Japan’s demographic crisis is deepening faster than expected, with the number of births this year on track to fall below even the government’s most pessimistic projections.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20251228215131/https://slguardian.org/japans-birth-rate-set-to-break-even-the-bleakest-forecasts/
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Amazing how the people in positions to have kids are screaming at the top of their lungs what would help the situation and the geritocracy just ignores them and has the fucking nerve to whine about low birth rates.
Wipe your own asses boomers, we’re done propping up this dead society
I love that people who just second before told me they DO NOT CARE about my future (bc of climate change), try to force me to have kids because I supposedly SHOULD care about their future lmao
Yeah honestly, this wolrd has done nothing but tell me it hates me and wants me to die. And I’m doing much better than most people.
This isn’t a world I would feel ok subjecting a child to.
Dropping dead on the factory floor only to be replaced hours later isn’t very motivating I’d imagine
japan has a socially forced drinking after work hours problem,.
Surely more austerity and social alienation will solve it
MORE WORK HOURS!!!
The beatings will continue until the Japanese cum
Where my phone placed the new line was truly a rollercoaster:
Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even
Wow, breaking even? Finally looking up for japan!
… the Bleakest Forecasts
Oh no.
Wow, we’re lucky this whole AI thing will fix everything if we just give some tech bros a few more trillion dollars
Low birth rates are a fantastic thing. There are too many people in the world, we will decrease to equilibrium.
Malthusian myth. Might as well argue for eugenics while you’re at it.
Strawman/Begging the argument logical fallacy: ignored
not for 1 country though, thier culture could become extinct. they need immigration, plus countries are not even trying to solve thier underlying problems, HCOL, and job prospects, they are doing adjacent.
It’s not 1 country though. Most western and developed countries are stagnating or declining in population, it’s a natural part of the cycle of equilibrium with their environment. Maybe it’s sped up or exacerbated by human caused factors but it was inevitable
Trust me, a growing elderly population with a shrinking working-age workforce to sustain them is very much not a good thing.
In the short run maybe not, but for the long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity. Capitalism is built on a myth of infinite growth, we produce more than enough for everyone to live a good life.
long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity.
No. This has been brought up and debunked by experts. Despite the rapidly falling birth rate, it will take centuries to overcome population inertia. Changes will not happen anywhere close to fast enough to save us from the environmental crisis we are facing. If anything, it may make things worse as an aging elderly population means the young generation is preoccupied trying to take care of them instead of dealing with the shit they left behind.
Our ideal birth rate would be between neutral to very gradual decline, not the cliff jump we’re currently facing.
Not sure if ‘brought up and debunked by experts’ is the best argument out there. For example, ‘population inertia’ would cover only one lifespan, not centuries. That is to say, whatever the population is now, it could be 10 people to 100 billion people within 100 years. This is not discounting cultural and psychological factors, but if we’re talking human behaviour, that’s literally everything.
Secondly, the population decline is hardly a cliff. It is decreasing in some countries like Japan, but when added into the global picture, we’re not even at neutral. We’re still growing.
You are absolutely right that a larger aging population is something that must be addressed. However, if increased population pressure leads to a tipping point, like a shift in the AMOC or immigration pressure from hotter areas to cooler areas, our current treatment of old people doesn’t fill me with confidence. I think in a crisis, we would sacrifice them anyway. We would write some sympathetic think pieces about it though.
population decline is hardly a cliff.
Population decline in Japan and similar countries is absolutely a cliff right now, hence the article.
We’re still growing.
That’s largely due to said population inertia. The current best estimates of actual worldwide fertility rate has us anywhere from 2.0 to 2.2. There’s a possibility we’ve already dropped below replacement rate worldwide.
Not sure if ‘brought up and debunked by experts’ is the best argument out there.
Unless actual scientific data showing otherwise is brought to a discussion, ‘appeal to authority’ is NOT a fallacy.
Appeal to authority is neither a fallacy nor proof. It is rhetoric. It proves nothing, and disproves nothing.
