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© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Japan's population falls for 15th year in a row
By MARI YAMAGUCHI TOKYO©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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Mark
i have been to the small rural towns in Japan, they got good roads leading there, electricity clean water and everything, but the towns are dying and you can hardly see anyone in the street. It is like Hollywood apocalypse movies. Anyway it is sad to watch the scene.
kurisupisu
It’s difficult to start a family on low salaries and high taxes-not much left over for children.
Add to that a lack of investment in rural areas but plenty for Tokyo then the downward trend is here to stay!
Alan Bogglesworth
If you’re a foreigner and you have a child here, they’re not granted citizenship. Even if you’ve been here for years and paid more tax than Yamada-kun ever will.
We’re doing our best but will probably just leave eventually because of stuff like this.
Japans loss really, not ours. Enjoy the destruction of the economy. We did our bit.
Nit much to anchor us here.
sakurasuki
Productive age, that's the only thing they care, healthy enough to pay pension so can support Japanese elder and shrinking worker in Japan.
David Brent
Well that’s 100% incorrect.
Fighto!
Actually positive news to wake up to for once!
Not all doom and gloom. Japan is consciously depopulating - and providing the world with an unprecedented model of achieving economic growth WITH a falling population.
A win for the environment, a win for kids seeking entry to schools and colleges, a win for graduates seeking employment - they will have multiple job offers. With rapid advancements in AI, drones, driverless tech and robotics, any supposed negatives of a so called "Labor shortage" will be allayed.
TokyoLiving
It's not bad at all..
Depopulation is happening throughout the developed world, if Japan knows how to do things well this can be beneficial, Japan will know what to do in its propper time..
Let Japan be Japan..
Agree 100%
JeffLee
Great news! I've been in Japan for all those 15 years, and during that time healthcare, infrastructure, housing and environment have improved immeasurably. Japan keeps getting better.
I come from Canada, a polar-opposite society from Japan. It has the highest population growth of developed countries, during which time healthcare and housing among other areas have fallen into crisis. The summers in many regions are blighted by massive forest wildfires that blanket cities in smoke. Canada needs some serious population decline as Japan enjoys.
TokyoLiving
I was waiting for your tearful antiJapan comment.. LOL
TokyoLiving
So because you're a foreigner in Japan you deserve a medal??, why not ask for the Nobel Prize too, LOL...
Japan does not need complaining people, Japan needs brave people, if you feel so offended to the point that Japan does not deserve you, then what are you waiting for???.. Bon Voyage !!!!....
Japan is for the brave who know how to respect, appreciate, love and give the best to the country, without expecting anything in return..
bass4funk
But that’s the sad thing, they don’t.
That’s like saying, my friends an alcoholic and I should just respect him even though he’s slowly killing himself, no need for intervention
Telling your friend that they have a problem is not being anti-friendship, it’s doing so out of care and concern.
Ricky Kaminski13
We are beyond a population in decline and are now starting to see a population collapse.
I truly believe, after all these years watching these people relate to each other , that by everyone focusing on economic reasons for the birthrate decline they are missing the entire elephant in the room. It’s a bleeding mammoth actually. Remember, both here and overseas, we are witnessing one of the largest money transfers in history as the baby boomers pass on their wealth and assets to this current generation of parents and kids. I don’t get the feeling that these young people are over concerned with money. That’s not it politicians.
It’s the interpersonal skills, and the glaring lack there of. The distance between people, the chronic lack of self expression skills, curiosity, empathy and then the risk aversion thrown in as a final nail. The real issues are soul deep which can be seen and studied in some of the lowest happiness and self confidence rankings on the planet. Check the world happiness index for reference. Japan ranks at the bottom of numerous categories. Places like Mexico are at the top! It ain’t the money baby! What is it a third of 20 to 40 year olds never even dated??
The root of the problem is so all pervasive that it’s almost invisible. There is a cold loneliness and a detachment behind this collectivist ‘we Japanese’ culture. It starts with the education system, the rote learning, the bullying into submission and I to forced drudgery, constant ranking of each other, then onto the workplace where so many just go through the motions not really trying. No celebration of high achievement , no one punching up but people love to punch down and berate their inferiors. There is a flatness of spirit that needs the whole country to recognize, take responsibility for and try and change.
But then again change is near impossible when you are in that state of shutdown . It’s tragic and they should have an army of psychologists going to all schools from kindergarten upwards to at least try and save this current crop. Forget the obsession with the bleeding economy! That’s not it!
