Let me make it simple.
You can't raise a fucking family if all you're doing is barely surviving.
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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Amazing how the people in positions to have kids are screaming at the top of their lungs what would help the situation and the geritocracy just ignores them and has the fucking nerve to whine about low birth rates.
Wipe your own asses boomers, we're done propping up this dead society
Dropping dead on the factory floor only to be replaced hours later isn't very motivating I'd imagine
If Japan capped working at 28 hours a week and anything after that required double the pay (for overtime), this problem would taken care of.
Working all the time makes people miserable. It's an externality that impacts society in all sorts of horrible ways. It would be proper for the government to institute a rule like this.
It would definitely lower GDP of Japan and cause some economic issues, but the alternative (living in a world where people are so miserable that they don't fall in love as much and want to reproduce) is worse for their economy.
Will they do this? No, because it would require thinking outside of the box too much and would be seen as too extreme.
Yup. It is so weird to me how little the destroyed work-life-balance is mentioned whenever declining birth rates are discussed (not only in Japan).
Here in the USA, employers just avoid overtime and benefits by hiring two people to work 35 hours/week, who each have two jobs.
They don't even have to pay overtime for work over 28 hours. If they just paid overtime for the actual or time work that is done, that would make an enormous difference. When I worked in Japan (25 years ago, but I have read/heard nothing to suggest that the situation has changed), it was normal for people to work 60 or 70 hours, but not claim any overtime.
Didn’t they have a program a few years ago inviting foreigners to come and have (effectively) anchor babies?
That doesn’t seem right. Japan is very conservative of its “genealogy” and would treat “halfus” very differently than people who look Japanese regardless of mastery of the language. They also have strict immigration laws because, they don’t view immigration as a positive. It would be a threat to their homogeneous culture and society.
Yeah, I was looking around and I couldn’t find anything about an actual program which makes me think it may have been just a comment someone made suggesting something like that. I do remember thinking at the time that Japan is rather unwelcoming to immigration by non-Japanese people so there would have to be a major shift in culture to allow that kind of thing.
Article claims they expected these numbers but in 16 years. Numerically, its not that far off from the expected number of 750k births. Its 90%. I dont think thats too much of a difference to be alarmed about until you read into it more. Taxes will increase and pensions will be effected if this continues. To make matters worse this is after they already dumped billions into policies like extra free money (63$ per month🤣) until child is in high school proving that current efforts are not enough. Shame they cant address the root cause:
real reason is that they were victims of the ‘ice age generation (job shortage generation)’ and the stagnation of economies that followed, which prevented them from marrying or having children if they wanted to,” she said quoting research data.
This is the average amount of monthly hours (male/female)worked since 2013, i do not see an honest effort to help the population growth.
Source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/
Which line’s male and which line’s female?
The lower averaging one is the female one, but one must remember that japan is deeply conservative and that means household and caring for kids/elders are womens duties - additional to the working hours. I couldn't find data for the amount of unpaid work done, but i found participation surveys, which show the difference in what percentage of men/women are involved in unpaid work on any given day in the working populace (data from 2021):
source: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?stat_infid=000032224111
The blue line is male and the blue line is female.
korea is actually worst off than japan.
Italy's not doing great either but it never comes up in the "look at japan" discussions
Probably because, compared to those 2 countries, Italy is easier to immigrate to.
Japan's easier than most people think. As long as you have a college degree you can get a shit job pretty easily.
Is that right? Maybe if you look a certain way that’s socially acceptable to them. If you aren’t (white, Asian) you’ll get temporary work that pays like shit, and companies can not hire you because they don’t like that you’re not Japanese with no legal or social protections to aide you. Even shit jobs have social requirements. That’s really the biggest problem.
Where my phone placed the new line was truly a rollercoaster:
Japan's Birth Rate Set to Break Even
Wow, breaking even? Finally looking up for japan!
... the Bleakest Forecasts
Oh no.
There are three solutions to adjusting the so-called 'replacement rate:'
- Reduce death rate (ie improve health outcomes for elderly to extend lifespan).
- Make more babies.
- Allow immigration.
Options 1 and 2 haven't worked too well, and option 3 can cause a lot of political issues.
Not sure there's a good way to avert the end-game.
Edit: actually there are two other solutions: cloning, and senecide (killing the elderly). It's dystopian SciFi and totally unethical, but they're there.
I'd argue that Japan has historically done pretty well at the first. I don't find the healthcare system here perfect, but I have many elderly in-laws who get great care. There's probably going to be a decline in quality and/or availability as the issues persist, though.
Wow, we're lucky this whole AI thing will fix everything if we just give some tech bros a few more trillion dollars
Low birth rates are a fantastic thing. There are too many people in the world, we will decrease to equilibrium.
Trust me, a growing elderly population with a shrinking working-age workforce to sustain them is very much not a good thing.
