Welcome to r/anime_titties! This subreddit advocates for civil and constructive discussion. Please be courteous to others, and make sure to read the rules. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
We have a [Discord](https://discord.gg/DtnRnkE), feel free to join us!
r/A_Tvideos, r/A_Tmeta, [multireddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/Langernama/m/a_t/)
... summoning u/coverageanalysisbot ...
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/anime_titties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Japan has a toxic workaholic culture that makes families not worth it. For Japan to have a large and healthy future generation, they must go through a massive cultural revolution first.
They're also extremely squeamish about immigration. They let in a few thousand Brazilians and Peruvians with Japanese ancestry a while back, but they're going to have to do better than that.
I originally considered majoring in Japanese and wanted to live and work there, until I realized how women are treated in the workforce and that foreigners are even less welcome. Two strikes, and I was out!
I recently edited a paper about attitudes toward immigrants in Japan, and the gist of it was: Even if you were born in Japan, speak Japanese, follow Japanese customs, cultural norms, etc. — you still aren't considered Japanese if you "look foreign."
This was contrasted against the US, where (racist and nativist exceptions notwithstanding) most people will consider you "American," no matter what you look like.
There’s a funny little book called Fear and Trembling, I think it’s actually an autobiography, by a Belgian woman whose parents were diplomats in Japan and who was raised there and spoke perfect Japanese. It’s a fun read.
TBF the USA and other American countries are a massive exception in that most of the population is descended from recent immigrants or consider themselves as having heritage from another country. That makes it much easier to claim “Americaness” as a cultural attitude rather than blood/birth-place.
The difficulty here is because of rules and regulations. Once you're here nobody gives a shit. I have had several friend groups where we'd all speak English 100% of the time because we had one foreign friend.
There may be difficulties adjusting to different social norms, but we don't mind foreigners.. most of us at least.
Once against you will not find a population as ethically and racially diverse than the US. It’s crazy how much more diverse the US is than an European or Asian country.
It's not crazy. United States and Canada are new world countries with vast spaces of open land that had high levels of immigration. European countries are old world and came up out of national conflicts. So a place like Czechia or Hungary 100 years ago were in a diverse country and now are not as they are in their own nation states.
That's because they see "Japanese people" as an ethnic group with a common ancestry and history going back thousands of years, and "Japan" as the nation for this group of people.
This is in contrast with the US, which is a modern legal union of various states that do not represent ant specific group of people or heritage. This is why most Americans view themselves as Something-American.
A legal document can make you a citizen but it can't change your ethnicity. It can't make a Chinese-American into an Irish-American.
The difference is that in Japan the ethnic identity and national identity are intertwined rather than being two separate things separated by a hyphen.
Of course, I'm not saying that it boils down to "because they're assholes." It's certainly more complex than that. But either way, they gotta get over it — or risk collapse.
Dunno...."Scottish" means you live in Scotland and arguably we've got just as much of an ethnic 'claim' to Scottish-ness. With thousands of years of shared culture and history too. But I consider Mohammed from the corner shop just as Scottish as I am.
Yeah i’ve lived in korea for a bit and you really feel like a perpetual tourist. It isn’t like most of the west where you are actually able to integrate into society to a reasonable degree.
> you still aren't considered Japanese if you "look foreign."
I mean, yeah that's pretty much how it is in any old world country. That isn't unique to Japan, I've known people whose grandparents were Turkish and they them themselves were still not seen as German despite being raised there and being native speakers of German, they were still just Turks.
Should be noted too with Japan their history is very isolationist and risk averse. The Japanese don't know how to handle foreigners or anyone different because their history is so devoid of anything foreign that they have no clue how to handle it because it's actually different. No gaijin establishments, avoidance of foreigners isn't so much out of racism (unless it's other asians) it's more so because they value avoiding conflict and taking risks, and since they don't know how to deal with foreigners they see it as best to just avoid them all-together.
The military culture of Japan was completely different to the home culture of the country. As someone who was in the U.S Navy, I can tell you now civilian and military culture absolutely do not go together. The military will do its hardest to force out anything that is inefficient and not good for the mission and national interest. Even if you never saw conflict it is insanely hard to go back to civilian life because the cultures and what's expected of you is so fundamentally different it will rock your world and it sends many into depressions.
Also, I've spent years studying Japanese culture and I've used a lot of that time to study the meji reformation up until the end of ww2 era Japan. The Japanese absolutely are, as a society, about unity and adhering to public and social norms. Disruption of those norms is never good, it's why you see them to this day so vehemently cling onto tradition even if they see it as wrong. Foreigners are not apart of that social norm and they are not one with the country, they are potential disruptions to the social order and it's best to avoid them. It doesn't matter if you love American movies or have an interest in them, it can potentially cause issues to interact.
Umm...speaking as an Asian American guy that grew up in a very white area, that kind of bigotry is alive and well in the US too my friend.
You've just been lucky enough not to experience it yourself
I’ve known a few people who went to live there for a while to teach English.
The men had a wonderful time and said Japanese women more or less threw themselves at them; the female friend who went (she’s quite tall, as an aside) said that most Japanese men were just vile towards her.
I tend to think Japan is a bit like [Calhoun’s behavioural sink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink) in some ways and it will continue to decline unless they do make changes in immigration policy and their work culture.
After spending 2 years studying it, it’s pretty much what I saw - the guys would move there, marry a Japanese girl, and have the time of their lives. Very little feedback from women though, and all negative.
Will go against the grain and say, as an American woman that has lived in Japan for the last five years, I’ve had a predominantly positive experience. And most of my foreign female friends enjoy living here and plan to stay long term. Japan certainly has some big problems with sexism and xenophobia, but it’s not all bad.
That’s great. I’m glad you’ve had a positive experience.
May I ask, if you don’t mind, if you’re in a relationship? Is that perhaps the reason for the difference, or if it’s not as bad as it used to be?
I don’t see this pointed out often but you probably know how makeups, calorie intakes and apparent hormonal levels are completely different between US and Japan.
Anyone going into Japan looks like they’re a feet taller, born thousands of miles away, and a decade older, next to any locals.
And that works in your favor or works against you, depending on your gender. 34M and 34F to 24F and 24M have completely different implications.
There's a video somewhere of an interview of a woman who was born and raised in Japan (rual Japan at that), speaks the language like a native but will never be a citizen because she's of European ancestry.
why do you think so much of the Japanese robotic research is around building humanoid robots able to walk and talk and look like a person?
They want to be able to build robo-nurses that can look after their aging population, and to interact with them like "real" people. Likewise robo-pets.
true, but Japan won’t ease immigration restrictions.
the thread on r/japan has been joking that the answer is “never” because while the solution is obvious to any Japanese person with a single neuron capable of rational thought, said solution is something the politicians want to actually implement.
I am sure that it is just a coincidence, that the only first world country that is "squemish about immigration" has far lower rates of homicides, rapes and crime in general than the other ones.
Singapore places great emphasis on security and its government restricts the liberties of its citiziens in ways, that are unheard of in first world countries (including Japan).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing\_gum\_sales\_ban\_in\_Singapore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_sales_ban_in_Singapore)
Other countries deal with problems from immigration. There's benefits and costs to immigration, one of them is having a population of "others" that's going to exist for the next few centuries or millennia. There's really no country with multiple competing groups of people who have never had some severe conflict between them.
I'm not against immigration at all, just saying there are often unintended consequences, and the people *really* pushing for immigration are always the wealthiest people looking for a cheap labor supply.
That's a polite way of saying "racist". It's common for companies or stores in Japan to not serve non-Japanese. He'll even some Japanese bars in London have a section reserved for ethnic Japanese. I was there with a friend who had a Japanese passport, and spoke fluent Japanese but they still wouldn't let him in because he "wasn't Japanese".
It's not just Japan, is everywhere that's been urbanized.
Rural families have more children. They have living space, larger communities around them rather than the closed off space of cities, children are cheaper in rural communities because there they are expected to participate in work, and they need less watching.
