Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis
cnn.com
cnn.com
There are enough (way too many in fact) people already. The social and economic mechanisms just have to adapt to the steady-state or even decreasing population levels.
We should be grateful it is happening spontaneously, instead of having to think of instituting invasive policies to limit growth.
That is not what is being called a crisis.
Fertility rate being *far* below replacement (1.3 vs 2.1) is being called a crisis.
If the population falls to quickly the ratio of young to old gets unbalanced and there are not enough people young enough to do the work needed to support the population too old to work. All the products and services like food and healthcare that the old consume still need to be physically produced regardless of nominal price, so simply saying "save more money for retirement" is not a solution.
Second, this "crisis" is entirely brought upon themselves by the generation that will have want for people to "support them". Cut out elderly healthcare and the majority of your shortage is gone.
Third, there are plenty of people available for this support, as many of the jobs these youngsters do today are only done because they are very attractive in the current economic system. If the population as a whole agrees that this "crisis" is indeed a crisis, there is enough labor to step up.
There are no other options. You can do that by either increasing immigration or birth rates. That’s it.
It’s essentially UBI and universal healthcare that winds up making a lot of demand for younger workers. Keeps the grandparents able to help raise kids, if wanted/suitable.
Most people's jobs aren't necessary for a functioning society. If you look at say, agriculture, transportation, energy, sanitation, infrastructure, etc, what percent of the total population is employed in those fields, 5-10% maybe?
Society will be fine for a long time with drastically dwindling population, we'll just see a contraction of the "bullshit jobs" which have become the mainstay of post-industrial societies, with a higher percent of people employed in fields which are actually producing something of value for society.
What percentage works in agriculture and related industries? A single-digit % last time I checked. It does not make sense that there could be a fundamental problem with the production of essentials (or non-essentials for that matter), especially with decades to adapt.
The Japanese economy has already been close to stagnant for the last 20 years or so.
I think we'd need some research/math to see at what working population to non-working population ratio this is actually a problem (and what fertility rate is safe to avoid this if it is indeed a problem).
> working population to non-working population ratio this is actually a problem
True. Overall I find it a bit (well huge understatement...) disappointing that while productive has increased tremendously that has not been reflected so well in compensation (for most people for a privileged minority it's the complete opposite) or working hours.
I don't see the problem though. We have a gerontocracy where most of the power has been concentrated by an unusually old generation. If there was a problem they could have done a lot to solve this problem. I mean, why expect the powerless young to solve the problems of the powerful old?
You can't let rich/talented hoard resources so that they can pour inordinate resources to their one kid and 'expect' them to inherit the talent. Nature simply doesn't work this way.
So how many do we need exactly? I think we have more than enough on Earth. Problem is that we are quite busy fucking up each other's life using this "next gen tech".
We didn't rely on some superior gene pool, instead we just educated our children in a way that exceeded our expectations.
Also, not raising children means people have more time to spend on technological progress.
Strawman. We are merely talking about not dropping to zero too fast
If I had "just a billion dollars", I'd be so happy /s.
Seriously though, do you have any tangible proposal of how to adapt? Because otherwise we are looking at a terrible situation where kinless elders are dying off lonely in poorly maintained facilities due to a lack of funding and a lack of caregivers.
See “Danchi” - https://www.archdaily.com/933829/the-rise-and-fall-of-danchi...
When my family first moved to Japan, we spent a few months living with our in-laws in a rural agricultural village. Not even that rural by Japanese standards, it’s only a 10 minute drive from a relatively thriving city center. But there are telltale signs of a shrinking and aging population everywhere you look. I remember one day I took my three year old son to the park, and it was just so quiet (except for the sound of bugs and frogs), and so neglected, that I was overcome with sadness and hopelessness. It reminded me of “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clark.
We ended up buying a house on the other side of the city in a relatively new housing development and it’s basically the complete opposite. Kids are out playing in the street and nearby parks, neighbors are friendly - it’s a great place to raise a family.
