Births in Japan likely to fall under 700,000 for first time | The Asahi Shimbun
Births in Japan likely to fall under 700,000 for first time | The Asahi Shimbun
An estimated 687,080 Japanese children were or will be born in 2024, falling below 700,000 for the first time and marking the lowest level on record, according to Asahi Shimbun calculations.
For comparison, Japan births in the past:
- 1935: 2.19 Million
- 1955: 1.73 Million
- 1985: 1.43 Million
- 2005: 1.06 Million
They will do anything but not work their people to death.
I mean they are doing things to try and change that culture. It's taken a while though.
Western nations also have declining birth rates but they are less xenophobic so immigrants are back stopping the drop.
You think this is the reason? Western Europe and countries like Italy have pretty lax working hours, however birth rate is close to 1 there too
It's hardly the sole cause of Japan's problem, nor unique amongst developed nations. However, given the near total aversion Japan seems to have towards the notion of enabling immigration as a means to permanent residency for immigrants, it takes on a much greater dimension for the problem than it might in other nations that are more open to immigration. Barring a sudden and total reversal politically and socially on the question of immigration, Japan will have to do far more domestically to improve quality of life and work-life balance if they want to avoid a total demographic collapse.
Japan's response to this will be to take a shower then wonder what happened to their libido afterwards.
They're doing something right over there.
No they aren't. According to current projections the population could drop from 130 million to 50 million by the end of the century. That's a shocking gap. Nobody knows what the consequences of that would be.
And it is tragic when small towns and villages slowly die out. If you've ever lived in one or if any of your relatives who ever lived in one that suffered from young people leaving and never coming back, it's just sad. To some degree it may be unavoidable, but when that's happening on a massive scale across your entire country, maybe there's a better way.
And if you don't want it to drop that low, then you need to take steps to address the fact that people aren't having children. The first is you need to raise pay and increase working conditions and stability. But of course the rich assholes don't want to pay for that. Another option would be to allow for foreign workers to come in and gain citizenship, but if you give them citizenship then they will create laws that will prevent companies from fucking them over. Rich assholes and racists don't like that.
Some of us feel it's better to have fewer (or no) people in this world. If you ascribe to that philosophy then a declining birth rate from people choosing not to procreate is the most humane way to achieve that, with genocide and eugenics being obviously evil. I do believe things will be difficult for the aging population, and even more difficult for the young who are forced to care for them.
I have lived in a town dying from the exodus of young people. I was in 8th grade when the school became too small to maintain and my bus ride tripled in length, but I was suddenly in a class of 32 instead of 6. It is indeed sad, and it looks worse every time I visit. It's like a person in hospice fading away. I do truly mourn for the history and culture that is lost. But I also personally believe the suffering humans inflict and endure outweighs what the universe will lose.
Infinite growth is impossible. It doesn't matter if we achieve luxury gay space communism, there is a maximum comfortable limit to the population based on technology and resource balance.
We need depopulation, or perfect terra forming technology. Since we don't have the latter, encouraging a voluntary form of the former is good until we do.
The reason for the birth decline is the change of the culture from both male and female working. The liberals and feminist convinced people that an ambitious woman does not need to beg her husband for money, instead they can just go to the workforce themselves, and become independent. The purpose of marriage is largely lost, and that is why marriage is coincidently lower, too. China, for example, use to have a dominant culture of the women only needing to marry a man, but since Chinese women are working too, they have no real need for a husband, and their career, and money become the priority. Work attachment is essential for increased wages. The longer a worker is attached to the work force, the higher the chance they take up better paying jobs. The culture has changed, plain, and simple. It has nothing to do with affordability or free daycare.
Your close. The issue was families could be funded on 40 hours or so of labor a week and that switched to over 80 hours. There is no time for children. If work hours were decreased as women entered the workfore it would not be much of an issue. Two people each working three days a week were one spouse can watch the children and work on the house in various ways while the other is working would result in more people having kids. Of course they would need to make enough to buy a house suitable for a family and cover other necessary expenses. In addition they should start working as teenagers to get used to the work world so high school should be 3 days a week to accommodate.
This is not true. People don't want kids. How many kids does Rihanna have? Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Anderson Lee, Jim Carey, and so on? Not that many compared to the amount of money they made, and it varies. Some people like kids, other people don't. You are free to choose how many kids you want or don't want. With contraceptives, and abortion, you can achieve that easily. Because women can choose a different lifestyle other than being a wife, who cares for the house, they can focus on other things, besides kids, because they have the opportunity, and expectation to do so. The role of the woman has changed from the rural lifestyle that took care of the home, and kids, to that of independent woman who supports herself. Other than inheritance, there is no economic reason to get married. It isn't necessary to get married to thrive in an urbanized setting with job opportunity. This is exactly what happened to Chinese women, as China is the latest country to transition from a rural lifestyle to an urban one due to economic changes. Children were needed to operate the farms, so having many children, is like having more workers. Since individuals can be much more productive by investing into themselves, children are not necessary. They are in fact considered a hindrance, and to a free person, even a nuisance. No free daycare will fix that. Germany has subsidized daycare, and it is completely free for Germans with low incomes. Germany has ultra-low birth rates. Not just low, but ultra-low. Most children are accidents, not planned pregnancies. It makes no economic sense to say you need to pay someone else to take care of your family, when people did it for free. Mormons with polygamous lifestyles do it for free. It is a matter of priorities.
The purpose of marriage, exclusively, was to increase your parents wealth.
But more importantly you're dancing around the fact capitalism is the root cause of all issues described and the elimination of capitalism is the cure.