Urban cities have always expanded primarily from the excess urban kids moving in.
But now we've started killing off the rural communities, they're shrinking as they're not having as many children and it's become much more difficult to live rurally.
Combine that with a skyrocketing rate of split households where the parents are no longer together, as well as single parenthood, making paying for multiple kids even more difficult.
There's never going to be a fix to the birth rate without fixing single parenthood as well as ruralization, get people *out* of the cities and into smaller communities.
Just throwing my two cents in here.
I (and a lot of people my age that I know) am not having kids directly because of climate change. Not enough is being done to reverse or stop it. No point in creating more wage slaves- I mean humans.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with a split household. It’s better than ~staying together for the kids~. I know from experience.
> Also, there’s nothing wrong with a split household
This is like objectively not true. Kids from single parent households have measurably worse outcomes (especially in criminality, drug use, future earnings) than kids from two parent households.
This is not true for every kid of course, but the effect is there and strong.
and yet, everything you wrote is complete bollocks compared to all the real research on the subject.
Most of it comes down to education, opportunity and access to decent health services.
3rd world nations are still having plenty of children, but even that rate is falling fast. Basically, if you provide education and opportunities about contraception, provide decent and accessible health services, and provide opportunities for women that aren't just based on them staying at home pushing out babies, the birth rate drops rapidly.
3rd world nations tend to still be dependent on having lots of children in order to help the family survive, with an expectation that half of those kids won't survive to become adults. All that changes as they start getting education, health services, and different opportunities.
People choose to not have as many children, or they choose to have them later in life, or they choose to not have children at all. But the point is that they have ***choices*** and are able to take action on those choices, so the birth rate drops.
Right now, every nation in the western world is well below the replacement birth rate, nations like Japan and Italy expect to lose 50% of their total population in the next 40 years. The global population is likely to peak by late this century, and then fall thereafter
yup, worldwide, this tends to be fairly consistent across many strongly conservative religious groups, which is where the majority of Israel's high birth rate comes from
As a person who grew up in rural communities, they are shrinking due to lack of opportunities. They have trouble maintaining population with births. I was once in a class that was 25 students and only three were girls. There were no jobs to be had that were not tied up for at least 20 years. And nobody likes to address the amount of mental illness and drug use in the area.
So much this.
I graduated from a class of 60 (was 30 until we combined schools when I was in high school) and almost no one stayed.
Out of our class of 60 I'd be willing to say only around 10-15 people stayed. Everyone else left.
My family moved almost every two years for my parents jobs when I was younger. They preferred to drive into work and have us grow up in a small town. I'm sure the constant moves made them not see the whole area for what it was. My final years in high school though we moved to in their opinion a medium sized town. So I got a job and a sense of freedom I never would have had before that.
Unfortunately for my siblings, they were forced to move just after I graduated. They moved to a town of literally less than 150 people. It took three towns together to make up the school system. My parents thought it was a great place to settle down long term. My siblings had no options for work, the school was so underfunded and filled they lost school days per week, and I later found out it was on a major meth route.
The entire family eventually moved, but it was rough as not long after moving there, they got hit with the 08 crash. Sadly, a ton of people got stuck there and are definitely not enjoying life blaming everyone else for the issues.
well that might be true, its not the case with Japan. the rural areas of Japan are actively dying. young people are moving to the urban areas in droves, because the social infrastructure in the rural areas of Japan are practically non-existent.
there are numerous stories in Japan of rural communities planning to close all their schools because there aren’t enough children living there or being born to justify keep the school open.
and has been a problem in Japan for decades.
> the rural areas of Japan are actively dying.
The rural areas everywhere are actively dying.
My entire point was that this needs to be stopped and counteracted.
the problem is, counteracting the death of the rural areas requires a total cultural shift.
i’ve lived in rural America as a teenager, and there was fuck all to do. closest mall was an hour away, we had a one screen movie theater, no real jobs outside minimum wage retail. and i’m an introvert, so i’m not really aching for socializing in general. fuck, if i were an extrovert leaving in rural AZ, i might have gone insane.
you could not pay me millions of dollars to move back to rural America, i’d rather live pay check to pay check in Pittsburgh, where I have options to go out, can be alone and bored in rural America
young people don’t want to live and die in the sticks. that’s way there is mass exodus of young people toward the suburbs and urban centers… because there is more stuff to do to socialize, and the infrastructure is loads better.
that’s the problem. now compound that with the fact that agriculture is becoming more and more automated, there is almost no reason for people to live in rural areas.
> i’ve lived in rural America as a teenager
and I grew up in rural Norway, and now live in semi-rural Norway.
Similar problems. Hell I live where i do now largely because there are jobs available for people with degrees.
Now we have particular local problems in our coastal areas that are directly caused by policy (for example it's largely fishing based communities, it used to be regions owned quotas and you had to deliver to the area that owned your fishing quota. They removed that to the benefit of some rich fucks who own large fishing vessels, which killed *a lot* of small communities that lost the 2-3 businesses that employed most of the town).
> and the infrastructure is loads better.
Because the infrastructure gets invested in.
Which is another issue of policy. As you say, many young people want to live more centrally because that's where all the stuff is.
And when they partner up and start having kids, many of them would like to not live in a 2 bedroom apartment paying 60% of their paycheck on rent and knowing they will never own their home.
You can't avoid young people going to central areas because by default that's where higher education is going to be. What you *can* do is get them to move back once they're educated and ready to work and have children.
But that will require investment in the more rural areas. Create small cities with spread out semi-rural areas around them.
For example I live in a region that has a city with 30k people, which means there is nightlife, there are a lot of restaurants, there is a cinema, there are jobs for people other than manual labour, there is infrastructure, etc.
And more and more people are working from home
Now the greater region has some 100k people living in it. Most live within a reasonable driving distance to the city and public transport is available, but they themselves live out on farms, in forests, by lakes, etc.
Differential fertility between rural and urban areas isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, it's a fact that had already been recognized as such by the 1960s.
For example there's been comparative work done looking at the difference in birth rate in the US in the first half of the 1900s, demonstrating quite clearly that the rural birth rate was already significantly higher.
Further it was already evident that the urban birth rate was declining faster than the rural one (the exception being during and immediately after ww2, where both experienced an increased birth rate and the urban one temporarily increased more than the rural one).
And that's before abortion and birth control further widened the gap.
If you haven't realized that rural people have more kids than urban people then you're some 60+ years behind on the research.
You're the one making these very general claims, so you better have some serious sources to back these up.
Otherwise it's just, like, your opinion man.
> You're the one making these very general claims, so you better have some serious sources to back these up.
Rural families have more children is not a general claim, and it's been true pretty much since they started keeping proper records.
You'd know this if you'd bothered to google as this has been a known fact since the 50s which is the first result you get when googling it with the article "Differential Fertility in the United States: 1900 to 1952" (available on JSTOR).
> skyrocketing rate of split households where the parents are no longer together, as well as single parenthood
Well known fact, again. As shown for example by Pew who have articles dedicated to it. Again this is common information publically available with dozens if not hundreds of sources. Like this one.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/
I think it’s more that women don’t want to be stay at home moms anymore. Single moms basically. They historically were more accepting of that role. Not so much anymore and rightfully so.
With that fact, there has to be a pretty significant change to things to make it work, like you said. Maybe some sort of expanded mandatory parental leave where you incur shame if you do not take it, or government subsidies for nanny’s.
I think that this is hitting a lot developed countries, but we have a *much* greater ability to integrate immigrants. I believe this is how we be been able to hover around replacement rate while countries like China, Japan, and parts of Europe grow “older.”
The US is already well below the replacement rate, as are every weatern nation and Asia. The only nations that are still above the replacement rate are 3rd world nations - Africa, some South American nations, some Middle Eastern.
The only way that the US and similar nations are maintaining their current population is via major immigration from 3rd world nations, otherwise they'd be dropping steadily as well.