For example, your authorities debunk “long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s (sic) a necessity.” My authorities, like William Catton or Meadows, et. al. would say otherwise. Invoking them doesn’t prove my perspective. It does prove there is much debate about the subject.
In such instances, defining metrics and showing your work, as the math teachers say, is the best way forward.
The article in question, for example, relies on hype like ‘670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.’ Level of what? Percentage of population? Actual number of people? Compared to how many? With the priviso, for example that ‘The expected figure, … excludes children born to foreign residents”. How many of those? I suspect not many, but it’s necessary to know.
What the article could have stated are actual metrics such as replacement rate, which in Japan is 1.20. South Korean is considerably lower, at 0.72-0.74. We could use words like ‘cliff’ I guess, but I prefer numbers, and I would encourage their use in articles such as this.
A smaller population is necessary but not sufficient to combat climate change in the far far term. You’re right it won’t happen fast enough to save us from climate change but in the long run if we want a decent standard of living for human beings especially with a far lessened climate impact, we’re likely far beyond the carrying capacity of the earth.
Population growth is obviously next to impossible to project but the low end of figures I’ve seen show a decline to below 8B by 2100 which is a start.
It’s hard to say what the actual carrying capacity of earth is, if we were trying to optimise for sustainability and not profit or special interests. Would we be sustainable today, if we were full on renewables and batteries, vat grown meat, no plastic waste, etc? There’s so many things that could be done for major impact but aren’t, for all we know we aren’t even anywhere close to earth’s carrying capacity with current or near future tech.
not good for a countries, culture, and people, and this also devestate the economy eventually
Population decline isn’t a forever thing. A group of animals is overpopulated they decline until reaching equilibrium with their environment. 4B humans would be plenty for all the cultural richness you could ever hope for. As for the economy, I view that as a good thing. Either capitalism dies or we do, the economic system is incompatible with a universe of finite resources
But AI told me AI can solve that.
That’s only if they keep their current system though. Why would they do that if they can see it won’t work out going forward? Their economic system will need to evolve and that’s ok.
Why should people change their behaviors to suit the economy instead of just changing the economy?
Can you define what sustainability looks like? One farmer has never been able to produce more. Maybe a country makes less widgets, but I don’t all the doom and gloom when taking care of the basics has never been more attainable for all.
There are three solutions to adjusting the so-called ‘replacement rate:’
- Reduce death rate (ie improve health outcomes for elderly to extend lifespan).
- Make more babies.
- Allow immigration.
Options 1 and 2 haven’t worked too well, and option 3 can cause a lot of political issues.
Not sure there’s a good way to avert the end-game.
I’d argue that Japan has historically done pretty well at the first. I don’t find the healthcare system here perfect, but I have many elderly in-laws who get great care. There’s probably going to be a decline in quality and/or availability as the issues persist, though.
3 leads to more than just “political issues”, you are replacing your country’s people and culture with others that will in all likelihood have far higher birth rates
More culture is good…?
Not “replacing” unless you bring in like 50k+ immigrants per year and give them disproportionate power over everything. Immigrants bring their culture, but they’re always the ones who have to adapt.
Currently Japan brings in 153k in the last year, and 175k in the year before - and these are net stats
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If one of the most intelligent races in the world is going extinct due to not reproducing, it’s a good sign that reproducing in this world is a terrible and selfish idea. Good for them. Just die out and break the cycle of suffering.
“race” has no basis in science or biology and is completely made up, so go ahead and fuck right off with your Nazi shit.
I’m antinatalist. It’s very unpopular.
You can be antinatalist without any of the bad fake Nazi pseudoscience. The Hitler shit will only make you popular with the worst cringy people.
Human race
Most intelligent race huh?
beeeeeeeep::: cw war crimes
Throwing babies on pikes was the peak of humanity didn’t you know :::
Really on that Lovecraft shit, like Japanese people specifically are a race with their own unique characteristics
They really are more educated than most. The value on education there is high.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t speak English very well. We don’t use the word “race” that way, you sound like a Nazi.
