Birthrate continues to fall as young people increasingly reluctant to have children due to bleak job prospects, cost of living and work culture
The number of babies born in Japan last year fell for an eighth straight year to a new low, government data has shown, and a top official says it is critical for the country to reverse the trend in the coming half-dozen years.
The 758,631 babies born in Japan in 2023 were a 5.1% decline from the previous year, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry on Tuesday. It was the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899.
The number of marriages fell by 5.9% to 489,281 couples, falling below a half million for the first time in 90 years – one of the key reasons for the declining births. Out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan because of family values based on a paternalistic tradition.
Surveys show that many younger Japanese balk at marrying or having families, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living that rises at a faster pace than salaries and corporate cultures that are not compatible with having both parents work. Crying babies and children playing outside are increasingly considered a nuisance, and many young parents say they often feel isolated.
What intelligent pair of humans would have a child with the climate apocalypse looming on the horizon?
I would like humanity to continue, even if it means the next generation has to solve problems we created.
Why? We exploit every resource available to us until there’s nothing left to exploit. We’ve driven 70% of all species to extinction in a quarter of a million years, equivalent to a super volcano or a meteor. Humanity is fucking awful.
We are the only known intelligent life in the universe and that’s worth preserving, even if we’re not perfect. And unlike a meteor or supervolcano, humanity can learn and improve. And I think we are, hopefully we reach a point where we can live sustainably on earth before it’s too late.
We aren’t intelligent. We’re killing ourselves and every living thing we touch.
i’m with you bro, and im a total misanthrope. I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with my species though, and i don’t blame most of us for the misery a scant few have created and continue to propagate. I wanna see us succeed, but insofar as making kids is concerned that’s not how i’ll contribute. Even the human act of having children has been commodified and leveraged against us. A human will put up with far more if he has a child at home to provide for after all.
you’ll need to make up 2 extra kids for my wife and me, can you help us out? We wanted kids, but we looked around at the world, and we said uhhhh HARD no
Then get to fucking
So the whole origin of the birthrate collapse is that people can barely afford to survive on their own, dont have enough expendable income for dating to find a partner, and are so drained from working long hours that theu dont have the energy to look. There is a massive loneliness epidemic because capitalism has nothing left to consume but itself.
I’m well aware. But what is anyone doing about it? Nations have yet to acknowledge these issues as the cause and us bitching online isn’t doing anything.
revolutions spring from speeches, friend. its too easy to dismiss chatter as useless, but minds need to meet to share information, and introduce or reinforce ideas. the internet is perhaps the best “3rd place” there is to discuss shit what needs discussing.
and theres cats
Poland implemented 500+ program 7 years ago. 500 PLN(~100€) per month per child if you have more than one.
It did not increase the birth rate.
There are similar programs in UK, Germany, Lithuania and Belgium .
Because 100 euro a month is fucking nothing. Rents increase more than that each year lately. How much is daycare eqch month in poland?
Around 60€
That doesn’t address any of the other issues that are contributing to the problem though. The government can offer whatever miniscule child care support it wants: it makes no difference when people cant even get to the point that they are having relationships and even accidentally having kids.
We need to threaten to ruling class by refusing to have kids unless things improve. It’s the last nonviolent option there is. They can either actually do something about the out of control costs of living vs wages or humanity should die out completely.
It’s not a choice of wage increase or extinction. It’s population decline makes labor more valuable. Like the black plague freed the serfs.
Reduced population is a good thing and a new sustainable balance will be reached.
Why does humanity need to continue? Not being an ass, but I don’t get the moral panic around that.
Even without that, kids are expensive, housing is expensive, and women are expected to pull double duty working and caring for the kids. And then your kid gets to go to cram school and end up in the same work-sleep-repeat hell that you’ve been in your whole life.
Even without climate change I don’t know why anyone would have kids.
On the flip side, who’s going to fix it if we don’t have kids?
We fix it by going extinct.
Well that doesn’t exactly benefit humanity. Does it?
It benefits every other living thing on earth lol
Not domestic dogs!
Japan still culturally racist to non-japanese in work, living, and even being able to visit certain establishments?
They still against interracial marriage? And interracial marriage to a Japanese is like… Being Korean or Filipino?
You’re forgetting their attitudes towards people of Japanese descent born in Brazil. From what I heard they don’t have much love for them either.
yeah i love how they looked at the problems with racial tension in other countries and thought the best way to deal with that issue is avoid it completely.
cant have racism if racial purity!
Given enough time, the purity of their people will eventually become antithetical to government programs for growing their population.
Have known several half Japanese who were treated with hatred by the Japanese grandmother.
Those babies/kids outside are a nuisance! I cannot get enough sleep for my bleak underpaying job - Average Japanese person.
Also 40hr a week minimum, followed by culturally expected overtime, and “totally optional” post-work events that failure to attend reflects poorly on you
In other parts of the world, we get around this problem by farming immigrants for cheap labour.
I can’t imagine the pressure the Japanese government is under to “open the floodgates” so that capitalism can metastasize.
It’s also amazing the lengths that the wealthy will go to to inflict misery rather than imorothe lives of everyone.
Japan is in a weird spot. They have weebs that would break arm and leg just to get in there, but the people are very natonalistic\xenophobic and reluctant to change.
Right now they can’t attract anyone elese as they have outdated bureaucracy and toxic work culture.
I’m not sure weebs are going to solve their birthrate or labour force issues.
I’d say some of us weebs work etc, but all the ones I know who do simply like Anime and arent obsessed with getting an Asian waifu or husbando. In fact, most I associate with are in long stable relationships already, and I’ve seen no evidence the others have such a preference.
My family and I do want to visit Japan, and one of my sisters lived there. Another of my sisters lived in Korea, and she found dating hard there because none of the men wanted a serious relationship, they just thought a black American girl would be kinky. They’d tell her they still want to marry another Korean, because no one would want to have mixed babies. Iirc she told me they specifically used [nword]babies.
So personally I especially wouldn’t see myself living in such a racism country easily.
It wont solve it but kick a can down the road, and for japan that would be enough for now.
The weebs would certainly love to try to solve their birth rate problem.
They actually have a somewhat open door policy for the weebs through JET. If your an American with a college degree than your welcome in Japan. There just aren’t that many of them and those people also don’t tend to have children.
There are a ton of people in the Philippines and S.E.A that would do anything to get to Japan even if the work is hard because the standard of living is so much better, much like Mexicans and central Americans wanting to come to the u.s. They would also be more willing to start families. Like the u.s. though they don’t like brown people and only let a limited amount of them in legally.
Those weebs are also not the same culture so using them won’t provide the 1:1 gains of using a person who grew up in the culture.
Japan: we got NEETs at home.
Perhaps we should fix the problems that are leading to people not wanting kids? Nah! Let’s just force people to have children while we keep making everything worse!
Is it a surprise that the world’s governments have created a nightmare hellscape and people don’t want to bring new life into it? Seems like they will throw everything at the problem except for an actual solution.
