When you first hear of Japan, what pops into your mind? For most, it is technology, food, fashion, culture, anime, and manga. At the same time, many would answer sexless or lonely Japanese, lesser births, and an aging population. This Asian nation stood tall against natural calamities when the time came, but how will it brace against the rising inadequate aging ratio in the country? Especially when its birth rate is steeping low every year. Probably, it is one of those countries in Asia where the older populace overshadows the younger ones.
The aging population, constituting around 30 percent of the total, is seen as a burden on the nation’s growth; the solution for which an economics professor Yusuke Narita at Yale suggested was the mass suicide or mass “seppuku” of the elderly, finding its origin from the Samurai era.
Lately, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, asserted over the country’s falling birth rate. He said Japan would disappear if it continued to “go on like this”. Masako Mori voiced the falling birth rate to be alarming, days after Japan released data showing the birth rate plunging to a record low in 2022.
“It’s the people who have to live through the process of disappearance who will face enormous harm. It’s a terrible disease that will afflict those children,” Bloomberg reported Mori as saying.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also called for society to act immediately upon lesser new births each year. He warned Japan is “on the brink” of becoming socially dysfunctional if the fall in birthrate does not cease.
He drew urgent attention to the issue. “The need to address the issue of children and child-rearing policies is a challenge that cannot be postponed,” he said. “We must create a children-first economic society and reverse the birth rate.”
Even Twitter owner Elon Musk, in one of his tweets, echoed the same sentiment on the imminent extinction of Japanese society.
At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2022
Baby Crisis: Lesser Births, Low Fertility Rate
As per the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare data, the total number of babies born in 2022 dipped to a seven-year low of 799,728, breaching the 800,000 mark, which was estimated to be breached by 2023, as per the 2017 government forecast. The data also includes the children of Japanese nationals living abroad.
The births last year smashed a new low since the ministry began record-keeping in 1899.
In 2021, 811,604 births happened, 3.5 percent lower than 840,832 births in 2020.
In 2016, the number of births fell below 1 million for the first time, and it continued to fall, with now below 800,000 in just six years.
Japan recorded over 1.5 million births in 1982, which now has declined to almost half.
The birth rate continues to decrease despite the government’s incentive schemes to boost people to opt for parenthood.
Japan’s fertility rate has been free-falling since 1976 when it first fell below 2.0. It has a fertility rate of 1.3, below the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population.
The population of the world’s third-biggest economy has been falling off for several years, reaching 125.5 million as of 2021 from a peak of 128 million in 2008. The island nation will have an estimated population of 88 million in 2065 – a 30% decline in 45 years.
Those of you who have read Ikigai must be aware of the centenarians of Japan. It is a country with the highest life expectancy rate.
The age at which a person retires from work here is 65 years. The 1990s was the inception of a gradual fall in the workforce participation of young people, which will soar in the coming decades. The working population (i.e., those aged between 15 and 64) is shrinking dramatically, while the elderly population (65 years and older) is ballooning. The aging population and the diminishing workforce are reasons why the Japanese economy is not expanding further, observed Asian Development Bank in a paper titled: Japan’s Lost Decade: Lessons for Other Economies.
Other East Asian countries are also grappling with the issue of low fertility rates. South Korea has a worse fertility rate than Japan at 0.87, per UN estimates. The picture in Hong Kong is even deplorable at 0.76, while the most populated nation on the Earth– China— recorded the fertility rate at 1.18 per woman, which was 2.6 in the late 1980s.
A fertility rate of 2.1 is called the “replacement level”.
What is the replacement level of the population?
The National Library of Medicine defines Replacement level fertility as “the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman.”
Over the long run, if the fertility rate continues to decline, like that in the case of Japan, the share of the working population also shrinks and that of older persons increases, leading to the increased financial burden on the government to provide social security needs, like in the form of pension, and healthcare.
The United Nations explains, “In countries experiencing below-replacement fertility (lower than 2.1 children per woman), population aging accelerates, and the fact that a generation does not produce enough children to replace itself eventually leads to 100 outright reductions in population. It is not yet clear to what extent declining and aging populations may have beneficial effects on sustainable development.”
Reasons Why Japanese Do Not Want Children:
Expensive Lifestyle:
Research conducted by financial institution Jefferies found the Japanese nation to be one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child. Notwithstanding this fact, the country’s economic growth stalled after the 1990s, translating to low wages and somewhat upward mobility.
Dipping Real Wages:
Data as per Labor Ministry show a slump of 4.1 percent on-year in real wages (after being adjusted for inflation) of Japanese workers in January, a record nine-year low. The real wage index measures purchasing power of households.
Nominal wages or total cash earnings were 0.8 percent on-year to 276,857 yen, or about 2,000 U.S. dollars a worker, but much weaker than a revised 4.1 percent growth in December, showed data.
Over-burdened, Workaholic Employees:
The issue of overworking and working till late is not a new phenomenon. The baby boomers are aged now, with a shrinking younger population available in the workforce. This labor shortage leads to excessive workloads and long working hours to meet targets. As per a white paper published by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, by 2004, as much as 12% of the population was working 60 hours or more per week.