What the fuck kind of virtue signaling nonsense is this? English is my first language. If you put kids from Japan in a room with kids the same age from Mississippi, Japan will kick their asses at Math. My country has hard college, Japan has brutal high school. More people in Japan are better educated because most people in my country do not have college education and high school doesn’t go far. What an annoying comment. Using pronouns does not change definitions and make you the bastion of sensitivity for the world.
Sorry for giving you the benefit of the doubt. I should have just said fuck off, nazi trash.
Yo sarcasm right?
korea is actually worst off than japan.
That’s crazy man
Italy’s not doing great either but it never comes up in the “look at japan” discussions
The birth rate discussion is mostly centered around “can we continue making money?”
Japan and Korea have low immigration rates, so the population falls and capital is unhappy about the prospect of a shrinking and more elderly workforce and domestic market to sell things to. Italy on the other hand has subsaharan and arabic immigration (and the actually larger eastern European and Chinese immigration - but they’re not as fantasy inducing for the far-right), so the population decline isn’t as fast. There are more workers to replace the dying ones, and capital is happy. Plus, you can use this fact to fuel chud paranoia about “the great replacement”
Immigrants are seen as a tool everywhere. Right wingers want us, only as long as we become loyal servants with 0 political power and living in fear of the state and society’s iron fist. Liberals want us, because “who will clean the toilets?”.
And the fact that something is happening to cause people to consider reproducing as outright harmful to their well-being among people who would otherwise have wanted offspring is a crisis of bourgeois society that few people actually want to talk about.
Probably because, compared to those 2 countries, Italy is easier to immigrate to.
Japan’s easier than most people think. As long as you have a college degree you can get a shit job pretty easily.
Is that right? Maybe if you look a certain way that’s socially acceptable to them. If you aren’t (white, Asian) you’ll get temporary work that pays like shit, and companies can not hire you because they don’t like that you’re not Japanese with no legal or social protections to aide you. Even shit jobs have social requirements. That’s really the biggest problem.
These days even the white folk are stuck in shit jobs because everyone and their mom wants to live in Japan. You need more than just a bachelor’s in whatever to make it long term.
Granted it’s probably still more difficult for non white or Asian people, but I wasn’t really taliking about long term prospects. Even still, it’s way easier to immigrate if you get married than somewhere like the US.
This is the average amount of monthly hours (male/female)worked since 2013, i do not see an honest effort to help the population growth.
Source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/
40 hours a week is 160 hours in a month, which the male average seems to dip below regularly and the female average is always below. That doesn’t seem worse than my situation in the US.
- This is the official working time, which does not include the obligatory overtime where bosses require their employees to accompany them going drinking and stuff
- They want japanese babies, and no immigrants - so their working time MUST get below other western countries (which keep their population at a stable level by immigration) or it will never happen.
I completely agree. This is all about people not enjoying life because they work too much. Regulate the problem as an externality and this problem would go away. But government leaders in Japan would never have the guts to radically regulate the problem, such as requiring double the pay for overtime after 28 hours of work per person in a week (and this would need to be per person, not per job, to avoid people then just doubling up on jobs to get more hours; the externality could only be brought under control by having it apply to everyone with no way to circumvent it).
Which line’s male and which line’s female?
The lower averaging one is the female one, but one must remember that japan is deeply conservative and that means household and caring for kids/elders are womens duties - additional to the working hours. I couldn’t find data for the amount of unpaid work done, but i found participation surveys, which show the difference in what percentage of men/women are involved in unpaid work on any given day in the working populace (data from 2021):
source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?stat_infid=000032224111
The blue line is male and the blue line is female.
Japan does not get enough hate for being a racist anti-immigrant conservative hell hole.
I don’t see the problem. What’s the problem here? How is this bleak, except for the linegoup?
More babies is just more people later. I don’t know that we need fewer, but we certainly don’t need more.
I said the same thing but used the word race and the whole forum bashed me for being a “Nazi.” I swear sometimes I think the bots have already taken over Lemmy.