Check this out.
https://youtu.be/edWYxCAEvRk?si=c9rQRrD-eizIS3Qh
bass4funk
You can’t make that call. People can say what they want. You applaud that when China does so, extend the same respect and curtesy to everyone else as well.
Japan is no different less or more deserving than any other country in that sense, but Japan is not the U.S. and Japan in many aspects needs help because it just doesn’t have the resources many other countries has and when you are highly dependent on other nations, you do need to listen sometimes, that’s the trade-off
Abe234
Am I reading the same article every couple of months?
SDCA
Ironic enough, many people around me are having kids this year, and I mean many! I wonder how many of them will have more than one or two children though. Seems the Japanese ヤンキー are the ones having 3 or more children. I know this because the further out and the more 治安が悪い the neighborhood is, I see these 柄悪い parents walking around with 50 kids that are 口悪い. But this is just speculation, wonder what the actual data is.
Chabbawanga
Of course this is in part down to inhospitable working conditions, but its also largely due to a complete breakdown of social skills.
Convenience can be the devil. Society panders to much to people who want to lock themselves in a closet and never speak to anyone.
Blacksamurai
Here we ago, cue more the sky is falling, the sky is falling, Japan has 24.9 million people! chicken little narrative.
The real problem Japan has is managing the population decline - at the moment the public discussion is stuck in the 'How can we make more young people have children?' instead of accepting that this is part of a worldwide, first world country trend and Japan is too smart of a society to go down the road of irresponsible mass immigration that is pushing so much of the increased homelessness and strain on resources in countries like Canada and Australia at the moment.
You can't force people to have children unlike the weird narrative pushed by some persistent posters on this topic in JT discussions. Hiking up payments to families will help some things but it won't make those who don't want to have children or don't want to get married here, do that. Rightly. The stats in western countries generous with welfare shows that people having the most children are mostly from low income/refugee backgrounds/single mother relying on others' taxes to keep those benefits coming. Japan must never even go near there and it won't.
Japan's greatest period of growth was in the wreckage post WW2 and its population was much lower. The population decline can be managed successfully but it{s going to need more investment and collaboration by private enterprise and making use of non politician input. Osaka needs a rejuvenation and that city and cities like Nagoya could attract the population that drift to Tokyo with better planning and opportunities.
And all the talk about giving more free money to families misses that the ageing popuation will need way more resources than it gets now. This can be an opportunity as the silvers have specific needs. The govt could invest in affordable retirement villages for example in areas on the outskirts of the metropolis and attract mini mall developers for services, restaurants and stores, making hubs where communities can exist. The way some people talk about Japan's population situation, you'd think you can solve it by throwing money at families and ignoring the growing silvers population.
Sven Asai
I guess that big population decline also corresponds a bit with the loudly announced big rise of minimum wages by biggest ever 50Yen, from 1,004 to 1,054 Yen on average. Together with that unstable employment trend in our era it all makes the wish of young people for partnership, marriage, family with child or children , nearly impossible, even if there are still less and less left who develop such a wish. It's maybe possible to leave the accelerating downwards spiral, but surely not by celebrating 50 yen more hourly minimum wages.
kohakuebisu
No-one said you could fix a broken record!
Blacklabel
These pensions are going to get rough later on.
its already terrible enough that you only get a small percentage of what was taken out of your paycheck.
seems gonna be even less when no one working to pay for it when compared to all the old people receiving it.
Gene Hennigh
It seems that there is a positive side to Japan's population decline. The world's population is far more than the planet needs. The root cause of most of the problems in world is that the population is just far too big. Perhaps Japan is a model for the rest of the world: don't go forth and multiply, go forth and add. The world's economy is based on growth, but perhaps the economy could do with some retooling and make is so that a smaller population doesn't mean being poor.
It's far better for the population to reduce in size the Japanese way than it is to wait for WWIII or a rising climate mortality rate or AI taking jobs and starving people.
Just me. Most people, I know, will disagree, but it's something I think of from time to time.
Ivan Martinez
The population decrease doesn't have to be a bad thing. Also, if companies allowed more remote working for those jobs which doesn't necessarily require physical presence would allow that population to re-distribute to other areas. It's just a matter of adapting to the current needs of the population.
Seigi
Next year's headline will be "... 16th year in a row"
Toshihiro
I do hope that with the continued population decline, the govt can ease up on foreign worker visa rules and let more foreigners own properties, marry locals and just help prop up the country. On another note, nobody should really expect Japan's population to rise or just break even when the population is overworked, outpriced and just red taped into poverty.
kohakuebisu
The fund, which definitely does exist, is making record profits. According to population projections, Japanese over 65 population will only increase another couple of million before peaking, so the amount paid out is not going to get much bigger. It is not a defined benefit pension linked to wages or the price level, so payouts are not going to go up with inflation. People will just get an amount of money that buys less and less.
