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Japan's Population Decreasing


LostCosmonaut

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35666274

 

I think there's two main causes of this trend. First is the Japanese economy, which seems to be stuck in a funk since the 1990s and makes it financially straining to have children. Another big one is immigration; Japan is a notorious pain in the ass to immigrate to (I think they don't do dual citizenship, and it seems pretty difficult to assimilate). IIRC, Germany was looking at a declining population until immigration went up (it's now growing), so if Japan can fix that it should help slow the population decline. Not sure how to, though.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35666274

 

I think there's two main causes of this trend. First is the Japanese economy, which seems to be stuck in a funk since the 1990s and makes it financially straining to have children. Another big one is immigration; Japan is a notorious pain in the ass to immigrate to (I think they don't do dual citizenship, and it seems pretty difficult to assimilate). IIRC, Germany was looking at a declining population until immigration went up (it's now growing), so if Japan can fix that it should help slow the population decline. Not sure how to, though.

Most of Japan's social problems result from their toxic work environment which regularly has 12+ hour work days. They have a large shut-in population due to the work environment. Plus, the extra work environment is interfering with their social lives so the average Japanese person doesn't actually have time to go out and meet other people to have kids with.

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Most of Japan's social problems result from their toxic work environment which regularly has 12+ hour work days. They have a large shut-in population due to the work environment. Plus, the extra work environment is interfering with their social lives so the average Japanese person doesn't actually have time to go out and meet other people to have kids with.

Plus it is literally too expensive to have a child in any large Japanese city unless both parents are full-time proffessionals. Also, there is no way anyone who is not a billionaire can afford a maid, au pair, nanny, nurse or whatever.

 

So your would-be parents are left with the unappealing option of concieving their child via vigorous exchange of sticky notes, followed by said child raising itself until social workers shame everyone into committing suicide.

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Most of the world is breeding below replacement, I'm pretty sure the US is the only country in the developed world actually breeding above replacement rather than riding a population increase via demography.

 

It's just that as usual Japan's invented a smaller form of birth rates.

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Most of Japan's social problems result from their toxic work environment which regularly has 12+ hour work days. They have a large shut-in population due to the work environment. Plus, the extra work environment is interfering with their social lives so the average Japanese person doesn't actually have time to go out and meet other people to have kids with.

 

Japan also has, as I understand it, a low level of gender equality in work. This sounds a bit odd on the face of it, since traditionally the impression is that countries with more gender inequality would have higher birth rates; wife stays home and has nothing else to do but raise the kids. Before the 1970s, this was true; countries which had a higher level of female involvement in the work force tended to correlate with lower levels of fertility. However, since the 1970s this has flipped. Now, countries which have a higher level of female involvement in the work force also correlate with higher levels of fertility. A lot of countries previously noted for high birth rates - such as the Southern European countries, Italy, Spain, and Portugal - have now flipped, and have catastrophically low birth rates. Italy's TFR is 1.37, Spain's 1.32, Portugal's 1.23. These can't be easily explained by poor economic performance in recent years either, since their pre-crisis TFRs were, while somewhat better, still low. Portugal was 1.39 in 2008, Spain 1.45, and Italy 1.55.

 

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In general in Europe the North has a reasonably high TFR, while the South and the East has a low TFR. Germany is the exception with having a TFR much more akin to Southern Europe, which has been hypothesized for a number of different reasons, but generally difficulties for working mothers and a lack of supportable alternate family structures than traditional marriage are commonly cited reasons. In France as the example of a high TFR, there is the traditional family model with children, and the cohabitation model with children, while in Germany there is the traditional family model with children, and the cohabitation family model without children. France also has the mentioned better ability to integrate working mothers while still enabling them to have children, something the Germans have been less successful at. East Germany had a higher TFR for a while than West Germany from the 1970s on, with high levels of work participating for married women and child care facilities, and iirc East Germany recently surpassed West Germany in TFR. 

 

Note: The East Asian countries mostly correlate to the Southern European countries for similar fertility situations, which is why they're a relevant comparison.

 

Japan also does have falling rates of sexual activity and a growing population not interested in a romantic relationship too, which I can't imagine is a good thing. Otoh, the same trends do exist elsewhere, even if they may be famously associated with Japan. 

 

Most of the world is breeding below replacement, I'm pretty sure the US is the only country in the developed world actually breeding above replacement rather than riding a population increase via demography.

