Japan's annual births fall to record low as country's 'silent emergency' deepens
The number of newborns in Japan fell below 700,000 for the first time since records began in 1899. The government data released Wednesday showed a 16th straight year of decline and it's faster than had been expected.
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We made everything super expensive and created a toxic work culture that weighs on your every waking moment while cutting salaries so that both people in a relationship need to work full time... why is no one having kids?
When did everyone collectively stop freaking out about overpopulation?
Ohhh "replacement" in this context means "replacement minimum wage workers for the factories".
Might be worth noting that this is a huge swing from a bygone era of high infant and child death, such that women were expected to have children early and often in hopes that they could outperform the mortality rate. Population rates in Japan had been low and relatively flat for centuries. Then the industrial revolution and modern medicine dramatically reduced mortality rates, causing populations to climb rapidly for around a century.
Now we're settling into a new normal of sub-replacement rate births (not no births by any stretch, just births slower than the post-40s boom years) and everyone's freaking out like Japan won't exist in another generation.
The Japanese people could likely support a higher population via socialist public policy. But they could also just have a smaller population going into the 21st century. It's not like 123M is a magic number the nation needs to persist. If Japan's population fell into the 80M mark, what's the horrible thing that could happen? Koreans and Philippinos and Italians and Egyptians might be legally allowed to immigrate at last? Oh no!!!! Death of a nation!!!
Philippinos
Filipinos.
They wouldn’t be able to afford retirement payments for their elderly population. That is the risk
How big of an issue is that in Japan? I know that older people there tend to like being employed even into their senior years. I don't know how much is out of necessity.
It's a big issue. The problem is there are a large amount of elderly people and not enough young people to care for them and keep the economy going.
Population age graphs used to be a triangle. Lots of kids some adults and a few elderly. So there were a lot of people to care for a small number of the elderly and a big group to care for you when you became elderly.
These countries age graphs look like upside down pears. Lots of elderly some working and few children. So more work by the young to care for the elderly.
Caring for them is entirely a different matter, but yes.
It’s a big issue everywhere, Japan in particular has it worse than others because of their robust social support network so you need a large working population to be able to fund it and due to their shrinking population funding social services their deficit has been increasing and is reaching a bad point where their deficit is around 2.5x their GDP so they are going to bury their future already shrinking population in debt
I agree that immigration is a big part of fixing this.
I think if the population (replacement rate )declines too swiftly, you have a lot of old people and few young people. At some point it become exponentially harder to even keep your last generation's replacement rate, and you have spiraling population decline. See South Korea for the Speedrun.
If Japan steadily declines to 80M it could be fine. If Japan goes to 80M in a generation, that's very very bad for the chances of there being any Japanese people left in a few more generations
See South Korea for the Speedrun.
S. Korea has some of the highest populations per sqkm on the planet. One of the problems they're facing is the lack of real estate.
If Japan goes to 80M in a generation, that’s very very bad for the chances of there being any Japanese people left in a few more generations
A generation ago, people were talking about the perils of overpopulation, particularly in highly dense countries like Japan and Korea.
It's so bizarre to see a marginal shift in trends lead people to extrapolate an extinction level event.