Japan’s fertility rate, which has seen a precipitous fall for many years, has reached another record low as the government ramps up efforts to encourage young people to get married and start families — even launching its own dating app.
The nation of 123.9 million people only recorded 727,277 births last year, according to new data released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on Friday. The fertility rate – defined as the total number of births a woman has in her lifetime – dropped from 1.26 to 1.20.
For a population to remain stable, it needs a fertility rate of 2.1. Anything above that will see a population expand, with a large proportion of children and young adults, as seen in India and many African nations.
But in Japan, the fertility rate has been well below that stable marker of 2.1 for half a century, experts say – it fell below that level after the 1973 global oil crisis pushed economies into recession, and never recovered.
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Still, the government is now racing to soften the impact, launching new government agencies to focus specifically on this problem. It has launched initiatives such as expanding child care facilities, offering housing subsidies to parents, and in some towns, even paying couples to have children.
In the capital Tokyo, local officials are trying a new tack: launching a government-run dating app, which is in early testing phases and will be fully operational later this year.
I realize that a lot of governments planned for population growth as part of their economic strategy for the future and for social welfare programs for the aging. They need to start rethinking things (and acknowledge a stalled or shrinking population is a good thing for the planet.) The economy portion can be remedied by just having the obscenely wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
I think what many people (and thus governments) don’t want to accept is that maybe people just don’t want kids. It always happens, when people are more educated and have better quality of life – and access to contraception, they have fewer children. If money was really the defining factor, then why aren’t all rich people having 10 kids? Why is the birth rate in countries like Finland (where they have a lot of social programs, high quality of life and support for parents) so low?
I am absolutely not denying that having no money factors into the decision to not have kids, for people who actually do want them. But we need to face it, a lot of people -when given the choice- just don’t want kids. You can’t pay me enough to have kids. I could be a billionaire and I wouldn’t want kids. The only way you could make me have kids is by forcing me. And while typing this, suddenly I have the urge to erase it all, because I fear the day when governments finally realize what I typed above and they actually start forcing people to have kids.
Edit: I think what should happen is for us all to figure out how our society should work when global birth rate inevitably drops below replacement rate, and what we want from life other than infinite growth.
And thus the reason education in America has been dismantled by the republicans these past 40 years.
Why do you think anti-abortion policies have become so big in the USA?
I thought it was because of religious nutjobs trying to force everyone else to live by their rules. I doubt that Kate and Joe down the block have some kind of pro-corporation-meatgrinder reason to be anti-choice.
It is a combination of the two, especially as states fighting abortion seem to also be the states lowering work age limits.
Ah well, that’s a good point. It’s not like politicians never lie about their motivations either.
That doesn’t solve the lack of labor available though.
As someone who used to work in a corporate environment–some of those people can be shipped out to do real work. At least half of them don’t do anything of value.