Gov't advisers warn Japan's birth rate falling at more rapid pace this year

People don't have children because they feel bad raising children in the crazy, insane, robotic, unsafe soceity. Make changes and people will have children.

Couples should be marrying at 22, not 42.

I think couples should do what they feel is best for them.

Japanese Government: Have more babies! Birthrate is falling and we need more people!

Japanese People: But we have no money and work like zombie's! how can we?

Japanese Government: Have more babies! why arent you listening! and doing what you are told!

The Japanese Government and institutions are a total fail.

fewer than 800,000 births this year, 10 years ahead of a projection

Some "projection"s are just too optimistic.

Back to the meeting room!

High housing costs are a major disincentive to having children. In a country, like Japan, where more than 90% of ruling class wealth is in land/property, there will be no deliberate effort to reduce housing costs. Japan's rulers will take both all their wealth and the country's future to their graves.

So long as the Japanese work culture is "you belong to the company and you go home when the boss leaves, unless he orders you to go drinking", Japan's population will continue to decline.

It's not rocket science. Parenting is exhausting anyway, even in a supportive environment.

You can't make babies if you're in a state of permanent exhaustion before you even start.

Private sector advisers to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga have warned that Japan's birth rate is declining at a faster pace amid the coronavirus crisis, saying that society should have a "sense of crisis" about it.

Government? Private sector need to do theirs too.

The advisers called on the government to strengthen support for children and child-rearing households, such as for securing sufficient revenues for raising support to levels comparable to that of other countries.

It's common in Japan woman will lose their job in company Japan once they are pregnant, beside that when a father try to take paternity leave they will lost their job too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/world/asia/japan-paternity-leave.html

The advisers called on the government to strengthen support for children and child-rearing households, such as for securing sufficient revenues for raising support to levels comparable to that of other countries.

That's killed the idea, no way are Buisness lobbyists going to allow that. It would kill their Buisness model that being keep the plebs on the edge of financial ruin.

This is not a cause of concern, but rather a sign of hope. The population of Japan rapidly grew from the end of Tokugawa and especially in the early half of the 20th century, to the point where ecological carrying capacity was greatly exceeded and Japan was forced to export people, then colonize and, when that didn't work out, accept permanent occupation to have US military protected, global access to enough calories to feed the population. Until Japan can get closer to food self-sufficiency, population decline should be embraced.

With too many humans propelling the climate emergency and collapsing ecosystems, especially the ones with big ecological footprints, actually shouldn't all nations follow Japan's lead and rapidly reduce their populations?

The four advisers in the 11-member Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP), Japan's top economic advisory panel,

Could have come to their conclusions with one member in a few minutes: The neo-liberal economic model of wage suppression and capital growth in developed nations is incompatible with large family units.

Japan simply have too many good and responsible people. Without good prospects of a sufficient salary, support for childrearing and both parents keeping their jobs after having a child, it is natural many will simply choose to not have any children.

Solve the immediate danger of this year first, then solve the many hurdles people have to deal with to have kids and birth rate will climb up as a natural consequence.

We already have two, I’d love to have more, but living in Tokyo with meager support from the government for parents hardly encourages us to have more.

Our monthly expenses for the kids alone are well over ¥100k per month, plus our own health care, pensions, living tax that we have to pay and can’t opt out of. Where do the government expect middle or low income families to find the extra cash to have children? Answer is they won’t have more kids without much bigger incentives to do so..

@rainyday

We've had over a decade of population decline in Japan so far and it has produced no noticable environmental benefits at all. None.

This is true, reducing the human population is not sufficient to stave off the pending ecological doom, but it is a key factor. The other is a change in the political economic ideology and practice of never-ending-growth on this finite planet, which basically means an end to the capitalist mode of over-accumulation. Can we achieve either of these in a non-violent way?

Ronald Wright's 'A Short History of Progress' lays out clearly, with historical examples, of what happens when human populations get so set on a course of destruction, removed from their ecological limits, that they dismiss all the negative feedback, until it's overwhelming but far too late. We have gotten to that point, and all we can work for now is to break in time to mitigate the impact, not avoid it.

I wonder if making more people poor would help. It seems like as countries become wealthier, the birth rate declines.