I can definitely understand why rural communities are being hit especially hard by shrinking population, and how one could go 25 years without any babies being born. Nobody (or most people, at least, the family in this story is definitely the exception) wants to raise a family where there are no other families around, the elementary school has been closed, job opportunities are scarce, etc. So people move elsewhere.
(Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All it achieves is to balance the birth/death rate on paper for the year.)
As more and more jobs become obsolete, a country will be able to run just fine on fewer people, so long as there are enough people to do the work that can't be automated.
Yeah, but maybe you want them ;)
Unpopular opinion (and playing devil’s advocate since I have two kids), but is it necessarily a bad thing if people stop wanting to have children and the human race just gradually disappears? There are a lot of other types of potential existential threats on the horizon that might be unsolvable and could entail a significant amount of suffering (e.g. global warming, super viruses, rogue AI)—perhaps it’s better to stop reproducing and just let things end peacefully? I can’t thing of a great argument for forcing societies to continue having children if they no longer wish to do so. Sure, you’ll have some “who will take care of all the elderly in 50 years?” but you could plan a bit for that and the problem would only last for one generation.
Prisoner's dilemma, I guess. If everyone stops reproducing, the people who keep at it secure more resources for their offspring.
People can make up their own minds on this, but I don’t think states and governments will want to stop existing.
The shrinking growth rates are problematic for wealthy old people because they realise that their money represents economic power over other people, but if those other people don't exist, then their economic power will be worth much less than they deluded themselves it is. Indulging in the desires of these special interest groups makes no sense for the continued survival of humanity. If anything it makes it harder for humanity to survive as we run the risk of faster resource depletion. If you believe in mars colonies and so on, you would want our society to survive the next 1000 years and not prioritise the next quarter so an old person can retire from their stock returns.
What? The reason low fertility is bad is that you end up with a proportionally small working age population, immigration doesn't "solve" low birth rates but it does solve the problem low birth rates cause. In fact it does it even better, because you have a proportionally lower number of children who are just as unproductive as retirees.
The reason Japan doesn't have much immigration is because they have, shall we say, a strong desire to remain purely Japanese and don't believe immigrants can become truly Japanese.
How about we make it not a PITA to be a mother?
You are seeing these “breeding machine” type posts because people are extrapolating from the current poor success rate of these programs and thinking about what more drastic steps might be taken. (Do note that I don’t approve of forcibly turning women into breeding machines, just like I don’t approve of forcibly turning men into killing machines. I did call it unconscionable.)
If fertility rate gets depressed then just keep letting in more people. I don't see how it isn't the answer if your objective is to keep the population at a stable level.
There is no crisis. There's problems, but not to the level that a mainstream western rag wants to make out.
There's a known migratory pattern that once people retire, they don't need to be commuting to an office anymore, and so they move out far from the cities, where the cost of living is significantly lower, to stretch their pensions.
I don't imagine retirees have many kids. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a great number of such places.
What everyone who bemoans this situation needs to answer is: what population number is ideal, and why?
There's no clear rational being put forward by anyone why 100M is not fine, or why 50M is not fine, or why 200M is a must, or whatever. All they say is "more is better", and that's pure ideology and political bias.
If a few towns fade away, so what. They weren't there originally anyway.
Believe it or not, Japan is vastly better situated than South Korea or China for what's about to happen.
Maybe it will happen later? But right now China is still a net emigrant country.
Depends how better situated is defined.
Advanced economies like JP, SKR or TW (and most of EU) with relatively maxed out human capital (~80% skilled workforce) are undergoing net demographic decline that will stagnate/contract their economies while accumulating increasingly onerous welfare commitments.
