The article shows a graph of reasons why Japanese respondents were not having children.
Roughly ~22% (can't tell due to the graphical nature) responded "Struggling to conceive".
If you have a full FIFTH of your population willing but not able to have children, that's a lower hanging fruit to pick than somehow incentivising people who don't want to have children to change their mind.
Fertility treatment is almost never brought up... as though it were taboo. That needs to change. The cost of an IVF cycle is somewhere around $20,000 USD. It's a huge cost to bear as an individual, it's a drop in the bucket for a government, and pays for itself many times over when the conceived child enters the workforce.
In the west, this is a big issue because feminism told women they can have it all. Turns out work doesn't leave much time for having kids. I think men actually have the same issue, though more because a lack of social safety net and capitalism drives them to produce rather than have balance in their lives.
Something's off with society and incentives, but I'm at a loss for how to fix it.
> feminism told women they can have it all. Turns out work doesn't leave much time for having kids.
How many jobs are fulfilling enough one would want to sacrifice family time, or even just housework for? Doctors, scientists, architects, engineers, artists.. after that, the vast majority of jobs are just a way to make ends meet, not a means of self-fulfillment.
Looks at costs. Poor nations have high fertility. Rich nations have low fertility despite having an abundance of everything people in poor nations would clamor for.
Rich nations tend to be poor in social connectedness and community. This means dating and maintaining friendships is more difficult in richer nations.
Taking the context of dating in richer nations: If a dude from a rich country wanted to find a good wife, they would probably be better off looking in poorer nations where people aren't as likely to be spoiled, self-absorbed shits. Women in richer nations tend to want to screw around until they're 35-45 and then have an instant husband and kids. The last apartment complex I made the misfortune of selecting was bursting with mostly non-Ivy League office workers whose sole goals in life were sex, drugs, alcoholism, and imagining themselves as wealthy celebrity IG models. <unsolicited-dating-advice-department> I turned down this absolutely gorgeous woman mid-/early-20's who telegraphed she was self-centered, superficial, uncurious, and in a "maybe open" relationship, e.g., open to fooling around or an upgrade. The advice bit: A dude (or anyone really) can save themselves much grief by not monopolizing conversation and actively listen to the words and actions of others. In my calculus, it's cheaper and less painful to get an FWB if you need that but keep them at a distance. Most just aren't relationship material. Plus, I don't see how anyone in a richer country can find a reliable spouse when there is zero social context and zero accountability for behavior: dating apps only exacerbate the situation.
I generally agree, but you should change your opinion on poorer countries. The trend you describe is spreading everywhere. Even in that article they mention Thailand’s rate in 2022 was estimated at 1.32
This partially true as an overall trend, but is thankfully, not yet a universal fact. The "flattening" effects of globalization bring diabetes, divorce, and time and distance between relatives.
80's Eddie Murphy ridiculous bits notwithstanding, places like Rwanda are still socially conservative and fairly traditional. Certain Catholic-heavy countries and small island nations also tend to be very traditional. I don't mean "backwards" in ways like the Taliban, but have greater social cohesion, a sense that other people matter, and neighborliness.
Not all indeed. But across a population of millions, that has a serious impact.
The US has 330 million people, and assuming a roughly equal split means you're looking at ~165 million Men and 165 million women.
Assume that 1/3 of those 165 million women are able to have kids -- they're not too young, or post-menopausal. That's ~55 million women who can have kids.
If there is even a tiny amount of issues with being over age, like that only impacts 1-4% of pregnant women, that's still anywhere form 0.5 to 2.2 million pregnancies.
2 million babies that are going to not happen, or have problems. There are US states with fewer people. Even a tiny variance here can impact large populations greatly.
> The cost of an IVF cycle is somewhere around $20,000 USD.
Is this the cost in Japan or is this the cost in the US? Not trying to provoke a discussion on US healthcare, but it’s less than half that cost here in New Zealand (and additional subsidies are available too). Healthcare tends to be relatively inexpensive in New Zealand relative to the US
IVF may be cheaper in Japan?
> The cost of an IVF cycle is somewhere around $20,000 USD. It's a huge cost to bear as an individual, it's a drop in the bucket for a government, and pays for itself many times over when the conceived child enters the workforce.