Deconstruction of Japan is a fabulous idea. Less people, less concrete, more parklands... all of these things will pay people just as much as building more ridiculous concrete nonsense.

The council is comprised of Suga 

So, Suga is advising Suga. I hope he listens, but I doubt he will.

We have children because my wife felt it was time. In my town 100% of the hospital birthing expenses is reimbursed. Oddly, my town has babies; anecdotal, but all of my neighbors have kids.

Second, while 'education' is free, it's all those 'essential' extras that add up. For example, the housewives in our elementary school district got together to ban school uniforms. Big savings. But couldn't convince the school that all the required extras for club activities (mandatory) in junior high were unnecessary. Big cost.

People do not have enough time, do not have enough money, to raise a child.

It is not difficult to understand. Only governors do not catch the point.

School/Education expenses are insanely high: even if a child attends public schools, the expenses for the necessary materials and the juku are too high. Just think about the crazy prices of the Randoseru (the backpack used by elementary school students).

House costs are high: the most popular house in Japan is the ikkodate (the detached house), which has a high cost (plus the cost for the land) and has a very low price/quality balance (on average, poorly insulated houses). In Europe, buying a house is an investment, you can sell it in the future or you can leave it to your children as an inheritance. In Japan, after 30 years, a house has ZERO value and your children will spend a lot of money to demolish the building and to clean the plot of land if they want to sell the land.

Pensions are low: the Japanese pension system is in an extremely difficult situation, also related to the low birth rate. The average pension in Japan, now, is 150,000 yen ($1,350.01). In the future, it will decrease.

Watch this video (sorry, it is in Japanese) to have an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rlSFiw_RdE

Free time is almost zero: having a child means not only buying things or food. It especially means to follow him/her, to give him/her a child-friendly environment. Parents here have little free time. Children here have little free time (school+juku+bukatsu+exham hell…..).

Of course, governors do not know it since they live a golden life.

No seriously , why ? Free schools , so many nice parks .. I don't think this is just a money problem ?

To the people that say a decline in population is good, I agree, BUT, it depends on HOW that decline is happening & they way Japan is declining now its headed towards extinction!

Take a look at Japans population pyramid, note how the very bottom how narrow it is becoming, over time those are NOT going to widen at all. Japan is going to reach a point if it hasnt already where even if the birthrate gets to 2 the population will STILL DECLINE!!!

Add in the super top heavy elderly population & the COSTS they will consume IS & will increase massively in coming decades, meanwhile life for young people, families continues to get WORSE & WORSE over time.

Quality of life here only exists for a select few. As one who lives in the inaka which I love I also see it continue to ROT at an insane rate.

The future for Japan is sadly dim, but its mostly of their own making & fools in the LDP will NEVER do anything to really change anything. Japanese can be a fatal bunch & I dont see them getting off the Highway to HELL!

People don't have children because they feel bad raising children in the crazy, insane, robotic, unsafe society.

I have children because my partner and I are financially secure and we learnt that kids make our lives richer.

Japan won’t get more financially secure people while it’s central government keeps spending money willy nilly. Smaller government with more free enterprise opportunity to maximize individual freedom and financial security would probably help solve this population issue in time I think.

High housing costs are a major disincentive to having children.

Home ownership in Japan is high though, compared to overseas. So I don’t think that is it.

I have children because my partner and I are financially secure and we learnt that kids make our lives richer.

Me too.

Japan won’t get more financially secure people while it’s central government keeps spending money willy nilly. Smaller government with more free enterprise opportunity to maximize individual freedom and financial security would probably help solve this population issue in time I think.

This would be the same free enterprise that today produces mainly low pay, short term, precarious jobs that are nowhere near adequate for someone hoping to have children, right? I question the wisdom of relying on more of that as a means of raising the birthrate.

I get that the market supports some jobs for lucky people like you and me which allows us to have children, but for the majority of the population it is producing garbage jobs. This has nothing to do with how government spends money, it is just how free markets work in an industrialized society: the corporations that employ most people can only operate more profitably by offering crap jobs that barely pay enough to get by and which can be terminated at a moment's notice. Maybe 10% of workers can through a combination of luck, hard work and smarts crawl their way out of that to something better, but society can't rely on a system in which only 10% of the workforce has enough stability to have kids.