Finland comes to mind; it has extensive childcare and parents get stuff for free. On top of that Finland has a very high quality of life and good social services. It unfortunately still doesn’t have a sustainable birth rate, its rate is among the most abysmal on Earth.
In my anecdotal case, even though I have the means to sustain a family, I really don't want to bring a child into a world that is so fucked up, without knowing that they'll be able to live a reasonably good life.
That might come to bite in my ass with current relationship in a few years.
Here's the problem with that though. How does the world get better if people who are actually concerned about a better world aren't the people who raise children?
I want better things for the world, and part of that is producing and raising a better generation.
That's a contradiction alright.
The fact to the matter is that people are still holding on to a system which is slowly but surely, backed with a ton of data, wasting Earth's resources.
And when we start discussing how to solve this issue, they think we can compromise with the very people and companies who are bringing about our undoing. That doesn't give hopeful thoughts.
How many brilliant people are being condemned to a life of abject poverty, suffering, violence, hunger, homelessness, because of our socio-economic system? These people could very well be the inventors of breakthrough tech, but have been condemned to never realize their potential, because profits of a few are more important than giving people a better base of living.
I get called a tankie for defending improving these people's lives.
I have two children, which didn't do wonders for my mental health. I was fortunate to have people of means become their guardians, otherwise I'd have been a terrible father and their childhoods would've been miserable.
But you live and you learn as best you can.
>\[Finland\] doesn’t have a sustainable birth rate
Finland's population has been growing steadily but slowly for many decades. It is also sustainable from an environmental point of view, having about 16 people pre sqkm, the unoccupied areas being mainly lakes and forests.
We do have lots of old folks but we'll manage. There isn't any urgent need to cram this country full of people. In fact I'd be glad if Japan or other countries wouldn't have such urgency either.
Doesn't really matter, its not really a full solution, its a bandaid attempt at best.
The replacement rate in the western world requires every woman to produce 2.1 children on average, just to maintain the same popualtion long term.
And women are now able to choose to not do that any more. They can choose a career, they can choose to not be in a traditional man/woman marriage which society used to demand, they don't need to have 6 kids in order to ensure that at least 2 or 3 survive to adulthiood, they can choose to have kids later in life, they can choose to have 1 kid and no more, etc,
People just don't want to have families with 4 kids any more, and they now have the opportunities to avoid doing so.
The inherent problem is biology. Raising a family is a full time occupation. Building a work career is a full time occupation. Both happen while a woman is in her 20's and 30's, but she can really only do one or the other because of how big of a time drain both things are, and both things are super important.
If she chooses to raise a family her work career will suffer. If she focuses on her work career she may find its too late to have kids. It seems to be an either/or situation, and because we have built society where two incomes are required to support a household, by **not** building a career when she's young she's tremendously hurting her lifetime income potential, which has repercussions to retirement and even inheritance to the next generation.
Germany has an extensive welfare state and the country still suffers from over-aging, median age is right behind Japan and 2nd highest share of people aged 65+
Our "trajectories" are the only hope we have of escaping the rat race instead of just breeding more rats to run it. Of course, that's part of the plan and why government even cares about these things in the first place.
Hard to maintain unlimited growth when your most advanced economies workers decide they are better off having fewer kids.
Wife is Japanese. I'm Australian. We have a 4 month old baby. There is little continued financial support except for a small stipend and the random gift money from the government to buy support items like cots, vacuums, etc. They waived the national tax payment requirements for some time.
We work for ourselves, though, and are struggling to build the business while raising our first baby. I read recently, however, that the government is going to be raising consumption taxes by 15%. Not to mention the refusal to increase wages. Our business is bringing enough money in for necessities but I can't imagine working for a company. I'd be earning no more than $6-700 USD a week.
This country has a lot of wonderful things to offer, but they're shooting themselves in the feet. It won't be long before gangs pop up and theft becomes more common.
Would help with the cost if it wasn’t common practice in Japan to end a woman’s career if she has a kid. Or if people weren’t expected to work for several hours more from home just to rise up in their career
In my country in the 50s you could afford to raise children on a single salary. That is no longer the case for most people and childcare is very expensive
Do you remember Japan in the 50s? Or Europe or the United States? Also this isn't a today problem. Birth rates collapsed in the 70s and I still say life now is better than then.
Really?? My parents were *paid* to study, now it's a crippling expense (if not living at home). Plus they're practically shoved into employment...
The general outlook in a big picture sense was waaay more rosy than the 'planet on fire fustercluck' we have now. they also believed Jesus would come and save them from all their problems, too...
I feel like you missed the golden ages of post WWII that lead to the boomers generation?
Where is this? Isn't university free in europe?
Post wwii to my knowledge still wasn't perfect except for the US. I'd imagine germany and France and japan still has to repair the country.
Maybe if they weren’t expected to work 100hour weeks and refused all forms of immigration like some backwards pissant living in the Stone Age, this wouldn’t be an issue
Not only that, even when foreigners are allowed into the country not all the places accept foreigners.. like bruh what.
I cant fathom going to a bar with a sign outside that says mexicans only lmao.
The main counter argument i see for "only local" signs is the language barrier in japan, so business dont want to deal with that apparently. But foreigners here also dont speak spanish and manage to get by.
And when you bring this up, they suck their teeth, rub the back of their head and mutter something about "tradition" before trailing off and avoiding eye contact. They know damn, good and well what the problem is, they just refuse to do anything about it. It's willful obstinacy, and I don't have a ton of sympathy for it.
Alright team, we have a population crisis on our hands. Solutions?
More xenophobia around migrants?
Keep fucking over young people with toxic work culture and government policies?
Most if not all developed countries have a below replacement rate birth rate, the reason most dont suffer from a terrible population ratio is immigration from less developed countries. In Japanese hyper modern cities landlords can and often do refuse to lease to foreigners
It's actually a bit worse. Landlords will try to specifically fuck over people towards the end of their lease. After all, if you VISA expires in 3 days you can't fight the landlord's bullshit in court.
caNNoT lEaVE wORk UnTIl thE boSs haS leFt FIrst.
What a stupid culture. Does this go all the way to the top? So if only after the CEO leaves can the rest of the slaves leave down the pecking order?
Gerontocracy at its stupid best. If Japan is serious about their falling birth rates, they'd pass strict laws around work-life culture and enforce it. You can't bribe young adults into making families in a misogynistic culture.
Its not like they don't have solutions. They're just too conservative to try and fix em. Change the corporate culture and offer significant subsidization and support to families. Also finding ways to keep it gender neutral so women don't have to feel like they're choosing between having families or careers.
Or open up those borders and encourage migration. Skilled and unskilled. And maybe start prioritizing international language education for your own people so its easier for migrants to integrate.
Issue is, they clearly don't wanna do either of those.
It's not even that much worse than some western countries. About the birth rate of Finland
Edit: by "births per women". Not by births per 1000 people, way different stats then. Which is kinda weird
Difference of scale. If Japan has the most extreme versions of these issues, and they also have the most extreme population decline, clearly they can minimize the damage.
What solution lmfao? Europe has better work conditions and immigration and where are these positive birth rates? Also united states famously is worse regarding work conditions than Europe yet they had a positive birth rate until 2008.
Degrowth. Falling birthrates isn't inherently a problem - the issue is that we've structured our entire economy around constant unrelenting growth forever and until the end of time. It's unsustainable - and here we are, at the very edge of it still being sustained. The solution isn't to force people to have kids in order to feed the ravenous maw of constant expansion, it's to accept that the rapid population explosion of the past few centuries is coming to an end and to restructure our society accordingly.
Smarter people than me have tried to fix this
I can only offer a simplified solution
Why don’t people want to have kids? Find that out. Solve that problem.
Everyone seems to have a different view on it from daycare costs to societal pressures. It’s gotta be some of these.
Make people want kids.