This is extremely controversial in many circles, but subsidizing IVF for native born citizens, especially college educated, in countries like South Korea, Japan and the West has statistically better results than population increase through immigration. The effect are even more pronounced in countries with family-based immigrations, as often immigrants once settled will sponsor their aging parents into the country.
Just giving incentives to these families to have a third child (bearing in mind it requires more space, larger vehicle and so on) would have outsized returns compared to the negligible costs.
Note that I'm pro-immigration but it's about time we recognize it won't and can't solve all demographic problems. [0] [1]
IVF is not guaranteed to work, it could take multiple cycles each costing $20,000. Generally delaying finding a partner on the assumption that there is always IVF is also probably not a wise strategy.
Opened this article and immediately did a ctrl+f for 'immigration'. Not surprised to find only one hit toward the end where it is acknowledged as something that "might" be necessary.
Of course no society is forced to welcome outsiders, and from my very detached anthropological view on the situation, it looks like the Japanese would rather die (slowly, and then perhaps very suddenly as the weight of their society can no longer be borne by the next generation) than change.
Immigration is a short term solution to a long term problem.
Global fertility rate is only 2.4. Anything below 2.1 is a shrinking population. Yea, Japan could borrow population from China, but they will just be shrinking that population. Some countries in Africa still have significant positive fertility rates, but that is expected to drop dramatically if/as standards of living are increased.
If you've ever seen how their society operates, you'd know there's a reason to preserve it rather than sell out and destroy it to appease the economy gods.
It’s amazing what you can do when everyone is socialized into a consistent set of values from childhood, and raised by parents who were socialized the same way. It’s a marvelous society—coming back from Tokyo to New York City is viscerally upsetting. It’s very sad to see the situation they’re in.
> it looks like the Japanese would rather die (slowly, and then perhaps very suddenly as the weight of their society can no longer be borne by the next generation) than change.
Countries that do have significant immigration rarely see an increase in the native fertility rate. So the Japanese will die regardless*, immigration just means someone else will also inhabit their country.
In other words, you're offering a solution for the Japanese landmass, not the Japanese people.
*Assuming current trends hold for centuries, which they surely won't.
> In other words, you're offering a solution for the Japanese landmass, not the Japanese people.
Actually no, because these immigrants are not going to replace the entire Japanese population in one click, rather they will keep the country running and prevent the economic system from crashing in front of new Japanese kids.
Basically supplement the needed kids to reach/exceed the replacement rate.
I doubt that's going to be the majority of kids in the case of Japan.
It mostly doesn't work because it's very difficult for the children of immigrants to become German citizens. For a country where it works, see e.g. the USA. Germans, Irish people, Chinese people, etc. etc. have all 'magically' turned into Americans over the course of the country's history.
Yet Americans still divide themselves by race. The only reason they can all be called 'American' is because of the country's multiracial nature, not because they have abandoned in-group preference, as the many ethnic lobbies and general political climate attest to.
In contrast, Japan represents a small number of peoples, and it's laughable to suggest that someone can become Japanese or German by a mere act of bureaucracy.
I think its kind of unfair to compare america to Germany.
America is really an immigrants country, and its easy to integrate there compared to countries which have less of a globalized culture, such arguably Germany and maybe the UK.
That’s up to Germany, right? If racial purity is a requirement for being German then it will be harder to integrate immigrants. I’d suggest just dropping the requirement. The UK has much less of a problem with the concept of ethnically diverse British people (though it still has a long way to go).
Anyone who thinks that it takes ‘magic’ to turn someone who was born in Germany or Japan into a German or Japanese person is implicitly subscribing to some bogus theory of racially pure nations. (See e.g. your sibling comment, by someone who’s persistently been repeating far right talking points over the past few months.)
I didn't mean racial purity, rather how specific German culture and the German language with all of its dialects is to Germany.
Its not very globalized like American culture.
Kids who grow up in Germany will grow up speaking the local dialect of German and internalize the local culture. There's not much of a problem there. That is, unless you are someone who thinks that language and culture are tied to race. While I am not suggesting that you personally think this, it's an idea that clearly lurks in the background of these sorts of concerns (as you can see elsewhere in this thread).