Can you define what sustainability looks like? One farmer has never been able to produce more. Maybe a country makes less widgets, but I don't all the doom and gloom when taking care of the basics has never been more attainable for all.
But AI told me AI can solve that.
In the short run maybe not, but for the long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity. Capitalism is built on a myth of infinite growth, we produce more than enough for everyone to live a good life.
not good for a countries, culture, and people, and this also devestate the economy eventually
Population decline isn’t a forever thing. A group of animals is overpopulated they decline until reaching equilibrium with their environment. 4B humans would be plenty for all the cultural richness you could ever hope for. As for the economy, I view that as a good thing. Either capitalism dies or we do, the economic system is incompatible with a universe of finite resources
long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity.
No. This has been brought up and debunked by experts. Despite the rapidly falling birth rate, it will take centuries to overcome population inertia. Changes will not happen anywhere close to fast enough to save us from the environmental crisis we are facing. If anything, it may make things worse as an aging elderly population means the young generation is preoccupied trying to take care of them instead of dealing with the shit they left behind.
Our ideal birth rate would be between neutral to very gradual decline, not the cliff jump we're currently facing.
Not sure if 'brought up and debunked by experts' is the best argument out there. For example, 'population inertia' would cover only one lifespan, not centuries. That is to say, whatever the population is now, it could be 10 people to 100 billion people within 100 years. This is not discounting cultural and psychological factors, but if we're talking human behaviour, that's literally everything.
Secondly, the population decline is hardly a cliff. It is decreasing in some countries like Japan, but when added into the global picture, we're not even at neutral. We're still growing.
You are absolutely right that a larger aging population is something that must be addressed. However, if increased population pressure leads to a tipping point, like a shift in the AMOC or immigration pressure from hotter areas to cooler areas, our current treatment of old people doesn't fill me with confidence. I think in a crisis, we would sacrifice them anyway. We would write some sympathetic think pieces about it though.
population decline is hardly a cliff.
Population decline in Japan and similar countries is absolutely a cliff right now, hence the article.
We're still growing.
That's largely due to said population inertia. The current best estimates of actual worldwide fertility rate has us anywhere from 2.0 to 2.2. There's a possibility we've already dropped below replacement rate worldwide.
Not sure if 'brought up and debunked by experts' is the best argument out there.
Unless actual scientific data showing otherwise is brought to a discussion, 'appeal to authority' is NOT a fallacy.
Appeal to authority is neither a fallacy nor proof. It is rhetoric. It proves nothing, and disproves nothing.
For example, your authorities debunk "long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s (sic) a necessity." My authorities, like William Catton or Meadows, et. al. would say otherwise. Invoking them doesn't prove my perspective. It does prove there is much debate about the subject.
In such instances, defining metrics and showing your work, as the math teachers say, is the best way forward.
The article in question, for example, relies on hype like '670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.' Level of what? Percentage of population? Actual number of people? Compared to how many? With the priviso, for example that ‘The expected figure, … excludes children born to foreign residents”. How many of those? I suspect not many, but it’s necessary to know.
What the article could have stated are actual metrics such as replacement rate, which in Japan is 1.20. South Korean is considerably lower, at 0.72-0.74. We could use words like ‘cliff’ I guess, but I prefer numbers, and I would encourage their use in articles such as this.
A smaller population is necessary but not sufficient to combat climate change in the far far term. You’re right it won’t happen fast enough to save us from climate change but in the long run if we want a decent standard of living for human beings especially with a far lessened climate impact, we’re likely far beyond the carrying capacity of the earth.
Population growth is obviously next to impossible to project but the low end of figures I’ve seen show a decline to below 8B by 2100 which is a start.
It's hard to say what the actual carrying capacity of earth is, if we were trying to optimise for sustainability and not profit or special interests. Would we be sustainable today, if we were full on renewables and batteries, vat grown meat, no plastic waste, etc? There's so many things that could be done for major impact but aren't, for all we know we aren't even anywhere close to earth's carrying capacity with current or near future tech.
That's only if they keep their current system though. Why would they do that if they can see it won't work out going forward? Their economic system will need to evolve and that's ok.
Why should people change their behaviors to suit the economy instead of just changing the economy?
not for 1 country though, thier culture could become extinct. they need immigration, plus countries are not even trying to solve thier underlying problems, HCOL, and job prospects, they are doing adjacent.
It’s not 1 country though. Most western and developed countries are stagnating or declining in population, it’s a natural part of the cycle of equilibrium with their environment. Maybe it’s sped up or exacerbated by human caused factors but it was inevitable
If one of the most intelligent races in the world is going extinct due to not reproducing, it's a good sign that reproducing in this world is a terrible and selfish idea. Good for them. Just die out and break the cycle of suffering.
"race" has no basis in science or biology and is completely made up, so go ahead and fuck right off with your Nazi shit.
Human race