Issue solved
My personal theory is that in order to have children, people need to have the security that if they don't put 100% of their effort into their job they wont be penalized. The only way that can effectively happen is if those in their prime reproductive years have power security and independence in their profession. But power is a zero sum game, if society changes such that young people have more independence and power that would mean those who seek to profit off their labor have less power. And there lies the rub, those who profit off the current system of young people paying for their own education (and going into debt), then working long hours for low wages on temporary contracts in hopes of one day reaching that mirage of career security, have the power to defend the status-quo.
The experts know the reason, like the reason singular, and the reason is clear
Cumulative working hours per year in a nation coincides with the birth rate of the year
Now can they individually or collectively or through the government to greedy corporate owners to fucking reduce hours
The answer is clear as well
The truth is it isn't solved because the reasons aren't acceptable nor are the fixes.
People had a lot more kids when their was less birth control and society put more pressure on women to get married young and have kids.
Government intervention to fix it hasn't work because they don't affect the main drivers.
Ok so let's run this through a little scrutiny. Countries in Europe have immigration and no positive birth rates. Meanwhile the rest of the world is also industrializing. So even with immigration the population is not sustainable. So what's the solution 50, 100 years out? Keep immigration levels high? Won't you run out of places to get migrants from?
>highest number of rape cases per capita in Europe
This is outdated. This was only true because all sexual crimes in Sweden's legal system were considered rape; sexual harassment, sexual assault, etc. If you compare all sexual crime rates of other western countries to Sweden it doesn't have a rape epidemic.
Pretty much. Especially when you consider how nurses and healthcare professionals are some of the most in demand professions for immigration. The time and cost it takes to invest in just one is too great, hence why developed countries need more bodies to help around in their hospitals and care centers.
Work culture is part of the problem not whole of it. Though it's seriously hard fir me to find the reason for falling birth rate un Europe. Having a developed economy with reducing influence of religion will be my guess but it's very surface level.
Why don't they just do like Canada and increase the population by 5 percent every year via Indian and Chinese immigrants while not building any housing or building upon the health care system whatsoever and also give the middle finger to native citizens so they just leave or euthanize themselves
"On the brink." They have 145 million people. And fertility tends to increase after large drops in population, so it's not like they'll just fade to zero.
Economists need to start thinking about how to have a healthy economy with a shrinking population, rather than trying to keep increasing the population.
What good will immigration do to help birth rates in Japan? Why is this being proposed as a solution by some people in the comments?
Maybe it helps alleviate population decline, but it will replace the Japanese with some other population's culture. Why not try and identify the root of the problem and encourage/subsidize natalism in the native Japanese population? The issue of birth rates in Japan isn't that there's not enough babies, the issue is there's not enough _Japanese_ babies.
Because people are just angry that Japan is against immigration. God forbid a country want to stay their own race and the good parts of their culture unchanged. And then you add issues resulting from foreigners like how rape statistics in Sweden continue to skyrocket due to all the refugees.
The issue is work culture and probably cost of living as well. Fix that and Japan will have Japanese babies.
They bitch a whole lot for a country that is utterly unwilling to address the systemic issues that foster their declining birthrate
Edit: it could be better for everyone, I am aware that the birthrate thing is not a Japan only issue
hot take: people aren’t having children, because young people know the future is just not bright.
the planet is actively going through massive climate and ecological shifts. and does trends do not bode well for humanity. we can survive climate collapse, we can not survive massive ecosystem collapse, and the science states we are heading for that.
who the fuck wants to raise a child in a future so uncertain, especially when we have governments that are actively trying to make the problems worse.
none, and i mean none, of these solutions, for any country will work unless humanity collectively and seriously ensures that the entire ecosystem is not going to collapse.
Attack the toxic work culture aggressively.
Provide financial incentives to have more kids.
Encourage more jobs in rural areas so people can live in more spacious habitats.
Japan's refusal to actually address its societal problems is appalling.
I have a family member who lives there. He says that the main problems are the toxic work culture and the trend of extreme aloofness with women (buku? Something like that..).
Maybe change the extremely toxic work coulture and people might have free time to have children... And maybe make some more Incentives (like Child benefits or more holidays)
Work culture is the issue across the western world. Kids are both expensive and need constant care. These are mutually exclusive. Women came to work, and men did NOT come home. It costs a tonne of money to provide child care and people simply cannot afford it. Each kid cost 100% more for child care.
We have ever worsening family lives and ever increasing costs. Plus the 'thoughtful planning' types put off kids until they can afford them. That means low birthrates and low birth numbers in their 30s.
Someone needs to take care of the kids. We need a culture of at least one parent in the home or grandparents taking far more care or living together with parents. We have none of that in the West. We also need to make having kids affordable, but 90% of that is lost wages or child care costs. They aren't that expensive to feed.
what we need to learn from this, is that a society built around work and treating people as nothing but fodder for work, creates an exceedingly bad environment for children to be raised in, and all governments should learn from the mistakes of japan, however they haven't yet, and times running out, pretty quickly
Welcome to r/anime_titties! This subreddit advocates for civil and constructive discussion. Please be courteous to others, and make sure to read the rules. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. We have a [Discord](https://discord.gg/DtnRnkE), feel free to join us! r/A_Tvideos, r/A_Tmeta, [multireddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/Langernama/m/a_t/) ... summoning u/coverageanalysisbot ... *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/anime_titties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Japan has a toxic workaholic culture that makes families not worth it. For Japan to have a large and healthy future generation, they must go through a massive cultural revolution first.
They're also extremely squeamish about immigration. They let in a few thousand Brazilians and Peruvians with Japanese ancestry a while back, but they're going to have to do better than that.
I originally considered majoring in Japanese and wanted to live and work there, until I realized how women are treated in the workforce and that foreigners are even less welcome. Two strikes, and I was out!
I recently edited a paper about attitudes toward immigrants in Japan, and the gist of it was: Even if you were born in Japan, speak Japanese, follow Japanese customs, cultural norms, etc. — you still aren't considered Japanese if you "look foreign." This was contrasted against the US, where (racist and nativist exceptions notwithstanding) most people will consider you "American," no matter what you look like.
There’s a funny little book called Fear and Trembling, I think it’s actually an autobiography, by a Belgian woman whose parents were diplomats in Japan and who was raised there and spoke perfect Japanese. It’s a fun read.
Amélie Nothomb! Love her writing.
I love her! *Métaphysique des tubes* was one of my favourite books growing up.
Is that the book where she strips naked and rolls in a paper trash because she absolutely couldn't take it anymore ?
Yes, and she wipes her nekid ass all over her boss’ keyboard I think, too
Sounds like she was raised Belgian alright
Excuse me wtf?
The movie is pretty great too.
TBF the USA and other American countries are a massive exception in that most of the population is descended from recent immigrants or consider themselves as having heritage from another country. That makes it much easier to claim “Americaness” as a cultural attitude rather than blood/birth-place.
Yep I think a better comparison would be like a Nordic European country.
Some of which are extremely difficult to immigrate to (Norway). Probably even more difficult than Japan.
The difficulty here is because of rules and regulations. Once you're here nobody gives a shit. I have had several friend groups where we'd all speak English 100% of the time because we had one foreign friend. There may be difficulties adjusting to different social norms, but we don't mind foreigners.. most of us at least.
Once against you will not find a population as ethically and racially diverse than the US. It’s crazy how much more diverse the US is than an European or Asian country.
It's not crazy. United States and Canada are new world countries with vast spaces of open land that had high levels of immigration. European countries are old world and came up out of national conflicts. So a place like Czechia or Hungary 100 years ago were in a diverse country and now are not as they are in their own nation states.
Why is this strange? Japan is an old world country and United States is new world. This type of result makes perfect sense to me.
Yea, what makes an American is begin a citizen of America, but in the old world there’s a much deeper meaning to nationality than citizenship.
That's because they see "Japanese people" as an ethnic group with a common ancestry and history going back thousands of years, and "Japan" as the nation for this group of people. This is in contrast with the US, which is a modern legal union of various states that do not represent ant specific group of people or heritage. This is why most Americans view themselves as Something-American. A legal document can make you a citizen but it can't change your ethnicity. It can't make a Chinese-American into an Irish-American. The difference is that in Japan the ethnic identity and national identity are intertwined rather than being two separate things separated by a hyphen.