This is literally the case. Already in the 1980s, as Japan seemed headed toward becoming the world's dominant economic power, there was debate throughout Japanese society over how much of outside society Japan should be willing to absorb. Public opinion surveys found the populace wanted to preserve their society as it was, regardless of the economic consequences. I think it was in the 1990s that the government began to emphasize policies with that intent.
I thought I already saw that movie, but turns out I saw a remake[1] of an earlier movie[2] which that movie is a parody of. And...they are still getting mileage out of the idea[3].
This is an extremely patriotic view. Why should people do something they don’t want to do just to ensure the survival of their society/country? The future of society is irrelevant to people who have already decided to be childfree and live the life they want today.
“Oooh you’re so selfish” hell yeah I am. I get one life why would I waste it doing something I don’t want to do for a future I won’t even see?
Edit: thanks for the downvotes without explanation. If you have a blanket expectation for other people to live their lives according to your ideologies (even if it makes them unhappy), perhaps take a second to consider what you’re asking of them.
I downvoted you because you seem to have responded to the wrong post, or made a non sequitur. The parent post is about how the Japanese aren't even considering immigration as a solution; your response seems to argue that women are not obligated to have children.
My comment is in response to this statement from the parent:
> it looks like the Japanese would rather die than change.
Which, in context, was framed negatively, implying that Japanese people should be doing something they don’t want to do to avoid the collapse of their future society.
If you read my comment with this frame in mind, it might make more sense.
I too would like an explanation.
It’s one thing if OP was talking up a lifestyle that was destructive to others or the environment but that doesn’t seem to be the angle. I don’t get the requirement for children.
If you have ever paid attention to the comments a childless person (women in particular) receives, it’s not hard to see how they would end up a smidge jaded at society.
Suggestions of blindly following a flag because it’s your colour and casting shade on patriotism may provoke some?
> I get one life why would I waste it doing something I don’t want to do for a future I won’t even see?
> [...] If you have a blanket expectation for other people to live their lives according to your ideologies (even if it makes them unhappy), perhaps take a second to consider what you’re asking of them.
Rhetorical question: are you also one of those childless types who objects to your taxes paying to fund public schools?
Everything you consume or enjoy in your self-centered, hedonistic life is only available to you because others did things they didn't want to do for beneficiaries they'd never see. Even retirement is a pipe dream-- not everyone lives to see theirs. But we all do our part in the meantime. Except you, for some reason.
Your outlook is tone-deaf and antisocial (and not in the cool/edgy way), hence the lack of popularity. You'd be more popular were you to brag about making your living stealing candy from children and selling it back to them.
> Rhetorical question: are you also one of those childless types who objects to your taxes paying to fund public schools?
Why is it rhetorical? Because you made an assumption about my position without actually knowing where I stand? Which is actually incorrect, as I’m a huge proponent of the public education system. You seem to have confused my personal preference to not have children for something else entirely.
> Everything you consume or enjoy in your self-centered, hedonistic life is only available to you because others did things they didn't want to do for beneficiaries they'd never see. Even retirement is a pipe dream-- not everyone lives to see theirs.
This is not true at all. I live in a capitalistic society. Virtually everything I enjoy exists because it makes someone rich, not because someone altruistically gave up their life to make my life better. You’ve also placed a negative connotation towards my selfishness and hedonism. Can you please explain why it’s not acceptable for to enjoy my short time on earth?
> But we all do our part in the meantime. Except you, for some reason.
This statement proves my point. You believe I’m “not doing my part” in society based solely on me not wanting to have children (ignoring the fact I pay taxes, donate to charities and whatnot). You want me to live my life in accordance with your ideology, even if it makes me unhappy.
> You'd be more popular were you to brag about making your living stealing candy from children and selling it back to them.
Are you serious with this statement? You believe extorting children is more acceptable than living childfree?
Asian societies turned population control into a quasi-religious endeavor in the 1960s and are now paying the price. Japan’s fertility rate peaked at well over 5 in the beginning of the 20th century. In just 40 years, from 1925 to 1965, it fell to just over 2. But it shot right past replacement levels, down to 1.4 today. It’s not going to be easy to overcome decades of socialization telling people that not having kids is the pathway to prosperity.
