The decline in births is happening faster than official projections had envisioned, due to a shrinking pool of women of childbearing age. The children of baby-boomers are reaching their late 40s, which is causing a radical drop in births.

I'm fit and of child bearing age, my husband and I would love to have another child. Maybe even 2!

Oh what's that? He works for your government and is required to stay there from like 8am to midnight everyday, 6 days a week because every time someone quits you say it's not in the budget to replace them?

Oh dear... every year you move his office further and further away from our home just so his boss can look more and more prestigious on television, making my husbands commute nearly 2 hours and in the morning and 2 at night?

You forcibly 'promote' him so that he cannot make any complaint about his working hours because he is salaried despite being a contracted worker?

You low-key threaten to blackball him out of his career field if he take's the L and ditches before the end of his contract, despite you cutting his salary in half?

Let's hope nothing happens to me health wise and I can still have children when his contract is up. Let's also hope your lack of humanity doesn't kill him in the process.

Absolutely no surprise here.

The government projections have always been juiced to provide the most favorable outlook for Japan ever since the government realized there was a future demographic time bomb.

This is particularly true over the last 10+ years. The birthrate for Japan has been declining and yet the government actually projected the birthrate decline to stabilize and even begin to rebound, if memory serves correct.

The bureaucrats responsible for this are completely out of touch with reality. They have no understanding of the desires / wants / motivations for the vast majority of adults who are in their 20s ~ 40s.

And to come up with projected birthrates, you first have to project how many adults are actually going to decide to have children. And for those couples who do, how many will want more than 1 child.

The truth is that so many young / youngish adults these days either:

-- don't have a long term partner, or

-- if they do, they and their partner aren't particularly motivated to have children (or even sex, in many cases),

-- if they have a partner and they both want to have children, they may decided to only have 1 child, for whatever reason.

And the bureaucrats either don't recognize this and, therefore, don't factor it into their projections, or, equally possible, they are under pressure to generate the most favorable numbers.

The decline in births is happening faster than official projections had envisioned,

Faster or actually significantly faster? The projections were already for a fast decline. This site will show projections on a local government level. (the numbers are probably only kokumin (=Japanese citizens)

https://ecitizen.jp/

The reason I say this is "we couldn't see this coming" is a classic government excuse for anything. The gentleman continues "The children of baby-boomers are reaching their late 40s, which is causing a radical drop in births". This, a population spike ageing, was entirely predictable forty years ago.

In the bigger picture, a low or falling birthrate is a First World staple now. This means that the focus really needs to be on Japan-specific problems, my favourite being PTA and the prevailing cult of the housewife, which limits household earnings and significantly disadvantages mothers who do work. If Germany, classic modern First World, and South Korea, similar conservative Asian, can both have lower birthrates than Japan, then it is unrealistic and possibly foolish to expect Japan to do fantastically better. Perhaps the real issue is Japan's failure to fund retirement and healthcare for the elderly without needing a constant stream of young people newly paying taxes and insurance premiums.

Zone2surf* “The bureaucrats responsible for this are completely out of touch with reality”.

They are not out of touch per se, they are just not by their very nature geared towards performing for results. They are a world unto themselves who spend a bulk of their time keeping their heads down, ‘researching’ ( for show not for pro ) and following some equally useless superior who spends his time covering his own farce. It’s systematic, self serving and locked in. But, they do do a lot of meetings.

The social changes necessary to create a better work life balance necessary to encourage families will never come from the government, but there are some good signs that some forward thinking companies especially those with young shachos at the helm have realized what has to be done. My wife just joined one recently and it’s quite remarkable how many of the outdated work practices have been completely reversed by a boss with some actual smarts. Very encouraging. The business world over the bureaucracy, nothing more real than that!

Politicians are too old to understand the situation of young people now. Low wages, job instability (since Koizumi revised labor laws - no more lifetime employment) etc etc etc do not encourage or enable young people to make the long-term commitments necessary to raise a family.

( that quote )

and i think the water is wet . . .

tell us how do you expect to tackle the problem instead . . . ( might ,ve been a more interesting quote )

Governments policies have just made life intolerable even for singles. Who in his right mind would want to add more responsibilities of having children? Governments are realizing the threat of the state's very own existence because of this problem.