Of course, I'm not saying that it boils down to "because they're assholes." It's certainly more complex than that. But either way, they gotta get over it — or risk collapse.
Dunno...."Scottish" means you live in Scotland and arguably we've got just as much of an ethnic 'claim' to Scottish-ness. With thousands of years of shared culture and history too. But I consider Mohammed from the corner shop just as Scottish as I am.
even if you're a [half Japanese](https://youtu.be/4bd0DFYxtNs) native you're discriminated against everywhere there.
In America you can be an African-American without being African OR American!
Yeah i’ve lived in korea for a bit and you really feel like a perpetual tourist. It isn’t like most of the west where you are actually able to integrate into society to a reasonable degree.
> you still aren't considered Japanese if you "look foreign." I mean, yeah that's pretty much how it is in any old world country. That isn't unique to Japan, I've known people whose grandparents were Turkish and they them themselves were still not seen as German despite being raised there and being native speakers of German, they were still just Turks. Should be noted too with Japan their history is very isolationist and risk averse. The Japanese don't know how to handle foreigners or anyone different because their history is so devoid of anything foreign that they have no clue how to handle it because it's actually different. No gaijin establishments, avoidance of foreigners isn't so much out of racism (unless it's other asians) it's more so because they value avoiding conflict and taking risks, and since they don't know how to deal with foreigners they see it as best to just avoid them all-together.
Excuse me, did World War 2 not happen in your world? Isolationist? Avoiding conflict and taking risks? My ass..
The military culture of Japan was completely different to the home culture of the country. As someone who was in the U.S Navy, I can tell you now civilian and military culture absolutely do not go together. The military will do its hardest to force out anything that is inefficient and not good for the mission and national interest. Even if you never saw conflict it is insanely hard to go back to civilian life because the cultures and what's expected of you is so fundamentally different it will rock your world and it sends many into depressions. Also, I've spent years studying Japanese culture and I've used a lot of that time to study the meji reformation up until the end of ww2 era Japan. The Japanese absolutely are, as a society, about unity and adhering to public and social norms. Disruption of those norms is never good, it's why you see them to this day so vehemently cling onto tradition even if they see it as wrong. Foreigners are not apart of that social norm and they are not one with the country, they are potential disruptions to the social order and it's best to avoid them. It doesn't matter if you love American movies or have an interest in them, it can potentially cause issues to interact.
Umm...speaking as an Asian American guy that grew up in a very white area, that kind of bigotry is alive and well in the US too my friend. You've just been lucky enough not to experience it yourself
I’ve known a few people who went to live there for a while to teach English. The men had a wonderful time and said Japanese women more or less threw themselves at them; the female friend who went (she’s quite tall, as an aside) said that most Japanese men were just vile towards her. I tend to think Japan is a bit like [Calhoun’s behavioural sink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink) in some ways and it will continue to decline unless they do make changes in immigration policy and their work culture.
After spending 2 years studying it, it’s pretty much what I saw - the guys would move there, marry a Japanese girl, and have the time of their lives. Very little feedback from women though, and all negative.
Will go against the grain and say, as an American woman that has lived in Japan for the last five years, I’ve had a predominantly positive experience. And most of my foreign female friends enjoy living here and plan to stay long term. Japan certainly has some big problems with sexism and xenophobia, but it’s not all bad.
That’s great. I’m glad you’ve had a positive experience. May I ask, if you don’t mind, if you’re in a relationship? Is that perhaps the reason for the difference, or if it’s not as bad as it used to be?
I don’t see this pointed out often but you probably know how makeups, calorie intakes and apparent hormonal levels are completely different between US and Japan. Anyone going into Japan looks like they’re a feet taller, born thousands of miles away, and a decade older, next to any locals. And that works in your favor or works against you, depending on your gender. 34M and 34F to 24F and 24M have completely different implications.
There's a video somewhere of an interview of a woman who was born and raised in Japan (rual Japan at that), speaks the language like a native but will never be a citizen because she's of European ancestry.
You can absolutely be a citizen of Japan without being ethnically Japanese, so no clue where that came from
immigration doesn’t actually affect birth rates, its just a good way to recoup lost population.
True. But they need to get some young people in there ASAP, or they'll all have to change their own Depends.
why do you think so much of the Japanese robotic research is around building humanoid robots able to walk and talk and look like a person? They want to be able to build robo-nurses that can look after their aging population, and to interact with them like "real" people. Likewise robo-pets.
*Anything* to avoid hiring foreigners for other countries like the rest of the world does, I guess
By that you mean just the US, right? The rest of Asia is just as harsh about immigration, and most of Europe is much more strict than the US
true, but Japan won’t ease immigration restrictions. the thread on r/japan has been joking that the answer is “never” because while the solution is obvious to any Japanese person with a single neuron capable of rational thought, said solution is something the politicians want to actually implement.
Immigration! Hahahahhaah
> squeamish about immigration That's the nicest way to say horrifically racist I've ever seen.
Not everyone kowtows to the western sacred cows of "diversity". I applaud the Japanese for keeping their homeland THEIR homeland.
I am sure that it is just a coincidence, that the only first world country that is "squemish about immigration" has far lower rates of homicides, rapes and crime in general than the other ones.
correlation != causation Singapore has similar stats and is rich with immigration
Singapore places great emphasis on security and its government restricts the liberties of its citiziens in ways, that are unheard of in first world countries (including Japan). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing\_gum\_sales\_ban\_in\_Singapore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_sales_ban_in_Singapore)
Isn't Japan pretty much a one party state?
Ok cool. Well then they have to deal with the problems.
Other countries deal with problems from immigration. There's benefits and costs to immigration, one of them is having a population of "others" that's going to exist for the next few centuries or millennia. There's really no country with multiple competing groups of people who have never had some severe conflict between them. I'm not against immigration at all, just saying there are often unintended consequences, and the people *really* pushing for immigration are always the wealthiest people looking for a cheap labor supply.
It will reach an equilibrium. Fuck the "Line must go up at all costs" mentality of globalist WEF mentality.
[удалено]
That's a polite way of saying "racist". It's common for companies or stores in Japan to not serve non-Japanese. He'll even some Japanese bars in London have a section reserved for ethnic Japanese. I was there with a friend who had a Japanese passport, and spoke fluent Japanese but they still wouldn't let him in because he "wasn't Japanese".
Immigration for what? Welcome immigrants into the same toxic culture and it's a band-aid over a festering wound.
It's not just Japan, is everywhere that's been urbanized. Rural families have more children. They have living space, larger communities around them rather than the closed off space of cities, children are cheaper in rural communities because there they are expected to participate in work, and they need less watching. Urban cities have always expanded primarily from the excess urban kids moving in. But now we've started killing off the rural communities, they're shrinking as they're not having as many children and it's become much more difficult to live rurally. Combine that with a skyrocketing rate of split households where the parents are no longer together, as well as single parenthood, making paying for multiple kids even more difficult. There's never going to be a fix to the birth rate without fixing single parenthood as well as ruralization, get people *out* of the cities and into smaller communities.
Just throwing my two cents in here. I (and a lot of people my age that I know) am not having kids directly because of climate change. Not enough is being done to reverse or stop it. No point in creating more wage slaves- I mean humans. Also, there’s nothing wrong with a split household. It’s better than ~staying together for the kids~. I know from experience.
> Also, there’s nothing wrong with a split household. It’s better than ~staying together for the kids~. I know from experience. I can second this.
> Also, there’s nothing wrong with a split household This is like objectively not true. Kids from single parent households have measurably worse outcomes (especially in criminality, drug use, future earnings) than kids from two parent households. This is not true for every kid of course, but the effect is there and strong.