In a competitive society not having children is an advantage in the persuit of of financial freedom to live a standard lifestyle as it is nowadays. Women are the ones who get to decide to get pregnant, nowadays they just hate man for obstructing their goals of becoming like or better than man in society status.

The birthrate in Germany is lower, South Korea (similar culture to Japan) too, so some of this is just modern life. France has a high birthrate, over two per woman I think, but half the kids are born to unmarried parents. In Japan, it is under 5%. Japan is nowhere near ready for that kind of transformation in the family.

I have three kids, but I don't think they are expensive. This includes activities like skiing, piano, and ballet dancing. We now pay for our eldest to live in a dorm for senior high, but it is cheap, just over half the cost of a UK university hall of residence despite the school terms being much longer. What I do think though is that wages in Japan are low, especially women's and including my wife's. I don't think people realise that the minimum wage in other advanced countries is 1500 yen an hour. These low wages make things that do not cost much by global standards seem very expensive. They are only expensive relative to wages.

Demographics mean there are fewer kids now, about half the number in 1990, fighting for the same number of places at good schools. I think "exam hell" is more a carryover from the past in the heads of some parents who continue to pressurize their kids in a paniced fashion. The reality is that there is much less competition now and it is much easier to get in.

Japan keeps complaining about low birthrates. Yet, the country isn't getting everyone vacinated. My daughter is a teacher and she hasn't heard anything about when she will be vacinated! It seems to me, Japan should be focusing more on helping people stay alive, give out stimulous, shut down bars and help those in need! Then perhaps people will feel more like populating...jeez people, use some common sense!

This notion that growth is good and decline is bad, should be removed from this debate. A smaller, happier community is often found in the countryside. Why must we seek growth at all costs. Provide support to families, allow people to enjoy time with their families and stop all this nonsense of economic growth is the only thing that is important.

This is true, reducing the human population is not sufficient to stave off the pending ecological doom, but it is a key factor. The other is a change in the political economic ideology and practice of never-ending-growth on this finite planet, which basically means an end to the capitalist mode of over-accumulation. Can we achieve either of these in a non-violent way?

I totally agree about the need to change political economic ideology in that sense. But to me, that alone is the key. I would not put reducing the population in the same league as that in terms of importance basically for the reason I stated earlier, so long as over-consumption remains the mindset, even if you halve the population it won't make a difference since the remaining half will follow the existing logic and view this as simply enabling themselves to consume twice as much.

And don't get me wrong, I fully understand that there likely is a finite carrying capacity of the planet in terms of human population size. But if you can change the political/economic system, I don't think today's population, or even the projected peak population of about 9 billion, is necessarily unsustainable, which is why I think viewing our problems as one of population control is a kind of dead end.

Think Japanese government, THINK! I takes money, amongst other things, like paid time off, to raise a baby and a family. How about fair pay for families for once, and less sell-interest.

Whodathunk? Another inconvenient reality is that the prime child-bearing years are typically squandered in various individual pursuits. Get busy living(and procreating) or get busy dying off as a culture.

I know it's unfashionable to suggest it, but perhaps a few more of us migrants coming to this wonderful country might help alleviate said crisis?

I don’t know if unfashionable is the right word, but it’s against public sentiment. A pew survey taken a few years ago found that three quarters of Japanese believe immigration numbers should remain the same or be reduced.

It’s worth pointing out that numbers have increased over the past few decades.

meager support from the government for parents hardly encourages us to have more.

Did Japan or anywhere become populous in the first place because of government support for families to have children? Are we looking in the right area for solutions?

Ashley Shiba,

I feel you sister but this has nothing to do with low birthrate.

Being single mom may be challenging especially when kid enter shogakou, lots of PTA stuff etc.

But it's easier here to work with small kids here. In my country maternity leave is 3-4years. Place your kid in Nursery school? Almost impossible, leave husband? Till you have Nursery school, no way.

In case DV? bloody hell.

I am single mom in Japan. Not easy. My salary was that time: 160 000-180 000 max and even with that I passed for juutaku loan and have my own house. Can I do the same in my country (in EU) ?nah...

Now having two kids, single (poor choices) good job the only thing is bugging me is how the elementary school is operating (keeping same ways like from the time when every women was house wife)

It's hard, but it's expected to be.