@Reckless

I do work, but thanks.

In fact, Reckless... I work while my daughter is at school, take care of her the rest of the time, do all of the housework, all of the school functions, all of the cooking, and I help take care of my husband's aging parents. My husband would work the same amount of hours even if I didn't have my own job during the day. We're lucky enough to be fine with one income and if we have another child we'll be completely fine with the one until the next child goes to school. My husband is not a salary man. If all I cared about were my husband's money, I would have 'made' him quit years ago. He's been studying and working his whole life to be where he is at so who am I to demand he quit or slow down this far into the game? Nor would he ever demand that I work to give him a break, we all need breaks, thanks.

I'm criticizing the workplace practices of the Japanese government, not my husband's work ethic which is beyond reproach. It would be unfair to my husband to have another child that he could never see, likewise unfair to the child to not have access to their father.

The point is that the Japanese government is crying foul and complaining about why couples aren't having more children, meanwhile forcing Japanese fathers to separate from the families that they already have completely for less security than they've ever had.

savethegaijin,

Your comments are so poignant and correct.

I feel for you.

The work-life balance in Japan is truly shocking and the amount of control companies have over their staff is bordering on slave labour.

The sad thing is that the 'elite' have no idea what is actually going on because they live in a bubble and never have to mix with the plebs or commute 2 hours to work unless it is the 'green car' or in business class,and even then they don't have to put in a full shift.

I feel sorry for Japan but only the Japanese can change the system and they don't seem inclined to want to do that because they have been subjected to a brainwashed education where they are 'taught' to accept the status quo.

I worked like hell to raise two in Japan and put them through American colleges. And I'd do it again. But, lord, it was not easy, neither for me nor my wife. Both of my children have fond memories of their childhood and desire children themselves but will probably do so in the US.

Perhaps the real issue is Japan's failure to fund retirement and healthcare for the elderly without needing a constant stream of young people newly paying taxes and insurance premiums.

Japan IS funding those programs, with no economic repercussions. Because it can. It borrows its own money, which it pays back to itself. That's the prerogative of an issuer of the world's safe-haven currency amid low inflation. The consumption tax hike was a political decision, not an economic one, made by people who don't understand how public finance works in a fiat-currency world.

@savethegaijin is 100% on the mark. "Reality" is not a popular word in Japanese.

@Reckless, you’re correct, my husband is a passionate and goal driven man. That does not, however, equate to him having to basically living at his office because his uppers say all day ‘reduce cost, no waste’ and claim to have no resources for padding the workforce so that everyone gets a little more room to breathe.

And no, sir, my husband is not out drunk with his ‘girlfriend’ or blowing his ‘bonus’ at a brothel (quite the contrary, every yen of every bonus saved for our child(ren)s future education(s)). I’m not sure what type of company you choose to keep but my husband doesn’t fall into those categories at all.

My husband is an ambitious man and a loving father, and for some reason the Japanese government’s working culture demands that he has to choose between them.

I think a lot of it has to do with the after-effects of WW2 - right across the developed world. The poor gave up in response and only now are the perpetraitors (sic) and collaborators panicking about it. They counted on a steady supply of cannon fodder and human grist for the mill whilst we were all stumbling about in shock.

Japan IS funding those programs, with no economic repercussions. Because it can. It borrows its own money, which it pays back to itself. That's the prerogative of an issuer of the world's safe-haven currency amid low inflation. The consumption tax hike was a political decision, not an economic one, made by people who don't understand how public finance works in a fiat-currency world.

That's exactly right. It is foolish and mendacious to compare a national debt in the country's own currency to a household debt. They are completely unrelated. That said, there is only so much money printing you can do. Japan is already pushing its luck. The interest on the debt is already a big chunk of tax revenue.

many men with families just don't seem to want to go home after work

This is a common phenomenon and there are many reasons for it. It is not just men being poor husbands/fathers or living it large with money they may appear to have. Many men sadly do not feel welcome or comfortable in their own home. Half of Japanese married couples are famously sexless, and for some it won't be the only problem with their marriage.