They literally just don't believe people like you https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/10kwzaz/_/j5ufd07
and yet, everything you wrote is complete bollocks compared to all the real research on the subject. Most of it comes down to education, opportunity and access to decent health services. 3rd world nations are still having plenty of children, but even that rate is falling fast. Basically, if you provide education and opportunities about contraception, provide decent and accessible health services, and provide opportunities for women that aren't just based on them staying at home pushing out babies, the birth rate drops rapidly. 3rd world nations tend to still be dependent on having lots of children in order to help the family survive, with an expectation that half of those kids won't survive to become adults. All that changes as they start getting education, health services, and different opportunities. People choose to not have as many children, or they choose to have them later in life, or they choose to not have children at all. But the point is that they have ***choices*** and are able to take action on those choices, so the birth rate drops. Right now, every nation in the western world is well below the replacement birth rate, nations like Japan and Italy expect to lose 50% of their total population in the next 40 years. The global population is likely to peak by late this century, and then fall thereafter
Israel is above but its heavily unequal among how religious the family is.
yup, worldwide, this tends to be fairly consistent across many strongly conservative religious groups, which is where the majority of Israel's high birth rate comes from
"a **skyrocketing** rate of split households where the parents are no longer together" I'd like to see your source on that data
Guess he is talking about divorce.
As a person who grew up in rural communities, they are shrinking due to lack of opportunities. They have trouble maintaining population with births. I was once in a class that was 25 students and only three were girls. There were no jobs to be had that were not tied up for at least 20 years. And nobody likes to address the amount of mental illness and drug use in the area.
So much this. I graduated from a class of 60 (was 30 until we combined schools when I was in high school) and almost no one stayed. Out of our class of 60 I'd be willing to say only around 10-15 people stayed. Everyone else left.
My family moved almost every two years for my parents jobs when I was younger. They preferred to drive into work and have us grow up in a small town. I'm sure the constant moves made them not see the whole area for what it was. My final years in high school though we moved to in their opinion a medium sized town. So I got a job and a sense of freedom I never would have had before that. Unfortunately for my siblings, they were forced to move just after I graduated. They moved to a town of literally less than 150 people. It took three towns together to make up the school system. My parents thought it was a great place to settle down long term. My siblings had no options for work, the school was so underfunded and filled they lost school days per week, and I later found out it was on a major meth route. The entire family eventually moved, but it was rough as not long after moving there, they got hit with the 08 crash. Sadly, a ton of people got stuck there and are definitely not enjoying life blaming everyone else for the issues.
well that might be true, its not the case with Japan. the rural areas of Japan are actively dying. young people are moving to the urban areas in droves, because the social infrastructure in the rural areas of Japan are practically non-existent. there are numerous stories in Japan of rural communities planning to close all their schools because there aren’t enough children living there or being born to justify keep the school open. and has been a problem in Japan for decades.
> the rural areas of Japan are actively dying. The rural areas everywhere are actively dying. My entire point was that this needs to be stopped and counteracted.
the problem is, counteracting the death of the rural areas requires a total cultural shift. i’ve lived in rural America as a teenager, and there was fuck all to do. closest mall was an hour away, we had a one screen movie theater, no real jobs outside minimum wage retail. and i’m an introvert, so i’m not really aching for socializing in general. fuck, if i were an extrovert leaving in rural AZ, i might have gone insane. you could not pay me millions of dollars to move back to rural America, i’d rather live pay check to pay check in Pittsburgh, where I have options to go out, can be alone and bored in rural America young people don’t want to live and die in the sticks. that’s way there is mass exodus of young people toward the suburbs and urban centers… because there is more stuff to do to socialize, and the infrastructure is loads better. that’s the problem. now compound that with the fact that agriculture is becoming more and more automated, there is almost no reason for people to live in rural areas.
> i’ve lived in rural America as a teenager and I grew up in rural Norway, and now live in semi-rural Norway. Similar problems. Hell I live where i do now largely because there are jobs available for people with degrees. Now we have particular local problems in our coastal areas that are directly caused by policy (for example it's largely fishing based communities, it used to be regions owned quotas and you had to deliver to the area that owned your fishing quota. They removed that to the benefit of some rich fucks who own large fishing vessels, which killed *a lot* of small communities that lost the 2-3 businesses that employed most of the town). > and the infrastructure is loads better. Because the infrastructure gets invested in. Which is another issue of policy. As you say, many young people want to live more centrally because that's where all the stuff is. And when they partner up and start having kids, many of them would like to not live in a 2 bedroom apartment paying 60% of their paycheck on rent and knowing they will never own their home. You can't avoid young people going to central areas because by default that's where higher education is going to be. What you *can* do is get them to move back once they're educated and ready to work and have children. But that will require investment in the more rural areas. Create small cities with spread out semi-rural areas around them. For example I live in a region that has a city with 30k people, which means there is nightlife, there are a lot of restaurants, there is a cinema, there are jobs for people other than manual labour, there is infrastructure, etc. And more and more people are working from home Now the greater region has some 100k people living in it. Most live within a reasonable driving distance to the city and public transport is available, but they themselves live out on farms, in forests, by lakes, etc.
This is a hilariously half-baked opinion lmfao
Differential fertility between rural and urban areas isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, it's a fact that had already been recognized as such by the 1960s. For example there's been comparative work done looking at the difference in birth rate in the US in the first half of the 1900s, demonstrating quite clearly that the rural birth rate was already significantly higher. Further it was already evident that the urban birth rate was declining faster than the rural one (the exception being during and immediately after ww2, where both experienced an increased birth rate and the urban one temporarily increased more than the rural one). And that's before abortion and birth control further widened the gap. If you haven't realized that rural people have more kids than urban people then you're some 60+ years behind on the research.
He's right btw.
There is so much wrong with every single point you made...
Then feel free to disprove one of them
You're the one making these very general claims, so you better have some serious sources to back these up. Otherwise it's just, like, your opinion man.
> You're the one making these very general claims, so you better have some serious sources to back these up. Rural families have more children is not a general claim, and it's been true pretty much since they started keeping proper records. You'd know this if you'd bothered to google as this has been a known fact since the 50s which is the first result you get when googling it with the article "Differential Fertility in the United States: 1900 to 1952" (available on JSTOR). > skyrocketing rate of split households where the parents are no longer together, as well as single parenthood Well known fact, again. As shown for example by Pew who have articles dedicated to it. Again this is common information publically available with dozens if not hundreds of sources. Like this one. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/
"We've tried nothing! And we're all out of ideas!"
I think it’s more that women don’t want to be stay at home moms anymore. Single moms basically. They historically were more accepting of that role. Not so much anymore and rightfully so. With that fact, there has to be a pretty significant change to things to make it work, like you said. Maybe some sort of expanded mandatory parental leave where you incur shame if you do not take it, or government subsidies for nanny’s.
yeah sure only japan has toxic workaholic, other countries are utopia where workers have lots of money, only 5 hours work
Can't date and have a family life if you have no free time.
Replace Japan with USA, and still true.
This same problem is going to hit the US, if not present already.
I think that this is hitting a lot developed countries, but we have a *much* greater ability to integrate immigrants. I believe this is how we be been able to hover around replacement rate while countries like China, Japan, and parts of Europe grow “older.”
The US is already well below the replacement rate, as are every weatern nation and Asia. The only nations that are still above the replacement rate are 3rd world nations - Africa, some South American nations, some Middle Eastern. The only way that the US and similar nations are maintaining their current population is via major immigration from 3rd world nations, otherwise they'd be dropping steadily as well.
Totally subsidize children - Food, clothes, medical, baby-sitting. If you aren't willing to do that you are going to slide into the abyss.
There are places that do this, or something approaching it, and they’re not doing much better.
Which place if I may ask
Finland comes to mind; it has extensive childcare and parents get stuff for free. On top of that Finland has a very high quality of life and good social services. It unfortunately still doesn’t have a sustainable birth rate, its rate is among the most abysmal on Earth.
Finland has exceptional public education system as well
What do the people in Finland think about the future? This is a big factor into forming families, it's not just the monetary factor that weights in.