 

It's just that as usual Japan's invented a smaller form of birth rates.

 

The US slipped below 2.1 TFR, according to google we're at 1.88. Probably mostly due to the continuing economic crisis. France and Ireland are generally in the 2.0 range, sometimes they're above, sometimes they're below. Generally a bit below but its close enough so that when one takes into account immigration, and continued population increase as a result of youth cohort sizes they continue to grow. 

 

If one counts Turkey and Mexico as being part of the "developed world" because they're in the OECD, then they have a high fertility rate, as does South Africa. But all of those nations, despite being sometimes pegged into the industrialized world and/or with OECD membership, don't really have the level of developed countries in my opinion. There are also the oil-rich states of the middle east that can only be counted as "developed" for artificial means, so therefor I can't be bothered to look up their TFR. 

 

Israel has a high TFR as well, but that is due to special characteristics from various minorities, both Jewish (the Orthodox Jews) and Muslim, who have a high birth rate. Sometimes the argument gets brought up as France's high TFR being due to the Muslims, but from the papers on the matter that I've read, their impact is marginal. 

 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35666274

 

I think there's two main causes of this trend. First is the Japanese economy, which seems to be stuck in a funk since the 1990s and makes it financially straining to have children. Another big one is immigration; Japan is a notorious pain in the ass to immigrate to (I think they don't do dual citizenship, and it seems pretty difficult to assimilate). IIRC, Germany was looking at a declining population until immigration went up (it's now growing), so if Japan can fix that it should help slow the population decline. Not sure how to, though.

While economic matters do play a major part, concerning immigration it can only partially solve a population decline. Newcomers naturally age themselves, and so countries wanting to deal with aging problems require large numbers of immigrants. According to a UN report on the matter, the number of immigrants required would cause their population to reach to 50-99% of the country's population, something which is both politically impossible but also infeasible. To quote said UN report (an older report from 2001, but the fundamentals still apply) on the matter, concerning South Korea;

 

In order to keep the ratio of the working-age population to the population aged 65 years or older at its 1995 level of 12.6, it would be necessary to have a total of 5.1 billion immigrants from 1995 through 2050, or an average of 94 million per year. This number is enormous because the initial level of the potential support ratio, 12.6, is relatively high. Under this scenario, the total population of the country is projected to be 6.2 billion in 2050, of which over 99 per cent would be post-1995 immigrants and their descendants. 

 

Of course, for the purposes of maintaining population levels, that is different, but under a successful assimilation model immigrants will eventually reach the same birth rate as the rest of the population, which from my recollection, is generally the case even with Europe and continual fears about immigrant populations there. The paper covering that is probably somewhere on my computer. But in general, while immigrant can blunt population declines, in the event of very low TFR, immigration can only have a limited effect concerning population decline unless if we're talking about huge population waves. Taking into account political issues, its infeasible to have immigration levels of the amount required for maintaining current population levels for many nations. I doubt Japan will allow in large waves of immigrants into their island any time soon.

 

Germany has also seen a gradual rise in their TFR, although it is still far below replace rates. 

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OH MAN, THIS IS MY CHANCE TO MOVE TO JAPAN AND BECOME A NATURALIZED JAPANESE CITIZEN JUST LIKE IN MY JAPANESE ANIMES~

If it weren't for their shitastic gun control laws, I'd probably be living there.

Had a chance to work for ANA as a mechanic back in the 90's.

 

I still have some relatives living in the Aomori region. It's pretty nice, a lot like Michigan but with fewer mosquitos and wood-ticks.

The fishing there was fantastic, and as long as you were not some kind of dickhead, the locals were cool with you drowning bait.

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Welcome to SH. Interesting post. Also, I'm guessing you are a David Weber fan from the user name?

 

Thanks. Yes, I had liked the Honorverse and David Weber's works, there are some flaws with Mary Sues and the :not: British Empire in space winning eternally, but overall I enjoy Weber's works. The name I adopted a while ago for another site, and I recycle it intermittently for various uses.

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Thanks. Yes, I had liked the Honorverse and David Weber's works, there are some flaws with Mary Sues and the :not: British Empire in space winning eternally, but overall I enjoy Weber's works. The name I adopted a while ago for another site, and I recycle it intermittently for various uses.

I got my user name from another Baen author, Eric Flint. :)  David's good people.  A lot of the Baen folks are.

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