Even countries like Bangladesh will start shrinking in this century. I’m less worried about those because (1) I think Islam provides some back-pressure to keep birth rates from collapsing totally as in countries like South Korea; and (2) Bangladesh and India are quite a bit more densely populated than Japan, which really isn’t that crowded.
I don't think population control in the 60s is the issue now, rather like in North America, the way life and work is structured is not conducive to raising a family, and so many people have opted out of that.
The sharpest drop in the US birth rate came after the baby boom, from 1960 to 1980, and was almost certainly a product of changing norms rather than economic pressure.
> The sharpest drop in the US birth rate came after the baby boom, from 1960 to 1980, and was almost certainly a product of changing norms rather than economic pressure.
Economic conditions are a powerful factor in shaping norms, though in industrialized countries economic stability and stronger social safety nets are associated with reduced birthrates, “economic pressure” is thus more likely to be the opposite of the explanation.
I mean, in the sense that the birth rate used to be enormous because children were part of the subsistence farming labor force, yes. But the norm change here is pretty clear, and pretty clearly not a product of economic pressure; I'm being careful with my words so as not to set the thread off on a bleak tangent.
Subsistence farming has been a marginal activity even in colonial North America, and that was even more true in United States. It was mostly restricted to native Americans. The rest were overwhelmingly engaged in market farming, not subsistence — either as owners, hired laborers, or slaves. In any case, by 1960, US society was overwhelmingly urbanized, and subsistence farming has faded from living memory.
I'm just saying that if you look at the birth rate chart, the further away you get from modernity, the higher the birth rate goes. Substitute whichever more accurate words you prefer.
This might seem like nitpicking, but it is hugely important distinction for people interested in demographics. The simple fact is that societies engaged in subsistence farming are, in fact, stable instead of growing, and their TFR is not very far from 2. This has been true about, say, most of pre 1800s Europe, or pre 1900s sub Saharan Africa, but has not been true about North America for last 400 years until very recently.
> I mean, in the sense that the birth rate used to be enormous because children were part of the subsistence farming labor force, yes.
No, its true among countries in the developed West, both across countries at the same time and within countries over time, without subsistence farming being a significant factor. There's theory as to why speculating in the role of family as disability/unemployment/old age support being more critical with relatively weaker social support networks and less so with stronger ones.
(My personal pet speculatio is that its more subrational, and that humans are loosely biologically programmed in a way that generalized insecurity — perhaps signalled through accummulated effext of stress hormones — mitigates the degree to which humans are inclined to K-strategy in reproduction, and that’s an important factor in adaptability to environmental change on timescales shorter than evolution; lots of things in nature have a stress/reproduction response like that.)
No, in Asia the population control efforts started back in the 1930s and 1940s. Japan’s birth rate has already dropped to replacement levels by the time the birth control pill became prevalent in the 60s and 70s.
Japanese doctors made a big chunk of their money performing abortions. They lobbied to outlaw most forms of birth control, because it interfered with their abortion revenue.
There are plenty of stories of Japanese doctors saying, “Your pregnancy test is positive, when should we schedule the abortion?”
This wasn’t formal government policy, but the government did support it.
The birth control pill wasn’t legalized in Japan until the 1999. Plan B wasn’t legalized until 2011. Abortion by medication is still illegal.
I agree if there would be more birth control there would be fewer abortions and I agree it sucks that abortion by medication is still illegal. It sounds inhuman. I'm missing though the jump you're making as to how that would result in more births unless you're suggesting that you ban birth control and abortions but that doesn't seem like your position.
>>> Asian societies turned population control into a quasi-religious endeavor in the 1960s and are now paying the price
>> What kind of population control did Japan engage in in the
60s?
> Your response about no prescription abortions and birth control but instead doctors push abortions.
I'm totally missing your point about how Japan is engaging in population control. For example, if prescription abortions were legal and they pushed birth control instead, is the net effect a meaningful change in policy that would prevent them from "now paying the price"? I guess I'm totally missing how your criticism of their policies relates back to the original discussion that Japan's low birth rates are a result of population control and how addressing the critique you wrote would in any way change their birth rate.
Sadly, many of my sources, including the story of a western woman who was asked by her Japanese doctor when she wanted to schedule the abortion, are no longer googleable.
Even specific very specific queries aren’t returning anything.