Job Instability Means Lesser Prospects of Marriage:
The country’s employment system has undergone a humongous metamorphosis over the past 30 years, cropping up non-regular jobs for young people. Unfortunately, people with non-regular jobs earn some 100 million yen (approx. $734,000) less than regular workers throughout their careers, per an article by Japan’s daily Mainichi.
A survey by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (i.e., Rengō) suggests the marriage and birth rates among regularly employed women are almost twice that of non-regular female workers.
For Men under 35, the marriage rate among irregular workers is one-third compared with those in permanent positions.
Exorbitant School Fees:
Raising and educating children costs Japanese parents an arm and a leg.
According to a survey by the education ministry, a parent spends almost 6 million to 18 million yen (approx. $44,000 to $132,000) to educate a single child from kindergarten through high school.
Today, in times of tough competition, an average Japanese student would study till postsecondary education. And for that, 67% of the cost is paid out of his pocket, well over the average of 31% among member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Gender Biased Roles
Japanese society is still conservative when it comes to gender roles. Society expects women to manage household chores and raise children while men go outside and earn for the family. Women often find themselves at crossroads to choose between career and family. Even if they opt for the former, the not-so-conducive work policies for women challenge them to balance work and home responsibilities.
Companies often find pregnant women employees a burden as soon they will go on maternity leave. A phenomenon called “mata hara” or maternity harassment stirred a debate in Japan. Most pregnant women employees who will soon give birth are often handed over a letter of termination of their employment or are treated in a way that they resign themselves.
The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) reports that about half of female workers quit for reasons related to childbirth and childcare.
Low Adoption of Parental Leave Among Men:
Most men do not come out to exercise their parental leave at the time of their childbirth. Fear of losing their skills, increased burden of work on rejoining, less loyalty towards the company, and a cut on income stop them from taking paternity leave.
Such inhibitions thwart men from paternity leave in Japan. The data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) shows a mere 14% opt for paternity leave in fiscal 2021 — not even half of what the government set as a target rate — 30% by 2025.
Here’s a video by a Youtube channel- Asian Boss, that conducts street interviews on Asia’s hot topics. The vox populi suggests people consider financial instability their primary reason for not embracing parenthood. They believe their inability to earn more would fall their family in poverty if they chose to have more children.
In addition, factors like unfavorable work policies for women, late working hours, and conformist attitudes in Japanese society are stopping them from thinking about having a child. Yes, you read it right! Conformist attitude. Strangely, people think, if their friends didn’t have children, they won’t have either!
What is the Government Doing, and What Should be Done?
To rein in the long working hours culture, sometimes an attributing cause of Karoshi, or death from overwork, the Japanese government under the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe passed the Work Style Reform Law in 2018, putting a cap on overtime hours and introducing a penalty on its infringement. The law limits overtime work to 45 hours per month and 350 hours annually. Also, it mandates taking paid time off.
These overtime provisions, however, applied to small and mid-sized employers only. Highly skilled professional workers did not get any immunity from overtime.
However, the new legislation could not change the attitude of the Japanese. Many still hold on to working long hours values and believe it to being industrious.
As per the government report, in 2021, the monthly average of total hours worked was 136.1 per regular employee (in establishments with five or more regular employees), up 0.6 pc on-year, and an annual average was 1,633 hours.
Of the total monthly hours worked per regular employee, 126.4 were scheduled hours worked, and non-scheduled hours worked, such as overtime time was 9.7 hours ( up 5.1% YoY).
Separately, Persol Career, a human resource service provider, surveyed 15,000 businesspeople in 2022 and found that respondents worked 22.2 hours of overtime per month on average, 1.4 hours higher than 20.8 hours in the 2021 survey.
Recently, PM Fumio Kishida announced launching a new Children and Families Agency in April and double-folding the budget on child-related policies by June.
His government would focus mainly on three areas: economic support, child care services, and reform of working styles.
The government expectedly would inject more financial aid, such as increasing allowances for households with children or providing incentives to enter parenthood. Currently, the government offers ¥10,000 to ¥15,000 ($75 to $111) a month for each child until graduation from junior high school (age 15), with some limitations on higher-income families.
Secondly, the government would look to improve the quantity and quality of child care, including after-school care and services for sick children and providing psychological counseling to new moms postpartum.
Thirdly, it will be a task for the government to find routes for strict implementation of parental leave policy, especially in the case of males, and strengthen the legislative framework against “mata hara”.
Last year, the government amended the childcare and caregiver leave law to promote shared responsibility and reduce the burden of childrearing that falls solely on the shoulders of women.
Per the amendment, male employees will be entitled to four-week leave, in one or two installments, within eight weeks after birth in addition to the existing parental leave policy, which allows a generous period of leaves within the first year of birth. The submission period for childcare leave request has also been trimmed to two weeks in advance from one month earlier.
The catch is its applicability. This amendment is exclusively for employees working in major corporations with over 1,000 employees. In addition, these big corporates will have to publicly disclose annually the rate at which their staff takes childcare leave.
The government has been muted so far on immigration policies. However, it has shown some flexibility for foreign employees coming and working in Japan. Experts believe Japan needs to open up on immigration and relax its strict immigration policies, as it requires working-age people, which it lacks today.