Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

Post by imtringued » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #63

Turskarama wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is showing a clear misunderstanding of the cause of these low birth rates. If IVF and government run child raising facilities was a real option then they wouldn't need immigrants to do it. Japanese women are not having babies because they don't want to, not because they physically can't. The crisis the rich world is having is that it is no longer possible to raise a family with only a single working adult, and r…

It has nothing to do with "crisis in Western societies". It happens everywhere , including in countries that saw a super massive, skyrocketing (10x+ in one generation) increase of median effective incomes. Simply called a "demographic transition": people are not having kids because they can avoid it (contraception) and because there are no social or economic forces coercing them to have kids. Kids can only meaningful…

Post by CommanderData » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

shjake wrote: post #50

danybittel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the crisis is that there are not enough products and services for an aging population. That's a different crisis than low birth rates, that should be solved differently.

Well until we have robots which can fully replace many/most jobs people do, the only way solve that is by increasing the proportion of working age people to those who are retired. There are no other options. You can do that by either increasing immigration or birth rates. That’s it.

Post by throwawaymaths » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 11:31 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #66

throwawaymaths wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hell? Japan is no USA or Canada but the discrimination isn't that bad , it's pretty on par with the rest of east Asia except maybe Singapore and certainly better than China.

East Asia is a big place. Taiwan definitely treats its foreigners and ethnic minorities a lot better than Japan. On the other hand, China has concentration camps for its ethnic minorities. Yes Japan doesn’t have concentration camps for Ainu, so I guess they’re doing OK?

Post by defrost » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 11:44 AM UTC

Turskarama wrote: post #96

anovikov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you take the world overall, birth rates are beyond doubt falling (and are now at or near replacement ratio), while wealth is beyond doubt improving fast and has been for several generations virtually nonstop (even major events like Great Depression or WWII did not stop economic growth for the world overall due to being largely regional).

You should look into Simpson's paradox. The fall in birthrates is caused by countries going from undeveloped to developed, but within developed countries the birthrate is higher when the economy is stronger.

Post by jalapenos » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 12:18 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #64

jalapenos wrote: post #47

It's amusing that Japan has become singled out on this, like some kind of a trope, when it's not even at the bottom. Last I heard HK has a fertility rate of 0.7. There is no crisis. There's problems, but not to the level that a mainstream western rag wants to make out. There's a known migratory pattern that once people retire, they don't need to be commuting to an office anymore, and so they move out far from the cit…

It's not about population size, it's about number of working hands to mouths to feed, basically. In a decreasing, ageing population, this fraction becomes rapidly very unattractive.