I'd be more worried about countries with PAYG systems where there is no fund and older voters keep electing themselves pension increases.
FizzBit
This is a good thing!
runner3
Anyone who thinks a shrinking population is a good thing are nieve. Japan needs to increase immigration. Someone has to work to pay taxes to support social services.
Fighto!
You do realize that foreigners can and do own property, and can and do marry locals in Japan, right? No one is stopping them.
CaptDingleheimer
Doing my part to help by marrying a Japanese girl and taking her back to the States with me to live.
wallace
Allow birth citizenship.
Sebastiano
Elephant in the room: Japan is "black hole of child abduction" and children rights as stated in the UNCRC chart of rights (which Japan signed) are systematically violated.
It's fundamentally unsafe having children in Japan, they can be taken away at any moment by one spouse and the family law is rotten.
No wonder that Japanese are less inclined in having children, and the ignorant foreigners that still do are met with life-long nightmare of legal battles to get to see their child 1h a month after divorce.
Sh1mon M4sada
Are you sure?
Depopulation + an aging population is not a recipe any country wants. Less productive tax payers + more older failing health retirees = DOOM to me.
Jim
Can’t blame people for not wanting to have children! The cost of living is super high and people are struggling to make ends meet for themselves. In addition to all these the hatred and violence people have towards each other because of corrupt politicians who have divided the world! Who would want to bring a child into this sick world!!!!
Abe234
Am I reading the same article every couple of months?
Totally. I guess it's a slow news day. LOL
Andy
Fantastic news in an already grossly over populated country.
JeffLee
The CEO of Blackrock recently said that the upcoming artificial intelligence revolution will favor countries with shrinking populations. Countries with growing populations, on the other hand will end up with long unemployment lines as technology replaces jobs on a grand scale.
Japan will be well-positioned. Countries like Canada will sink into the abyss.
1glenn
Just my opinion, I am not by any means an expert, but seems to me that Japan might be able to cope with a declining population. What is important is the quality of life, not how many live there. In that respect, quality of life, Japan seems to be doing alright. Never been to Japan, but have talked with people who have, and they had no complaints.
Meanwhile, Japan is not alone in seeing a decrease in births. Apparently China and Korea are in the same boat. Read an article the other day that the US might see the same trend soon. Another article said that the total world population will likely stabilize within the next one hundred years. I know that the planet's population has more than tripled in just my lifetime, and that seems to be an unsustainable model.
Someone mentioned working from home......our adult kids love working from home, when they can. They avoid commuting, and can spend what would otherwise be driving time doing productive work. A son-in-law, with his own business, does a lot of business from home, and one of our daughters drives in to work twice a week, and the rest of the time works at home. Interestingly, it seems to be the higher paying jobs that can be done from home.
Fighto!
Yes - not to mention robotics also. Within a decade, Japan will likely roll out human-like robots servicing residents in nursing homes, replacing the need for care workers. Furthermore, flying drones will replace road-based delivery services. The "Kuro-Neko" type delivery system will be dead soon.
Canada basically invented the model of "importing people to grow your economy". They were not smart, sadly, and it seems Canada is now a pretty awful place to visit or live. Other nations that copied the flawed Canada model- namely Australia and NZ - are just now trying to unravel it.
daito_hak
This is one of the most stupid thing ever written on this site forum. You live in a fantasy world and the reality will hit you hard when you will come back to the real world. Japan has been in economical stagnation for decades with low wages and increasing living cost and taxes. What economic growth are you talking about with an old population with no clue and with low productivity? And do you realize that a shrinking population with increasing elderlies means that the country will have more and more difficulties to sustain the healthcare cost and a working pension system.
Japan is doomed because of people like you who live in a denial.
Fighto!
@ daito_hak -
So you believe that a growing population is the only model for a nation to pursue? That seems illogical in a world with resources already stretched to the limit. The environment is suffering worldwide.
Japan is showing that improved quality of life, better infrastructure, hospitals etc can be achieved along with a steadily declining population. The first nation on earth to do this.
Can you propose any legitimate objections to this model?
kurisupisu
The article is about depopulation.
If Japan were such an easy and welcoming place to marry and have children then why isn’t the population growing instead of falling?
It’s the painful reality of being in Japan for many young people that the economy and job prospects are unappealing.