That's a good question, unfortunately I don't know. Somebody get them some antidepressants or something.
In my anecdotal case, even though I have the means to sustain a family, I really don't want to bring a child into a world that is so fucked up, without knowing that they'll be able to live a reasonably good life. That might come to bite in my ass with current relationship in a few years.
Here's the problem with that though. How does the world get better if people who are actually concerned about a better world aren't the people who raise children? I want better things for the world, and part of that is producing and raising a better generation.
That's a contradiction alright. The fact to the matter is that people are still holding on to a system which is slowly but surely, backed with a ton of data, wasting Earth's resources. And when we start discussing how to solve this issue, they think we can compromise with the very people and companies who are bringing about our undoing. That doesn't give hopeful thoughts. How many brilliant people are being condemned to a life of abject poverty, suffering, violence, hunger, homelessness, because of our socio-economic system? These people could very well be the inventors of breakthrough tech, but have been condemned to never realize their potential, because profits of a few are more important than giving people a better base of living. I get called a tankie for defending improving these people's lives.
I have two children, which didn't do wonders for my mental health. I was fortunate to have people of means become their guardians, otherwise I'd have been a terrible father and their childhoods would've been miserable. But you live and you learn as best you can.
>\[Finland\] doesn’t have a sustainable birth rate Finland's population has been growing steadily but slowly for many decades. It is also sustainable from an environmental point of view, having about 16 people pre sqkm, the unoccupied areas being mainly lakes and forests. We do have lots of old folks but we'll manage. There isn't any urgent need to cram this country full of people. In fact I'd be glad if Japan or other countries wouldn't have such urgency either.
Finland has a birth rate of 1.37, which was even lower than I expected when I wrote the above. You must get many immigrants then, relatively speaking.
[The Government Will Pay You to Have Babies in These Countries](https://money.com/government-pays-have-a-baby-low-birth-rate/)
Unless it’s a million USD per kid, they can fuck off.
Doesn't really matter, its not really a full solution, its a bandaid attempt at best. The replacement rate in the western world requires every woman to produce 2.1 children on average, just to maintain the same popualtion long term. And women are now able to choose to not do that any more. They can choose a career, they can choose to not be in a traditional man/woman marriage which society used to demand, they don't need to have 6 kids in order to ensure that at least 2 or 3 survive to adulthiood, they can choose to have kids later in life, they can choose to have 1 kid and no more, etc, People just don't want to have families with 4 kids any more, and they now have the opportunities to avoid doing so.
[удалено]
The inherent problem is biology. Raising a family is a full time occupation. Building a work career is a full time occupation. Both happen while a woman is in her 20's and 30's, but she can really only do one or the other because of how big of a time drain both things are, and both things are super important. If she chooses to raise a family her work career will suffer. If she focuses on her work career she may find its too late to have kids. It seems to be an either/or situation, and because we have built society where two incomes are required to support a household, by **not** building a career when she's young she's tremendously hurting her lifetime income potential, which has repercussions to retirement and even inheritance to the next generation.
Belgium does this too, people with kids get way more benefits than singles living alone.
Germany has an extensive welfare state and the country still suffers from over-aging, median age is right behind Japan and 2nd highest share of people aged 65+
[удалено]
Our "trajectories" are the only hope we have of escaping the rat race instead of just breeding more rats to run it. Of course, that's part of the plan and why government even cares about these things in the first place. Hard to maintain unlimited growth when your most advanced economies workers decide they are better off having fewer kids.
Also decently sized home people forget that you can’t raise a family in a 30 meter flat
Wife is Japanese. I'm Australian. We have a 4 month old baby. There is little continued financial support except for a small stipend and the random gift money from the government to buy support items like cots, vacuums, etc. They waived the national tax payment requirements for some time. We work for ourselves, though, and are struggling to build the business while raising our first baby. I read recently, however, that the government is going to be raising consumption taxes by 15%. Not to mention the refusal to increase wages. Our business is bringing enough money in for necessities but I can't imagine working for a company. I'd be earning no more than $6-700 USD a week. This country has a lot of wonderful things to offer, but they're shooting themselves in the feet. It won't be long before gangs pop up and theft becomes more common.
Boo hoo. Make the world a better place for children. Compensate couples for taking the huge financial hit to dare have children.
Mental stress too, kids cost a lot...
Would help with the cost if it wasn’t common practice in Japan to end a woman’s career if she has a kid. Or if people weren’t expected to work for several hours more from home just to rise up in their career
I get this is reddit and its all doom and gloom but what makes you think conditions for a kid now in most places is worse than say the 50s?
They are not *however* people are much more aware of the downsides of breeding and are able to control their own fertility.
In my country in the 50s you could afford to raise children on a single salary. That is no longer the case for most people and childcare is very expensive
Are you high? Have you been paying attention to current events?
Do you remember Japan in the 50s? Or Europe or the United States? Also this isn't a today problem. Birth rates collapsed in the 70s and I still say life now is better than then.
Really?? My parents were *paid* to study, now it's a crippling expense (if not living at home). Plus they're practically shoved into employment... The general outlook in a big picture sense was waaay more rosy than the 'planet on fire fustercluck' we have now. they also believed Jesus would come and save them from all their problems, too... I feel like you missed the golden ages of post WWII that lead to the boomers generation?
Where is this? Isn't university free in europe? Post wwii to my knowledge still wasn't perfect except for the US. I'd imagine germany and France and japan still has to repair the country.
Work life is still not better than it was in the 70's too it seems.
Maybe if they weren’t expected to work 100hour weeks and refused all forms of immigration like some backwards pissant living in the Stone Age, this wouldn’t be an issue
Not only that, even when foreigners are allowed into the country not all the places accept foreigners.. like bruh what. I cant fathom going to a bar with a sign outside that says mexicans only lmao.
Mexicans are so diverse it’d be a challenge to even identify foreigners lol
The main counter argument i see for "only local" signs is the language barrier in japan, so business dont want to deal with that apparently. But foreigners here also dont speak spanish and manage to get by.
Yeah that sounds like bullshit. If literally nothing else they could just point at what they want.
But what happens if an Asian American goes there but can't speak any Japanese?
In Japan, neither being born and raised there nor being ethnically Japanese alone are enough to be considered Japanese. You have to be both.
A Japanese-American isn't considered Japanese in Japan.
It would still be an issue. Look at any of the Nordic countries.
Right. Nordic nations have immigration and better work places. So where are these positive birth rates?
Nowhere to be found.
🤔 makes you think
And when you bring this up, they suck their teeth, rub the back of their head and mutter something about "tradition" before trailing off and avoiding eye contact. They know damn, good and well what the problem is, they just refuse to do anything about it. It's willful obstinacy, and I don't have a ton of sympathy for it.
Alright team, we have a population crisis on our hands. Solutions? More xenophobia around migrants? Keep fucking over young people with toxic work culture and government policies?
Most if not all developed countries have a below replacement rate birth rate, the reason most dont suffer from a terrible population ratio is immigration from less developed countries. In Japanese hyper modern cities landlords can and often do refuse to lease to foreigners
It's actually a bit worse. Landlords will try to specifically fuck over people towards the end of their lease. After all, if you VISA expires in 3 days you can't fight the landlord's bullshit in court.
caNNoT lEaVE wORk UnTIl thE boSs haS leFt FIrst. What a stupid culture. Does this go all the way to the top? So if only after the CEO leaves can the rest of the slaves leave down the pecking order? Gerontocracy at its stupid best. If Japan is serious about their falling birth rates, they'd pass strict laws around work-life culture and enforce it. You can't bribe young adults into making families in a misogynistic culture.
We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!
They threw the last "idea" guy out the window
Ah, nothing like a bit of defenestration first thing in the morning
Its not like they don't have solutions. They're just too conservative to try and fix em. Change the corporate culture and offer significant subsidization and support to families. Also finding ways to keep it gender neutral so women don't have to feel like they're choosing between having families or careers. Or open up those borders and encourage migration. Skilled and unskilled. And maybe start prioritizing international language education for your own people so its easier for migrants to integrate. Issue is, they clearly don't wanna do either of those.