It seems search engines are focusing more on what they want to show you, rather than what you want to see.
What’s really the downside of falling birth rates (as long as they stabilize, and they obviously will)?
In real terms as far as I can tell: young having to support more old and less competitive on the world stage. There’s not many complaints from the news about those though.
What they complain about is how wages will increase as labor supply tightens (hence the push for more and more immigration) and business profits will fall. So many Ponzi schemes will become ineffective. In other words, it’s going to be harder to be a rich person. Why should we have to sell out our culture via mass immigration to protect the rich and their market sizes?
You have lots of things such as pensions, social security that have embedded growth obligations. Like a ponzi-scheme, everything is cool, so long as you grow the number of people paying in. Instead of reevaluating the economic foundations of these EGO schemes and ask if they are sustainable, it's easier to blame people not having children or countries that don't want open boarders, and call it a crisis.
I wanted to ask basically the same question. Isn't it possible that the old models of population growth won't be true in the future? People relocate more, we have better tools for communication and collaboration. I'm curious why there isn't a path to prosperity, especially since we can watch what is happening long before the effects are felt.
Basic math. If your birthrate stabilizes below replacement level then you go extinct because each generation is smaller than the one before. The only way you don't go extinct is if your birthrate over the long haul is at or above replacement level.
Do I need to seriously believe that there is possible to extinct for humanity because of some people are not willing to make children? Are there any chances for this to happen before heat death of the Universe if to extrapolate Japan's birth trend to all human population?
No, because not all parts of humanity are equally averse to having children. So as long as it is physically possible for people to have kids and survive until adulthood, natural selection will eventually reassert itself. Things could get dicey for a while until then, though?
If global fertility rate becomes that like Japan, we'll have a halving of the population every generation. This leads to a global population of 78 million after 10 generations. Also a miserable population because each person needs to support two elderly people while before it was two people supporting one elderly. That's a 4x increase in work.
But what if we adjust the figure to take into account those percent Japanese who want children but cannot afford them? When the population begins to "extinct" because of those who can but do not want to reproduce, those who want to but cannot now will be able to do it.
Also the overbearing burden to support the elderly with a smaller younger population will apply to every generation (barring temporary baby booms) since each generation will be smaller than the previous one.
I think the end result will be that elderly won't be supported anymore. But let to work until they die. Cultures can change, assisted suicide or simply not keeping people alive past certain point might come reality.
I said they obviously will stabilize. They always do. Everything always does. At a certain point the population is just so low that having children becomes highly advantageous again. There's very very few biological system where the entire population just dies out from lack of reproduction (despite all other resources to do so being available).
On the other hand: there is absolutely 0 evidence to suggest that the population wouldn't stabilize. There are sub populations of humans that already have stabilized populations, this is true throughout the animal kingdom. If it's just preferences to not have kids, then those people will see their genetic line stopped and the people with preferences to have kids will see their genes dominate. If it's environmental, then our path will look a lot like that of other animals experiencing environmental shifts: certainly tough, but if you can adapt fast enough you'll be ok.
Right now, the main reason people don't have kids who want them is finances. The likely outcome here looks like the economy will winnow as a consequence until having kids becomes a positive financial decision (and that might mean going back as far as subsistence living in a worst case scenario). Regardless, the population will stabilize short of an asteroid or other catastrophe.
There's not a single precedent ever for what you suggest. The population stabilizing is the default for all of nature.
Your argument about sub populations can be just as easily applied to humans as a whole. Perhaps humans will be replaced by another species.
If you look at nature more coarsely, you don’t see population stabilization. Instead you see speciation and extinction due to random and constant changes. Perhaps there will be an environmental event that we would otherwise survive that will do us in because of our low population.
The downside is that our entire world economy is predicated on the assumption that labor will be cheap and markets ever expanding. Even if the population stabilizes, it looks like it will be well below what is considered replacement level and so this will require a massive shift in our thinking about how we organize literally everything in our society.
I don't know if it is possible to overstate how much things will change. The service staff you interact with at Starbucks, the grocery store, who deliver your meals, will no longer be affordable. These places will still exist in some form (though there will likely be fewer) and they will be much more automated than they even are now. These people will be so needed elsewhere that salaries will likely draw them to other industries critical to society continuing to function. Healthcare, in particular, will swallow up as much of the population as it is able to (much more than even now in a relative, not absolute sense).
