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Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio told his parliament on Monday that reversing Japan’s demographic death spiral is a top priority for his administration.
“Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions. It is now or never when it comes to policies regarding births and child-rearing – it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer,” Kishida said.
The prime minister said he would propose doubling the budget for child-related issues and creating a new government agency for children and families. Kishida explained these proposals would address the extremely high cost of raising children in Japan, which is exceeded only by the cost of raising children in China and South Korea, both of which are experiencing their own demographic problems.
Last week, China reported its first net population decline since the mid-20th Century famines caused by the policies of Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong. The new demographic crisis in China was also caused by idiotic and inhumane Communist policy, namely the monstrous “One Child” forced-abortion population control scheme.
China ended One Child years ago and has lately been encouraging its citizens to have more children, but the population decline triggered by the older policies is proving very difficult to reverse, especially since it produced a shortage of young women.
Modern China is encountering some of the same demographic problems experienced by Japan, and in a somewhat less severe fashion by most of the industrialized world. As Kishida indicated in his policy speech, child care becomes expensive in advanced economies with high standards of living, and it is an expense that career-minded young professionals are unwilling to bear.
Healthy population growth requires a considerable number of families with two or more children, which usually requires couples to marry and begin raising children at a relatively young age. Educated women working on their careers are more likely to view child-rearing as a difficult and expensive endeavor that should be delayed until they reach a comfortable middle age – and it takes longer to reach that financial comfort zone when ambitious young professionals migrate to increasingly expensive cities.
Japan’s population began declining sharply in 2010, after a decade of hovering at nearly zero net growth. Demographers predict Japan’s population will contract by an astonishing 30 percent by 2065 if current trends continue.
The most significant of those trends is the collapse of marriage in Japan. Japanese women have very few children out of wedlock, and they are putting off wedlock until their 30s and 40s as they earn more college degrees and pursue higher-paying careers. One reason this trend is so pronounced in Japan is cultural: wives are expected to handle a larger share of domestic duties than in most other societies, so the “cost” of marriage and family to a young professional woman is much higher.