Old people unable to find caregivers and dying alone, often many years younger than they would with basic care. In isolation, I do find countrywide systemic elder neglect to be a pretty big negative. I am old enough my future need for care is starting to feel pretty real, and I really appreciate having enough nieces and nephews to have decent odds of support.
In Japan’s specific case, there are large numbers of people in nearby countries that would jump at the chance to immigrate and work in elder care, but most Japanese are so racist they would rather die alone and early. So, I guess leave them to it.
That’s more of a structural issue though than a population issue.
Like, you can literally have millions of people in the country that are unemployed but still not have enough care workers because the government refuses to pay them and provide the necessary infrastructure. An incompetent government does far more harm to elderly care than any population decline ever could do.
Another stupid article assuming that a population reduction is a bad thing.
No, no, of course, just keep increasing the human population until it crashes. Then it’ll be an actual problem.
The numbers look bad because increasing population increases the GDP, and GDP has become the archetypal example of what happens when you turn a metric into a goal.
It’s not just about GDP, if your retired population starts to outnumber your working population by a large amount, who will support all those old people? Nowadays children can’t care for their parents because they have to go to their 9-5 every day, so we rely on other people to do that job for us, and if they disappear then what? The problem isn’t the deflating population per se, it’s the inverted demographic pyramid and our work culture
‘It’s only a problem for economics.’
‘But what about the economics?’
So the problem isn’t “not enough babies” it’s “not enough babies to keep both our xenophobia and our toxic work culture”?
Oh no. Whichever you choose, I’m sure the world will mourn the other with you.
Kurzgesagt had an nice video about this, it has a huge imact on culture too. With old people not able to transmit their knowledge and crafts.
With old people not able to transmit their knowledge and crafts.
Oh no, my family’s extensive hater knowledge will be lost to time.
Don’t forget that immigrants are bad.
/s
True, dropped that, my bad
The problem is made up. We’re more productive than ever and should have plenty of leisure time and plenty of safety nets for old age…but that wealth has all been siphoned off by a very few. The solution to this is tax the wealthy.
“The problem that historians, economics, geographers and other researchers have studied for decades is made up. Trust me bro”
So, two easy solutions:
Immigrant labor
Cut the toxic work culture, go to a 20-30 hour work week, and give people time to take care of their parents.
Why can’t they do that? Ask your economy priests why they can’t do that. Get back to me.
Not all economists are capitalists or assholes. Many economists do propose such things. It’s the government that doesn’t implement them. Economists are real scientists, and shunning their work in such a blanket way is uncomfortably reminiscent of the kind of anti-science “I do my own research” thinking we see on the right. Economists disagree with each other on all sorts of things, because it’s an evolving field, but that doesn’t mean it deserves to be analogized to something like religion.
economists are real scientists
Absolutely, almost as much as L Ron hubbard was!
What makes someone a scientist to you? And why don’t economists fit that? It’s such an interesting take, especially since (given we’re on Lemmy lol) I assume you’re coming from either a communist or socialist standpoint, both of which are economic theories with many economists backing them. So it’s not like all economists are playing on the team against you - although maybe you have a much more interesting take on all this than I’m imagining.
For those who are downvoting this - > Watch these 2 videos from Abigail thorn from Philosophy tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDnr646tLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3nfS_1am4Y
The 1% can make their own wage slaves
It’s wild how much pearl clutching goes on about birth rates, and how it isn’t common knowledge that this shit is a cyclical pattern. People get antsy about birth rates any time there’s economic contraction happening.
The Japanese are not going to die out and Japanese society is not going to collapse.
Whovis going to take care of all the 80 year old Japanese people in 50 years when they have less medical staff? What happens to all the empty and decaying buildings that have no one left to maintain them all? What happens to the smaller rural cities with a current population between 75,000-200,000 people when the only job options are hospice care because the local employers can’t operate anymore? Decreasing population by 50,000 a year over a few decades is manageable. Japan and Korea are way past that point and there simply won’t be enough people to care for the ageing population and shrinking pool of working people and children.
