the 'recipients' to adapt the culture/custom will lead to a desaster in those countries (and if 'everybody' migrates - in Europe also (will happen after my lifetime probably)).
Being an island nation, Japan is in a good position to control their borders tightly compared with other countries like Germany.
It then becomes a question of having a well-designed immigration process that selects young, healthy, highly-educated folks who, most importantly, must speak the local language fluently. Canada has a pretty good system in place for this.
The imbalance is a problem because of things like lone grandchildren inheriting the houses and wealth of four grandparents and others inheriting nothing. It's a problem because some areas have established fine education structures that cannot simply be shifted to another continent. It's a problem because the youths aren't where the jobs are, and haven't been educated by a system that's tuned to the jobs in that area. And so on.
The top comment here is a person who has had the unfortunate experience of realizing that their cultural and genetic family are at high risk of being trimmed away from the tree of life. That's a pretty serious existential dread to swallow. Have some sympathy for them.
I mean, if all of humanity were going extinct could we say something like "well, at least there's a good chance that squids will evolve sentience someday so we will live on through squidkind no reason to panic" and make you feel better about it? And if that worked, maybe we ought not to even worry about the entire solar system being wiped out since there are plenty of other solar systems (no need to be such a xenophobic solist). And if that made you feel better maybe we ought to not mind the whole galaxy being wiped out because ... and etc... etc... c:
Then everything will be affordable again for young Japanese citizens and a good longterm economic outlook for the future is the best thing you can do to stimulate birthrates.
If Japan wants to screw it up, it should allow mass immigration. This way asset prices can stay high and the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist. We will speak of them in the future as great ancient civilization. Similarly we speak of ancient Greeks today.
There are probably ways to incentivize populating the countryside, but it hasn’t been addressed successfully.
Japan is in a very different position than Western countries such as the US or Canada.
They have a very small % of non mountaneoues land suitable for city building. Add to that their inability to build tall buildings and the huge population, and it is quickly apparent that Japan could do with fewer people in the country.
Now the obvious problem of having an aging population is collapse of any system that depends on the young to fund an aging generation that is now a net burden for the government.
Option 1 :
When immigration is not an option to artificially ramp up net contributors, the population will have to come to terms with an uncomfortable reality. That, the aging population can't avail the benefits they were promised when they worked their asses off, because the smaller young population can't bear their burden.
This ofc, is extremely difficult to implement in practice, because older people are big on voting and will destroy any politician who even suggests this. But, the other alternative could lead to an even worse outcome than the mass migration idea.
Option 2 :
The aging population keeps drawing from the system at the cost of an increasingly burdened working population and the debt keeps rising. Eventually, debt will be too large and the one generation capable of putting a dent in it will be far too crippled by economic burden of now dying populace.
Your comment seems to be an eventual outcome of option one. Where government support for systems for the retired vanish, and again people start liquidating assets to make up for vanishing welfare. As a result, housing may become affordable and the younger generation could gain some much needed stability and options.
I am not an economist and the economic implications of any of these events go over my head. It will however be interesting too see an experiment where a country tries to maintain a stable economy and QOL for their population for a country with much older average citizen, than he norm.
While Tokyo keeps growing at the expense of smaller cities and rural areas, a constant supply of new, taller buildings kept prices from skyrocketing like they did in London, New York, and San Francisco. Today, Tokyo doesn't feel like an overcrowded city: public transportation keeps expanding and increasing capacity, traffic jams are exceedingly rare, and the municipality has been hard at work to plant more trees and improve the air quality.
Quality of life is truly excellent here. You can see for yourself by watching some of these excellent videos made by a Canadian national who relocated to Japan 5 years ago with his family: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwxJts-6yF33rupyF_DCsA
cheaper housing, higher wages, less crime, less pollution
The only people hurt by stable population are giant corporations who want cheap labor and more consumers. Japan will be fine, they'll just increase productivity with technology rather than throwing bodies at problems
US should solve the problem by giving bigger tax deductions to incentivize middle class to have more kids and free child care. But instead of the logical decision, our politicians tell us we need to bring in millions of immigrants
Uh, what?
After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan.
If your point is about ethnicity, then I don't see what the problem is. It's also ridiculous to suggest that Japanese ethnicity will cease to exist. Sure, you'd see more race mixing, but again, how is that a problem?
The US still has native American ethnicity, and that's pretty much as extreme as immigration gets - any modern immigration system is never going to have that level of disparity.
The quality of life for young people is not good in Japanese society right now, sounds like your motivation is more about preserving some notion of racial "purity" than anything that actually matters.
Japan is more than a piece of land, or a group of people who make television programs and video games for you to enjoy. They are many millions of families each with a rich history that the world would be poorer for losing. And yes, if they stop having children or they lose their island then all of that will be lost.
Denying them this is tantamount to denying their humanity.
Immigrants (and furthermore children of immigrants) can and do respect and uphold the culture of the nation they move to. The idea that immigration destroys culture is patently false and there are countless counter-examples.
This view of immigration as "replacement" is just obviously wrong.
Since Japanese culture/society will not accept anybody into their "inner circle" those immigrants will build parallel societies. A diaspora usually heavily connected to their original homeland and not their host. If those get really big, they will have influence in politics which again will change the face and culture of Japan forever.
This has nothing to do with racial purity. It has to do with what is in the best interest of the Japanese people.
Another factor that you didn't consider is that prices dropping due to economic decline doesn't make life cheaper for people who live in that same economy. Their income is of course linked to demand on the labor market.
And last but not least, population can also drop due to expatriation, which inevitably grows in times of economic decline.
On the contrary, Islam does not forbid contraception or even abortion, up until four months of gestation.
The trend described is highly socioeconomic.