Anyone with children in Japan knows the situation all too well.
WeiWei
It is his job to milk billions into the hype. That bubble is going to burst spectacularly in the next few years. There is already a 400 billion deficit in AI revenue vs investment and that will just grow as the “AI” hype dies down.
virusrex
Japanese government:
We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!
BRS
Will boggle the minds of my kids with their Japanese passports.
thinkbefore
It's a terrible investment. So much in for so little return. My understanding of it is it needs a large working population for it to work well. The working population in Japan is dropping while the elderly population is increasing. Maybe it's best to abolish the pension all together one day and let workers keep the money that would otherwise be paid into the fund and invest in other things.
Jonathan Prin
Again marriage shall not not be related so much with having kids.
I was surprised to hear that my Japanese niece had married without any celebration.
She did the right choice because it costs too much money and is no fun at all.
Controlled depopulation may be good, but a falling population is a dire situation.
When young people have to spend more time in adult diapers than in baby's, future is bleak in so many ways, social structure is upside down. No robots no AI no politician to help you.
Alan Bogglesworth
Well that’s 100% incorrect.
Thats correct , I don’t think you read the article before commenting did you ? Just felt like a comment ?
If the population is going backwards , you should think about how to fix it, you know like , a normal country ?
Yohan
This is not true, I am EU citizen with Japanese wife and our two daughters were born in EU, but later on we moved to Japan and both daughters - now in their 40s - decided for Japanese citizenship.
WoodyLee
""Surveys show that younger Japanese are increasingly reluctant to marry or have children, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living — which rises at a faster pace than salaries — and a gender-biased corporate culture that adds a burden only on women and working mothers.""
AMEN, \
So if and when the LDP recognizes these issues only then we may see people wanting to have kids and start a family, until then just keep on importing labor and child baring ages.
Sh1mon M4sada
...only thinks of his fat bonus and management fees charged by his firm for looking after uber rich assets.
Do robots and AI pay tax?
WoodyLee
The government earmarked 5.3 trillion yen ($34 billion) as part of the 2024 budget to fund incentives for young couples to have more children, such as increasing subsidies for childcare and education, and is expected to spend 3.6 trillion yen ($23 billion) in tax money annually over the next three years.
Japan still charges for school meals, books and so on.
FREE EDUCATION for all children all the way to though Graduate School is what many advanced nations offer their children/families. Just DO IT Japan and stop trickling aid.
Mr Kipling
Missing from this article is where the population decline is going to happen. The countryside, and especially Tohoku are going to be wastelands. Tokyo will continue to grow and the other large cities will remain or only shrink a little.
BRS
Perhaps not in your parallel Japan.
Where the Japanese themselves live, accelerating depopulation is little short of catastrophic.
Here's some reading to further educate you:
https://www.cfa.go.jp/assets/contents/node/basic_page/field_ref_resources/097626be-6f2b-41d6-9cc0-71bf9f7d62d5/13cd9c2b/20230401_resources_research_other_shakai-keizai_02.pdf
BRS
The petulance and casual 'racism' of many an ignorant expat in Japan.
Aoi Azuuri
It's result by repeated misrules or incompetence of LDP regime who had sneered against once democratic government with calling nightmare.
Moskollo
Still barking up the wrong tree kishida. You have to make life easier for people who already have kids, if young people can see it’s not such a struggle they will follow. It is a struggle now, more tax breaks for families, more support-help families instead of punishing them..
Bellflower
The "Japan population crisis" is a lot of hype.
It is true that both the birth rate and population has declined, however the rate is not that great and is similar to many other countries today such as Australia, South Korea, and the US.
The US had a very similar birth rate decline in 2023. But what is the big difference between the US and Japan. Why are there no hysterical headlines in the US media? Everyone knows the answer. The southern US border is wide open. And Hispanics in the US have the highest birth rate of any ethnic group.
What is the end game of the Japanese media? Why are they hyping it? Of course the answer lies in imitating the US.
Bellflower
Why is the birth rate declining?
Kishida's "new capitalism" group are very worried young workers cannot afford to have children. So they have generously devised plans to subsidize families with children. Of course who are the workers most likely to have children. They are not the ones with temp jobs. The low wage temp workers will be paying taxes to subsidize the full time workers to have more children.