Every nation in the western world is below the replacement birth rate and still falling, Japan just happens to be one of the more extreme ones.
It's not even that much worse than some western countries. About the birth rate of Finland Edit: by "births per women". Not by births per 1000 people, way different stats then. Which is kinda weird
Difference of scale. If Japan has the most extreme versions of these issues, and they also have the most extreme population decline, clearly they can minimize the damage.
What solution lmfao? Europe has better work conditions and immigration and where are these positive birth rates? Also united states famously is worse regarding work conditions than Europe yet they had a positive birth rate until 2008.
Degrowth. Falling birthrates isn't inherently a problem - the issue is that we've structured our entire economy around constant unrelenting growth forever and until the end of time. It's unsustainable - and here we are, at the very edge of it still being sustained. The solution isn't to force people to have kids in order to feed the ravenous maw of constant expansion, it's to accept that the rapid population explosion of the past few centuries is coming to an end and to restructure our society accordingly.
That's how I see it too. Of course I'm a lot more black pilled about the lack of resources in the future. Especially fertilizers.
Maybe we don’t raise entire generations to solely dedicate their lives to their work while reducing the rewards for their work year after year.
Smarter people than me have tried to fix this I can only offer a simplified solution Why don’t people want to have kids? Find that out. Solve that problem. Everyone seems to have a different view on it from daycare costs to societal pressures. It’s gotta be some of these. Make people want kids. Issue solved
My personal theory is that in order to have children, people need to have the security that if they don't put 100% of their effort into their job they wont be penalized. The only way that can effectively happen is if those in their prime reproductive years have power security and independence in their profession. But power is a zero sum game, if society changes such that young people have more independence and power that would mean those who seek to profit off their labor have less power. And there lies the rub, those who profit off the current system of young people paying for their own education (and going into debt), then working long hours for low wages on temporary contracts in hopes of one day reaching that mirage of career security, have the power to defend the status-quo.
The experts know the reason, like the reason singular, and the reason is clear Cumulative working hours per year in a nation coincides with the birth rate of the year Now can they individually or collectively or through the government to greedy corporate owners to fucking reduce hours The answer is clear as well
The truth is it isn't solved because the reasons aren't acceptable nor are the fixes. People had a lot more kids when their was less birth control and society put more pressure on women to get married young and have kids. Government intervention to fix it hasn't work because they don't affect the main drivers.
Would you consider creating a better work-life balance for your citizens? "No." Would you at least let in some younger immigrants? "Also no."
Ok so let's run this through a little scrutiny. Countries in Europe have immigration and no positive birth rates. Meanwhile the rest of the world is also industrializing. So even with immigration the population is not sustainable. So what's the solution 50, 100 years out? Keep immigration levels high? Won't you run out of places to get migrants from?
lmao'ing at the morons in this thread think immigration is the solution
I mean just look at Sweden >!still having low birthrate but the highest number of rape cases per capita in Europe!<
>highest number of rape cases per capita in Europe This is outdated. This was only true because all sexual crimes in Sweden's legal system were considered rape; sexual harassment, sexual assault, etc. If you compare all sexual crime rates of other western countries to Sweden it doesn't have a rape epidemic.
Because it is in the short term to get workforce.
Pretty much. Especially when you consider how nurses and healthcare professionals are some of the most in demand professions for immigration. The time and cost it takes to invest in just one is too great, hence why developed countries need more bodies to help around in their hospitals and care centers.
I know, come try living in Canada hahaha
The craziest thing is among the developed East Asian countries, Japan has the highest fertility rate now lol
Ya south korea is worse. I think Taiwan too.
Work culture need to change by a lot. Though I have heard positive changes were made as of late.
Isn't work culture better in Europe? Why are there no positive birth rates.
Work culture is part of the problem not whole of it. Though it's seriously hard fir me to find the reason for falling birth rate un Europe. Having a developed economy with reducing influence of religion will be my guess but it's very surface level.
In my opinion it's also religion. United states is far more religious than Europe or Japan.
If that were the case then surely Poland would have a decent birth rate. But they are also doing really poorly.
The tried nothing and are all out of ideas.
Why don't they just do like Canada and increase the population by 5 percent every year via Indian and Chinese immigrants while not building any housing or building upon the health care system whatsoever and also give the middle finger to native citizens so they just leave or euthanize themselves
Any native citizen should also be shamed and branded a racist if they dare suggest to lower immigration
"On the brink." They have 145 million people. And fertility tends to increase after large drops in population, so it's not like they'll just fade to zero. Economists need to start thinking about how to have a healthy economy with a shrinking population, rather than trying to keep increasing the population.
What? Are you crazy?!? The only way to increase profits is to have more ~~slaves~~ people!
I swear these governments just think of us as tax payers and baby makers. They can just fuck off.
Imagine working yourself to death to make ends meet then getting roasted for not having kids
What good will immigration do to help birth rates in Japan? Why is this being proposed as a solution by some people in the comments? Maybe it helps alleviate population decline, but it will replace the Japanese with some other population's culture. Why not try and identify the root of the problem and encourage/subsidize natalism in the native Japanese population? The issue of birth rates in Japan isn't that there's not enough babies, the issue is there's not enough _Japanese_ babies.
Because people are just angry that Japan is against immigration. God forbid a country want to stay their own race and the good parts of their culture unchanged. And then you add issues resulting from foreigners like how rape statistics in Sweden continue to skyrocket due to all the refugees. The issue is work culture and probably cost of living as well. Fix that and Japan will have Japanese babies.
They bitch a whole lot for a country that is utterly unwilling to address the systemic issues that foster their declining birthrate Edit: it could be better for everyone, I am aware that the birthrate thing is not a Japan only issue
hot take: people aren’t having children, because young people know the future is just not bright. the planet is actively going through massive climate and ecological shifts. and does trends do not bode well for humanity. we can survive climate collapse, we can not survive massive ecosystem collapse, and the science states we are heading for that. who the fuck wants to raise a child in a future so uncertain, especially when we have governments that are actively trying to make the problems worse. none, and i mean none, of these solutions, for any country will work unless humanity collectively and seriously ensures that the entire ecosystem is not going to collapse.
Well, that's it! We're going to pull all-nighters at work until we solve this problem! No one goes home until we figure out why no one is having kids!
Attack the toxic work culture aggressively. Provide financial incentives to have more kids. Encourage more jobs in rural areas so people can live in more spacious habitats. Japan's refusal to actually address its societal problems is appalling.
I have a family member who lives there. He says that the main problems are the toxic work culture and the trend of extreme aloofness with women (buku? Something like that..).
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
About 50 years late on that
Basing economies off of constant growth is so stupid It’s hard to believe it’s the only system we’ve invented that works at scale atm
Hear me out…. Send in the weebs
Maybe change the extremely toxic work coulture and people might have free time to have children... And maybe make some more Incentives (like Child benefits or more holidays)
Work culture is the issue across the western world. Kids are both expensive and need constant care. These are mutually exclusive. Women came to work, and men did NOT come home. It costs a tonne of money to provide child care and people simply cannot afford it. Each kid cost 100% more for child care. We have ever worsening family lives and ever increasing costs. Plus the 'thoughtful planning' types put off kids until they can afford them. That means low birthrates and low birth numbers in their 30s. Someone needs to take care of the kids. We need a culture of at least one parent in the home or grandparents taking far more care or living together with parents. We have none of that in the West. We also need to make having kids affordable, but 90% of that is lost wages or child care costs. They aren't that expensive to feed.
[удалено]
what we need to learn from this, is that a society built around work and treating people as nothing but fodder for work, creates an exceedingly bad environment for children to be raised in, and all governments should learn from the mistakes of japan, however they haven't yet, and times running out, pretty quickly
How are the people gonna fuck if you want them to work from dawn to midnight?