An estimated 687,080 Japanese children were or will be born in 2024, falling below 700,000 for the first time and marking the lowest level on record, according to Asahi Shimbun calculations.
For comparison, Japan births in the past:
- 1935: 2.19 Million
- 1955: 1.73 Million
- 1985: 1.43 Million
- 2005: 1.06 Million
They will do anything but not work their people to death.
I mean they are doing things to try and change that culture. It’s taken a while though.
Western nations also have declining birth rates but they are less xenophobic so immigrants are back stopping the drop.
You think this is the reason? Western Europe and countries like Italy have pretty lax working hours, however birth rate is close to 1 there too
It’s hardly the sole cause of Japan’s problem, nor unique amongst developed nations. However, given the near total aversion Japan seems to have towards the notion of enabling immigration as a means to permanent residency for immigrants, it takes on a much greater dimension for the problem than it might in other nations that are more open to immigration. Barring a sudden and total reversal politically and socially on the question of immigration, Japan will have to do far more domestically to improve quality of life and work-life balance if they want to avoid a total demographic collapse.
Japan’s response to this will be to take a shower then wonder what happened to their libido afterwards.
They’re doing something right over there.
No they aren’t. According to current projections the population could drop from 130 million to 50 million by the end of the century. That’s a shocking gap. Nobody knows what the consequences of that would be.
And it is tragic when small towns and villages slowly die out. If you’ve ever lived in one or if any of your relatives who ever lived in one that suffered from young people leaving and never coming back, it’s just sad. To some degree it may be unavoidable, but when that’s happening on a massive scale across your entire country, maybe there’s a better way.
And if you don’t want it to drop that low, then you need to take steps to address the fact that people aren’t having children. The first is you need to raise pay and increase working conditions and stability. But of course the rich assholes don’t want to pay for that. Another option would be to allow for foreign workers to come in and gain citizenship, but if you give them citizenship then they will create laws that will prevent companies from fucking them over. Rich assholes and racists don’t like that.
Some of us feel it’s better to have fewer (or no) people in this world. If you ascribe to that philosophy then a declining birth rate from people choosing not to procreate is the most humane way to achieve that, with genocide and eugenics being obviously evil. I do believe things will be difficult for the aging population, and even more difficult for the young who are forced to care for them.
I have lived in a town dying from the exodus of young people. I was in 8th grade when the school became too small to maintain and my bus ride tripled in length, but I was suddenly in a class of 32 instead of 6. It is indeed sad, and it looks worse every time I visit. It’s like a person in hospice fading away. I do truly mourn for the history and culture that is lost. But I also personally believe the suffering humans inflict and endure outweighs what the universe will lose.
Infinite growth is impossible. It doesn’t matter if we achieve luxury gay space communism, there is a maximum comfortable limit to the population based on technology and resource balance.
We need depopulation, or perfect terra forming technology. Since we don’t have the latter, encouraging a voluntary form of the former is good until we do.