You just ganbare and make the best for your family.

Having and raising children properly shall be rewarded.

Have you felt that ever in Japan ?

Instead you get not only the obligations to spend time for your children, which is normal, but also additional taxes, additional pressure and additional (useless) costs.

But also truth is many bring to themselves that pressure. Nothing is requiring you to follow all the silly rules around you most of the time (going to school as a parent for celebrations, neighbouring tasks, going drinking often after business...). It takes to learn how to get a strong character but my kids deserved that.

Sorry to say that at the same time, in a dense world, nature operates as scheduled with the survival of the fittest.

That's why I live outside Japan. Even if you are a Japanese, nothing forces you to live in your country thanks to freedom.

Japan is a paradise for successful people, persons with inherited ties to politicians or if you live in a sustainable manner in the countryside where you can benefit the rich resources of mother nature.

Home ownership in Japan is high though, compared to overseas.

Yes, it's not housing. There is also lots of public housing, UR or whatever its called, so you can at least get a roof over your head for not so much money. Not in dead central Tokyo of course, but there is plenty dotted around in the bed towns. I am not saying anyone marries with dreams of living in an UR apartment, but families have always lived in them and no one should look down on that. The Japanese government was at least considerate enough to not build them like death traps like Grenfell Tower in the UK.

The number of births was always going to go down during Covid, so the best thing for the government to do is take action to end it as soon as possible. There are many issues feeding into the low birthrate in Japan, some of which are Japan specific and are not present in other first world countries which have similarly low birthrates, but the main thing should be to get Covid out of the way.

I know it's unfashionable to suggest it, but perhaps a few more of us migrants coming to this wonderful country might help alleviate said crisis?

Couples should be marrying at 22, not 42.

I think that's not really up to you.

^Japanese young men are not corporate slaves respect them pay more, stop there overwork and reduce 3 times higher suicide rate than women due to pressure or the country will perish.

rainyday, you mentioned Japan has free markets.

Hey, you are correct, the government here interferes in the economy in all sorts of ways, many of which are nonsense and economically inefficient.

But the point I was discussing was whether unleashing free enterprise to do whatever it wants would solve Japan’s low birthrate problem. It won’t.

The problem I was describing is not one that reducing the role of government would do anything to solve and is not specific to Japan anyway. Market economies in all developed countries are dominated by large corporations which are overwhelmingly producing jobs that don’t pay enough and lack the security people need to start families. It is just the nature of the state of capitalism and technological development at this point in history. Most of the jobs they produce require low skills and so the value of labor is very low to them, so in order to stay competitive as free enterprises they have to drive labor costs down and keep their workforce precariously employed. This situation is going to keep getting worse as the development of AI allows them to make even greater swaths of the workforce redundant in the coming years.

A small percentage of the workforce is able to escape that trap and make it into high skilled professions which offer decent wages and conditions but they are just that: a small minority. The successful entrepreneurs on their own just don’t have the numbers to keep the birthrate up.

Fixing the birth rate, and Japan’s is not far off from most developed countries, means doing something to change that situation. Cutting red tape or government spending isn’t going to do it because the root of the problem goes way deeper than that.

But this is precisely the sort of backwards policy that sounds good but actually makes things worse not better. Is it any wonder there is all this inequality in the world? The rich have the poor pay for them in the name of their virtuous decisions such as wanting to get a higher education, when it is they themselves who will be the primary beneficiary!

That is just BS. Education is the best way of allowing the poor to access social mobility and improve their lot. Cut off government funding and make it cost 50K US a year and you’ll just ensure that the construction worker’s children and their children’s children never get the chance to do anything other than precarious labor.

The wealthy aren’t the ones who benefit from publicly funded education, they send their kids to private schools anyway. Its the middle and working class who do, without it their kids are the ones who will be cut off.

Get busy living(and procreating) or get busy dying off as a culture.

A couple doesn't have to produce children to be busy living and enjoying life. The culture isn't going to die off.

I don’t know if unfashionable is the right word, but it’s against public sentiment. A pew survey taken a few years ago found that three quarters of Japanese believe immigration numbers should remain the same or be reduced.

And are those sentiments a good thing?