Versus PRC, whose only at ~25% skilled workforce, with lots of poor before rich aging cohorts that will be replaced by more productive newer generations, still has vast development + economic headroom even with less net population. Meanwhile poor before rich cohorts = expectation of welfare less demanding - many do not expect much in the first place. Hence most poor in PRC have high homeownership and household savings rate to weather the lack of anticipated state support (96% in poorer rural regions). They're vastly different scenarios to manage politically - average PRC retiree is going to have to suffice with much less vs retiree from an advanced economy, but that's expected from old before rich societies. Or just plain not rich societies, i.e. most societies throughout history.
But where PRC is vastly better situated, than just about anyone, including immigration heavy advanced economies, at any time in recorded human history, is PRC workforce trending from 25% skilled workforce to 70-80% over next decades - generations of high skill demographic dividend and high-value economic development is JUST starting in PRC. Quick napkin math, PRC will be recomposing the current 750M workforce with ~200M skilled to shrunken 700M workforce but with 450-550M skilled (+250-300M). For reference, current JP is like 55M skilled out of 70M workforce, demographic decline will lead to economic contraction. Also consider 2000 PRC GDP ~1T @ ~2M STEM grads, 2022 GDP ~18T @ ~17M STEM. Projected 2030 STEM @ ~50M, likely topout ~80-100M @ 2050. That's 4-5 extra current JPs worth of growth left, which will increase capacity to weather demographic decline from baseline, which might still be low relatively, but again, that's an entirely different demographic/political situation to engineer around.
The TLDR is many advanced economies are in net demographic decline with increasingly onerous welfare requirements, vs PRC has massive high skilled demographic dividend to buffer net demographic decline from old/poor cohorts on their way who also has savings to retire meagrely because they simply don't expect much from state in the first place. IMO person is better situated to retire in the former, but a governance better situated to manage in the latter.
Work from home? If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, GPT-4 may be able to do your job soon.
lets say i am given incentive to move to japan and start a family there, i would contribute to the workforce, the children would be "japanese" anyway because they would be born there (from non japanese parents) and the next generation would grow to be there only.
Also seriously, no foreigners understand Japan. I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.
To Chinese or Japanese, God said nothing, so they simply stopped having kids once they could stop and once they had nothing pressing them to.
Only difference in our (Western) perception of China and Japan in this sense is that we see this process in China positively and Japan, negatively... That's of course cynical but true.
On the other hand, China has concentration camps for its ethnic minorities. Yes Japan doesn’t have concentration camps for Ainu, so I guess they’re doing OK?
Source?
However, gp was about foreign minorities. There have been foreign-born (Caucasian) members of the diet, for example.
I guess the one thing weird about Japan is that there is some expectation of cultural erasure -- if you immigrate and you want to fully assimilate, you have to take a Japanese name.
I lived there for years and have known many people with mixed heritage, including my own children. Many choose to live in Japan because they feel comfortable there and that it is their home.
Modern Japan has millions of immigrants, and is thankfully free of the weird borderline eugenics stuff you’re proposing in your first comment.
Making babies isn’t an end goal. Children need to be raised in loving caring families in order to thrive.
Yes, there is some juvenile behaviour from people who are prejudiced against foreigners and even mixed descent residents, but that happens in many countries including my native Australia. As with those places, the vast majority of people are perfectly agreeable and will cause you no grief.
Culturally, as long as you aren’t going out of your way to be particularly individualistic, you can participate pretty much the same as everywhere else. Of course, like many older workplaces elsewhere, you’ll have a harder time if you want to be unique and stand out.
Blanket statements are not very helpful. There are certainly people who are against immigration but there is also a large number of people who are not against it as long as it's "controlled". Nobody want open borders with no control, unless you are completely out of your mind.
> I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.
Many foreigners have had no problems living and loving living in Japan for centuries by now.
The crisis the rich world is having is that it is no longer possible to raise a family with only a single working adult, and raising a child while both parents are working full time is simply not something that everyone wants to do. It is in effect too time expensive to raise children.
Ironically the solution here is to accept a drop in productivity and create a society in which people can stay at home. There is already evidence coming in that the shift to working from home has increased the birth rate in places where it has occurred. Japan needs to fix it's work culture in order to fix it's birthrate issue, end of story.
