Fred Hiatt, writing in the Washington Post, discusses the incredible shrinking Japan. With a rapidly declining birth rate how does a country remain a vital economy? Japan's birthrate is well below what is considered purely replacement level. Simply to maintain a population with no growth requires a birthrate of 2.1 children per mother. Japan's is at 1.25.
As a result, Japan's population, now about 128 million, is expected to fall to about 100 million by mid-century. Big deal, you might say. Wasn't Japan happy enough 50 years ago, when it blew through the 100 million mark on the way up?
Yes, but it was a very different 100 million then. In 1965 there were 25 million children in Japan, 67 million people of working age and 6 million senior citizens. In 2050 there will be 11 million children, 54 million potential workers and 36 million people 65 and over. No one knows whether such a society can maintain a spirit of innovation, or how its capitalists will adapt to a shrinking market. There will potentially be a lot more dependents for every productive worker.
Faced with this prospect, a country could choose to fight (raise the birthrate) or cope (prepare to manage the consequences). Japan gives lip service to the former. Since 1990 the government has sought to encourage more births, but the policy has had no impact. Today the portfolio of the minister in charge of spurring fertility seems to indicate a certain lack of governmental focus: She is minister of state for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, science and technology, innovation, gender equality and social affairs, and food safety.
In truth, Japan doesn't seem to want to change as it would have to in order to increase the birthrate. Japanese women say in surveys that they want two children, but they delay or abstain from marriage and motherhood in astonishing numbers because fathers don't help around the house, because mothers feel isolated in tiny apartments and because it's so hard for a woman to combine career and motherhood.
This is a country on a path to extinction. It isn't alone in this, of course. The United States is the sole industrialized country that is still growing. All the rest are experiencing a shrinking – and aging - population.