No money with young men = no marriage, no children. Japanese government should raise salary of young men and support there unemployment to find good jobs that is the only way.

rainyday, you mentioned Japan has free markets.

This is absolutely not the case, and you raised a perfect case in point - it is not free markets that created the two-tier labour market arrangements in Japan - it is government that created this law. It is government that could reform the labour market law or just simply abolish it and make labour agreements entirely up to would be employers and employees.

Japan is a place where the government thinks it must create a “scheme” or system in order for anything to be legal.

This is in no way a system of free enterprise.

I cannot think of a single industry in Japan which does not have some kind of anti-free enterprise government regulation acting as a barrier to entry.

The only time we do see free enterprise is when the disrupters come in and move before the government has had a chance to start to regulate them.

There is too much centralization of power in Tokyo. That is what attracts the likes of the recent political bribes/influence scandal to occur - it occurs because it is in someone’s interest to seek to have the government make changes that will benefit them, and the more power is centralized, the more it is worth to seek to influence that power.

A decentralization of power in Japan would do wonders, I believe. Not likely to happen why people keep blaming others instead of getting to the root of the problem.

Just read Japan Today and see how much of the news each day involves government. It’s everywhere.

I am really disgusted with how little financial support there are for college students here as well.

Everyone wants somebody else to pay for stuff for their benefit, so what’s new?

Japan is well over its head in debts already, and here is a complaint that kids who go get good higher education for a better paying job need others to pay for it!?

So the kids that quit school and go into construction work at 18 years start to pay income tax, and support these kids who go to university to party up for 4 years and then get a better, easier job than a construction worker too?

This sort of policy makes things worse for the lower educated people, they are the ones who are more likely to be in need of financial support than those smart and fortunate enough to be able to go to university.

But this is precisely the sort of backwards policy that sounds good but actually makes things worse not better. Is it any wonder there is all this inequality in the world? The rich have the poor pay for them in the name of their virtuous decisions such as wanting to get a higher education, when it is they themselves who will be the primary beneficiary!

Births down during Covid in Japan and also the death rate even though we are in a pandemic. Funny old world eh!

Get busy living(and procreating) or get busy dying off as a culture.

A person who thinks the primary reason for having children is to further culture might be better suited as a librarian than a parent.

This is not a cause of concern, but rather a sign of hope. 

No, gotta disagree with that.

While limiting population growth globally is probably a good idea, reducing it in Japan isn't an answer to anything.

We've had over a decade of population decline in Japan so far and it has produced no noticable environmental benefits at all. None.

This outcome was predictable and is likely to continue. Why? When the population goes down, it just leaves more to be consumed by the remaining population and they do so. If you reduce the population by 50% and the remaining 50% double their rate of consumption, they will basically just continue trashing the environment at the same rate. This tends to be closer to a description of reality than the assumption that everyone will maintain the same rate of consumption as before after the population goes down.

Relying on population decline to solve environmental problems is a fool's errand for other reasons too - the global population isn't expected to peak until the late 21st century, way too late to stave off the effects of the worst environmental disasters (mainly climate change, but also a lot of other stuff like loss of biodiversity) that we are creating now.

What we need is concerted government action to steer our socities away from these destructive paths. Relying on population decline isn't going to do anything.

I fully agree with warispeace but a few other remarks. Seeing part of the composition of the 11 person commission ( by the way is there a woman in there) not much hope anything useful will come out of them.

main reason not to have children is a good one these days. Young women want to enjoy their own lives and not sacrifice it early on to have children. They want fun, a career, travel in normal times. And as Waripeace says , less people is the only way to save the planet. Overpopulation is the cause of all our problems, the rest are symptoms.

it was very clear that the reduction in births was underestimated years ago, clear for everyone to see who wants to see but less. Children is a blessing that comes with 2 generation temporary problems with an aging population. That temporary problem ends when the births stabilise around 600.000

Does Japan really need a huge population? I mean it's a small island with limited resources that suffers a lot of natural disasters. As someone has mentioned, it's probably a good thing that the population declines.

Families in the 1950's and 1960's managed to have big families. There's no way it was easier for them or cheaper. They worked hard for it all.

People are just lazy these days. Women wants kids but needs Mary Poppins to look after them as it's too hard work.