Chinese per capita income increased 8.76x between 1978 (last year before one-child policy) and 2019, when (since 2016) two babies were allowed for everyone (so few people want a 3rd one it barely bears any significance anymore). Birth rate has decreased from 2.72 to 1.5 - from far above acceptable maximum to well, far below acceptable minimum. It's absurd to compare living standards in China in 1978 and in 2019. These were two completely different countries - West didn't see so much progress in maybe 200+ years. And yet, birth rate fell. One can quote authoritarianism - but well, China was even more authoritarian in 1978. That same thing is true everywhere - there isn't a single country where birth rates were on the rise, while living standards are improving at a good rate in most of the world.
Yes, which is why I said RICH countries, not western countries. It would have been strange for me to focus on western countries, given that this thread is about Japan.
>and because there are no social or economic forces coercing them to have kids.
This is kind of implying that the primary reason people have children is for economic reasons, but in wealthy countries children have been more of an economic burden than benefit and yet most people still choose to have children, though usually just 1 or 2.
In fact, this research (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/06/chart-of-th...) by the pew research center shows that within a single country (in this case the united states) birth rates are often inversely correlated with economic strength. It actually shows the birth rate increasing between 1940 and 1960, despite the fact that children were an economic burden that entire time.
I think the idea of higher income leading to lower birthrates only really applies to countries leaving deep poverty where it is common for children to work for an income. While women might not want to have 8 children, there are a lot of women who would like to have 3 or 4 children, enough to keep the birth rate at or above parity. Among that population, many won't have as many children as they want because they can't afford either the time or the cost of raising them.
The fall in birthrates is caused by countries going from undeveloped to developed, but within developed countries the birthrate is higher when the economy is stronger.
So ... you're implying that the USofA saw peak economic strength in 1825 and it's been down hill ever since?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037156/crude-birth-rate...
With respect to both the data above and cherry picking to best fit a specious argument, of course.
But in the context of birth rates, I would say the three factors that matter the most is the infant mortality rate, the state of retirement, and the existence of child labour laws.
High infant mortality increases birth rates because parents have more "backup" children in case some die. A good retirement system reduces the number of children because people are less likely to have children just to look after them in old age, and child labour laws reduce birth rates because it turns children from an economic benefit to an economic burden.
Alternatively you could consider a country "more developed" if it has better support for parents through parental leave and baby bonuses.
So ultimately more developed = less children is a bit of a simplification, but I think it's _less_ of a simplification than more money = less children which is what I was arguing against.
There is no way for a rich country to be above replacement level this days. Their success varies, but it all seems like that being rich is incompatible with having kids. Even in single countries, for which statistics like that is available, birth rates are higher in poorer income groups, like it is in USA. Households making over $200K have 1.5x fewer kids than the poorest households. Both between countries, and within countries, main drivers of reproduction are poverty and low educational attainment.
I wouldn't want to subject more children to that.
However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse.
What exactly is expected to change this? Not only for Japan but all modern countries? It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate that old politicians seem to deem needed.
So they've identified this as an issue and their attempts to solve it? a 4 day working week? Build and invest into housing? Focus on childcare costs? None of that? Well, why are they politicians then? Identifying the issue is easy, it was identified decades ago. Sadly it seems modern politicians are utter failures in solving issues when what is needed it pretty obvious to us all.
The ability to cut out commutes and move out to cheaper places and bigger homes that are aligned with child raising is a huge help, as well as improving many people's lives generally.
The government should really be leaning hard into this, and attacking meeting culture (especially in-person meetings) head-on.
I am seeing that play out first-hand at my workplace. During COVID, we went fully remote due to shutdowns. Then the leadership embraced it fully. Then all the systems were set up to onboard anyone working from anywhere smoothly. Phase two was multiple rounds of laying off American workforce over the last 12 months. And now phase three has started where all the engineering headcount is abroad (India, Eastern Europe, Latin America) in the name of cost cutting.
