Japan’s birth rate has plunged to a new record low, undermining the country’s initiatives to remedy its aging population.
According to Japan’s health ministry, the total number of births declined to 799,728 in 2022, which is down 5.1% from a year earlier. The birth rate is the lowest since the ministry began record-keeping in 1899, falling to a record low for the seventh consecutive year.
As for the number of deaths, it has risen by 8.9% to 1.58 million for the same time period.
The low fertility rate means a smaller workforce and fewer taxpayers to sustain the country in the years to come.
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Japan, which is the world's third-largest economy, has the highest proportion of elderly citizens globally. The rising cost of caring for its elderly is reportedly draining the nation’s coffers, making it the world’s most indebted country.
"We recognize that the falling birth rate is a critical situation," Yoshihiko Isozaki, a deputy chief cabinet secretary, said in a briefing on Tuesday. "My understanding is that various factors are intricately intertwined, preventing individuals from realizing their hopes for marriage, childbirth and child rearing."
The government has been working to increase the labor force and to support children and their families in efforts to boost the population and economy.
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Japan has encouraged more women to work and has been accepting some immigrants.
The government has reportedly allocated 4.8 trillion yen (approximately $35.3 billion) from the fiscal 2023 budget to a new agency dedicated to children and their families. It will lay out its child and child-rearing policies by June for doubling their respective budgets, according to Isozaki.
However, Narise Ishida, a member of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from Mie Prefectural Assembly, suggested that the nation’s plummeting birth and marriage rate is due to the people’s lack of “romantic ability.”
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“The birth rate is not declining because it costs money to have children,” Ishida said during a question-and-answer session at the assembly on Friday, reported The Mainichi. “The problem is that romance has become a taboo subject before marriage.”
He suggested that the government conduct a survey to determine people’s “romantic ability.”
Although Makoto Watanabe, professor of media and communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Sapporo, agreed that young people now lack traditional communication skills, he noted that this generation “communicates very well online and through social media,” according to the South China Morning Post.
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Among my students I see them constantly showing “romantic abilities” through modern technology, which may be why Ishida cannot see it happening. Young people still want to marry, to have a family, to have more children, but when buying a car or a house is so hard because of economic concerns, it’s very difficult to have children.
According to experts, the low fertility rates are due to demanding work cultures, rising costs of living, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality and rising disillusionment among younger generations.
Due to the improvement in gender roles in Japan, many women do not feel obligated to get married and raise a child.
Young women are reportedly more likely to get employed than to get married and have children.
In 2020, the enrollment rate of women in four-year-degree colleges increased by 51% since the late 1980s. The labor participation of women aged between 25-29 also rose from 45% in 1970 to 87% in 2020.
Demographic declines are also present in other Asian countries, including South Korea and China.
South Korea beat its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, falling to 0.78 children per woman in 2022.
China's population decreased in 2022 for the first time in six decades, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau last month.
warpedspockclone on March 1st, 2023 at 19:42 UTC »
There are so many causes. It is a societal artefact.
Other comments have mentioned things, but I'll add something new: work regulations and unintended consequences
There are a lot of worker protections in Japan, which is great. HOWEVER, there is also a giant loophole the size of the space shuttle. So many people get stuck in these employment models where they work for a contracting agency which then ships them off to some other company to work while taking a non-trivial fee.
This shields the end company from having to fulfill some employment protection laws, since they can swap out for new people. What this results in is instability since you may only be working at a given company for 2 years before you can't have that contract renew anymore and your agency has to place you elsewhere.
If you've developed specialized skills, that may be hard to place elsewhere in your geographic area. Your commute changes. You may need to move and switch schools for your kids. Or, if you can't move, you may need to leave the workforce or go with somewhere for 800yen/hr to help make ends meet.
This also causes brain drain at the companies.
Even government offices do this.
I get that this is a useful employment model to fill a temporary need or whatnot, but it didn't be the standard way to vote the majority of the labor market, which instability for people and a middleman layer fleecing everyone (I say that hyperbolically, since they do provide a useful service).
NomDePlume007 on March 1st, 2023 at 17:41 UTC »
This is a scenario many countries are facing. Japan is impacted twice, because they have very restrictive immigration policies. Falling birth rates plus lack of immigrants means they're falling into the same situation as China - nicknamed "the 1-2-4 issue." Each person (1) is effectively taking care of parents (2) and grandparents (4).
Gonzo_B on March 1st, 2023 at 17:37 UTC »
I'm sure that's it, and not the years of economic downturn and instability in a culture where people work a minimum of 40 hours per week with mandatory overtime. It's definitely the fault of every exhausted worker with little hope for the future that they don't have romantic ability.