We will have to make hard choices about continuing to support things like suburbs and other far-flung infrastructure that only barely made sense as long as you assumed more and more houses would be built and that property taxes would continue to go up to support it all. That will no longer be true, those houses will start to go empty, then the surrounding commercial properties. There will not be anyone interested in buying them. Some will be torn down, many will probably rot in place. This has already been in progress for decades in economically depressed areas, particularly the so-called "Rust Belt" in the United States.
There will (and already are) massive brain drains in key industries where skilled older workers are either not being replaced, or by those with much less directly applicable experience. The ability to maintain our infrastructure will become strained to the point where we will have to ask ourselves how we can safely reverse our maintenance and operation commitments alongside a constantly shrinking population while avoiding single points of failure that could trigger a panic or societal collapse. This is not far-fetched alarmism, the way we currently live, we are only a week or two of regional or national power outages away from complete anarchy. So many of our systems are interrelated, that a failure of one or two critical ones can have a cascading effect. The smaller local outages in Texas in 2021 was minutes away from leading to nearly months-long blackouts for this reason.
We will need more redundancy and slack in the system to manage these when they occur. Market capitalism abhors redundancy as inefficient so this will not be highly incentivized to be taken on by any one corporation, leading to governments likely deciding to impose extreme regulation or outright nationalize industries.
Interestingly, the United States may be one of the few societies where things more or less run along as normal, but this is only assuming a continued or increasing permissive immigration policy. The more we go the way of the Japanese, all of the above applies.
This just looks like basic biology to me. Yea it will be rough and quite the adjustment, but not catastrophic and totally precedented in nature. We will reach a new equilibrium - like all nature does.
These same people just a few decades ago were saying we're on track for runaway population growth because they couldn't imagine birth rates slowing. Now they say we're on track to go extinct because they can't imagine birth rates every picking up again. There are communities even in developed countries that are at an equilibrium birth rate, and the rest of the world will get there. That's simply how nature has worked over and over. The population will continue to grow, slow, then level off. Maybe decline somewhat, but find it's new equilibrium.
There's pretty simple logic to this too from natural selection: the types of people who don't want kids will see their genetic line end or can't, the people who do want kids and can will see their lines continue. The remaining over time will be people more and more inclined to have kids and the environmental effects will decline the population until we're at a sustainable level. Nature is self-correcting, always has been, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence for why that wouldn't just happen here too. These same corrective mechanisms are the same in the economy.
"the plan was to double the budget for child-rearing policies, focusing on three pillars: economic support, child care services and reform of working styles."
If you want it to work, ten-fold the budget or focus it in one administrative zone and see how it does.
Doing it half-heartedly isn't going to help. You need to guarantee an 18 to 20 year commitment to the program so that potential parents have assurance.
"The prime minister said the plan was to double the budget for child-rearing policies, focusing on three pillars: economic support, child care services and reform of working styles."
Double a currently lousy budget amount isn't even close to being good enough.
One of THE biggest problems is that women wind up carrying the weight of both sets of elderly parents in Japan. Why should a woman get married and double her burden for an indefinite amount of time--often longer than raising a child! You need elder care support and services in order to free up the younger generation to actually have children.
At the end, it's all about money. Society is going to have to funnel a whopping amount of money at young women to convince them to take on all the downsides of getting pregnant and raising a family.
I am surprised that no one is talking about Hiroshima and its possible impact on Japan’s falling birth rate.
The Axis countries of Germany, Japan and Italy have particularly steep declines in population with current generations simply unwilling to procreate. To not consider the impact of WW2 is a mistake. It’s not about fertility, it is about being defeated.
Roughly ~22% (can't tell due to the graphical nature) responded "Struggling to conceive".
If you have a full FIFTH of your population willing but not able to have children, that's a lower hanging fruit to pick than somehow incentivising people who don't want to have children to change their mind.
Fertility treatment is almost never brought up... as though it were taboo. That needs to change. The cost of an IVF cycle is somewhere around $20,000 USD. It's a huge cost to bear as an individual, it's a drop in the bucket for a government, and pays for itself many times over when the conceived child enters the workforce.