Please excuse my strong language but the American engineers clamoring for remote work are short-sighted idiots who are killing the goose laying golden eggs. Great for developers in the third world countries though.
Japan would be uniquely immune, since the main barrier to an offshore dev working for 1st world companies is the language barrier, and they're all learning English, not niche languages like Japanese. The next barrier is the cultural one, which is even more extreme in the Japanese case.
It is true that the system as currently set up does not cope with inverted population pyramid. Do you change the system or try to force the pyramid to re-invert? Why all the focus seems to be on the latter?
Fundamentally, disregarding for a moment how financing mechanisms are set up, what % of working people does it take to support a population?
This depends on the quality of life for the non-working.
Hence the need to either sacrifice the old, or make more babies.
Or raise the retirement age or cut retirement benefits or increase productivity or immigration, et cetera. The solution space is vast, which is why this is a problem, not a crisis.
Because the later has been tried and tested for thousands of years of human history - young caring for the old. This "change the system" option would be worthy of exploring if there was a fleshed out proposal on the table.
These reasons are a lie. The parents of boomers had less disposable income than we do, they were living in a generation devastated by war(s) and they had very much longer working hours that we do now.
We have just decided that we don't want to have children, it's not because of external factors.
In the 60s most women stayed home with kids for many years, whereas now very few do that. 6 weeks maternity leave is a complete joke.
The current generation of youth and working young adults feels abandoned and unecessary, why put more abandoned and unecessary people on this planet? The shrinking population is only a problem for old people, who themselves benefit from a shrinking population right now.
Graduating into the GR and being unable to find decent work for 10 years sure did this to me. I did find a job around year 4.5, and was treated like absolute garbage at best and outright targeted and bullied at worst. Then there’s that 4.5 year period after the GR where homes were empty and homeless everywhere.
Yeah, not hard for me to imagine why people aren’t having kids.
Short story, don’t bail out banks and push people onto the streets.
Edit-way I see it, I’d need a market valuation on my personally held assets of $3 million that I knew would grow at least 5% per annum before I’d think about a kid. Or a stable lifestyle with similarity to that.
What innovation of the last 20 years has improved our lives, and how many hours have people worked to make those innovations happen. Are the better cars worth it? The phones? We have had already 50 years where nothing new was required to really improve our lives. Most of us have all been working like rats, digging holes and filling them back up, for nothing. If you are not a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or working in the primary food supply chain, you have been tricked into walking the thread mill in return for a fancy colored hat. So many jobs can just be not done, and then there would be just two types of bread instead of 20 types of breakfast cereal.
I struggle putting it into words, or finding a hard logic reasoning, but I'm convinced that the vast (80%) majority of us are only working because our system distributes wealth according to coins that we get for working; and many of the jobs are about making other people buy more stuff, pumping the work around. Remember when science fiction thought us that we would let the machines do our work and we would leasure?
If I only could just sit in my house, that I maintain myself because it is low tech, eat plain food, chat with my neighborhood, do light exercise that doesn't require special equipment, bike around, walk the dog. How much work is there really to be done.
Some animals dont breed in captivity.
While that sounds great in certain contexts, practically it leads to a workforce exhausted by hundreds of paper cuts (aka micro-optimizations), and people just want to collapse in front of TVs eating microwave'd food. No time for leisure or hobbies or dating or friends or family formation. You think this is hyperbole? Just think about optimization metrics at pretty much any economic sector. Gig economy (how to maximize tasks per worker per hour), E-commerce (hyper-efficient warehouse workers and delivery drivers), Tech (idolizing Musk and Musk-wannabes who want to get the same work done by 50% of the workforce), etc.
Something that makes life pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable is not contributing to GDP growth and will be optimized away in the current pursuit of every increasing profits. And while those profits might trickle down as higher salaries, that additional income will be consumed by artificial scarcity (aka inflated housing / medical / college prices).
Our economic system is fucked up! </rant>