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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

These threads pop up here just about every other day.

It's not just Japan, though the media seems fixated on Japan to an unusual extent.

Here are some 2023 TFR estimates, source: CIA.

Japan: 1.39. Poland: 1.41. Spain: 1.29. South Korea: 1.1. Taiwan: 1.09. China: 1.45. Canada: 1.57. Germany: 1.58. UK: 1.63. Cuba: 1.71. USA: 1.85.

Italy: 1.24. This is noteworthy as Italy has been under replacement TFR for nearly 50 years. (Since 1975.)

Hungary: 1.49. Despite best efforts.

Just about every developed country on Earth is presently experiencing sub-replacement TFR, and a handful of large countries are worse-off than Japan, or in comparable positions.

Why all of the articles about Japan, when the situation in Italy is more dire? Go figure.

What is to be done? What's clear is that only radical solutions have any chance at working.

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> Why all of the articles [in the mainstream media?] about Japan, when the situation in Italy is more dire? Go figure.

Japan is further along in the process I think? Compare [1,2]. Plus, they have cool robots, that gets the people clicking. [3]

I have seen a lot of articles about Italy's 'dollar homes' which is a symptom of the same problem. [4]

Maybe the promise of cool robots or extremely cheap homes or something similarly evocative is necessary to get masses of people to click a boring story about old people and babies.

[1]: https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2023/

[2]: https://www.populationpyramid.net/italy/2023/

[3]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-au...

[4]: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-27/italy-...

>I have seen a lot of articles about Italy's 'dollar homes' which is a symptom of the same problem.

If I may, as an Italian, those are symptoms of a different problem, there are a number of (small) villages that are simply inconvenient (because they are difficult to reach, offer no "entertainment" nor jobs, often miss a number of services, etc.).

I.e. there are reasons why they were largely abandoned in the last few decades.

If you are (Italian or foreigner) retired or working from home and interested into living a life outside the chaos of modern life those places are just fine (and are often beautiful), but you need to take into account the drawbacks.

>Why all of the articles about Japan, when the situation in Italy is more dire? Go figure.

It's more dire in Japan because Japan has very restrictive immigration policies, so the decrease in working-age people there cannot be offset to some degree by immigration, unlike in western countries.

If people in a country are just substitutable like that by people from other countries without anything of any importance being lost, then we don't need to care for per-country replacement rates, just global ones. Except if the concern is purely economic.

Japanese old people are healthier and more able to take care of themselves which is a big difference and in my view preferable to mass migration.

Well, YOShInOn thought this article had an 83% chance of having a large discussion and I agreed and that was one reason I posted it (it was in the "people want to talk about this" queue, scored just 9% on "will get upvoted" model (the model for which is not so reliable), and just barely missed the "I think you will like this" queue at 47%.)

Pluses of this article are that it is factual and not inflammatory.

Minuses are that someone could say (as you're suggesting) that it is not really "news" in that it does not represent a major change in the situation and doesn't go into a lot of depth.

"Inflammatory" is a model I'd like to develop but looking at 5000 inflammatory posts on a weekend will not be good for my mental health. ("big discussion" unfortunately often means "inflammatory")

A "really news" or "duplicate" model is my holy grail, the most sources I add to YOShInOn the more articles I get for a given event. I have a a model for that but it not aggressive enough at removing duplicates but I'm afraid if I increase the sensitivity it will get more false positives.

Now do the TFR numbers for the "native" populations and you'll notice something quite interesting - that Japan is actually doing quite well.

Yeah, I know. The number for "Ethnic Germans in Germany" is probably comparable to South Korea's.

The birth rate for indigenous Canadians is 1.5x the rate of Canadians overall, significantly above TFR.

Do you mean First Nations Canadians or people born in Canada?

Not trying to PC-police you, just sounds like there might be some confusion here. It wouldn't surprise me if the First Nations people of Canada have a much higher birthrate than the rest of Canada, for many reasons.

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