The western barbarians introduced the system of "temp labor" into Japan and it has been all downhill since.
kohakuebisu
I don't disagree, but isn't that what they are doing? More more for child #3 and extending child benefit to SHS kids. Removing the salary cap too.
https://taxlabor.com/%E5%AD%90%E8%82%B2%E3%81%A6%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%A3%E3%81%AE%E5%B8%8C%E6%9C%9B%E5%BA%83%E3%81%8C%E3%82%8B%EF%BC%81%E5%85%90%E7%AB%A5%E6%89%8B%E5%BD%93%E3%81%8C%E6%8B%A1%E5%85%85%EF%BC%86%E6%89%80%E5%BE%97/
buchailldana
Within a few years with the shortage of workers coupled with the massive strain of the aging population Japan is going down the tubes like water down a drain.
Sad to say, sad to see.
A wasteland for young people
Jonathan Prin
Yes economic future of Japan si so bleak, and still many says look at Japan it is doing good.
No, young and older Japanese are so burdened with social difficulties.
Kishida is not at all dealing with issues told everywhere.
1glenn
The idea that free education would help prevent a declining birth rate is not necessarily accurate. Some Scandinavian countries, with much smaller populations, already have free education. I still think it is a wonderful idea, but not sure that it will impact population in any way.
By the way, non citizens, such as Japanese and Americans, can already attend university in Norway for free, even without being citizens. Of course, they have very few classes conducted in the Japanese language. We have a distant relative, an American, who enrolled in a Norwegian university specifically to avoid paying tuition. While traveling in Norway, I met a young American woman who was attending the university in Bergen, Norway. Just saying, this is not just a hypothetical, but actually happens.
1glenn
A hundred years ago, in 1925, Japan's population was less than 60 million. No one at that time proclaimed that the country was going to die because of a lack of people.
Tirion
I understand that the reason for the record number of deaths is the covid jabs. I understand that the reason for the falling birth rate is that young Japanese are not dating, marrying or having sex. I do not understand the apparently magnetic attraction of Tokyo. Especially in these hot sunny days, who wants to live in a giant, stuffy metropolis and travel to work like cattle on over-crowded trains every day? There are 9 million abandoned homes all over beautiful Japan, while new apartments in Tokyo now sell for JPY100m on average. This looks like another sad policy failure to me. Can't the government, for example, use the tax system to take the pressure off Tokyo and boost prosperity in the remainder of Japan? What am I missing?
tjguy
All these people claiming that population decline is a good thing! Amazing!
The government does not seem to think so. Good luck supporting the aging population, meeting their care needs as they get older, and generating enough tax revenue to continue to support the needs of the country.
Sure. There are good things about it. Stores and trains and roads are less crowded, etc., but overall this is NOT good for the country. Schools are closing as student numbers drop. Businesses have trouble finding enough help. Foreign workers will of necessity increase in number, like it or not. National debt will continue to rise as tax revenue falls. Pensions will struggle.
The big to-do over Climate Change is a big nothing burger! That should not enter into our thinking concerning kids and population decline whatsoever!
Yohan
If a young Japanese man is looking for a good job and considers to find a young Japanese female for a long term relationship, where else can he go?
Look around in rural areas, there are only elderly couples, sometimes their son taking over the business, but hardly any single young female. There are few children, even some elementary schools in smaller cities are closed, not enough students.
There is no way for a young Japanese man for dating outside of the big cities. Also you have to consider that income in rural areas is rather low, good jobs are rare, and same is true with those few people living on smaller islands.
Dating itself is also difficult for young men - especially those without higher education and with low-paid part time jobs in smaller cities just gave up, where and how can they really approach a female without being worried to be belittled and rejected?
kohakuebisu
The fall in the birth rate isn't just money. Fewer people are coupling up.
There are many reason for this, so I hesitate to mention any in case someone jumps down my throat. An important one though is increasing awkwardness for people working together and fear of accusations of sexual harrassment. Many existing Japanese couples met at work. Another is that many young people don't drink any more. This means they do not go to bars/izakayas and do not put a substance in their body that might loosen their inhibitions about meeting new people.
Tirion
Yohan, thanks for your insights. It seems to me all the more sad since the introduction of policies to reduce the strain on Tokyo's housing market and attract business and housing investment to other parts of Japan should not be difficult; but my perception is that the Japanese government is either unable or unwilling to attempt change in anything; so the economy has been stagnating for decades and the many social problems - of which the falling birth rate is just one - just rumble on like a steam roller towards the edge of the cliff. As a foreigner, I find it all really puzzling, to say the least.
commanteer
It's absurd to believe that populations can just rise forever. A decline is a good thing.
The problem is that the government (with the people's permission) has been running a giant Ponzi scheme, which by definition requires increasingly more investors to avoid collapse. In this case the "investors" are taxpayers.
No rational person would argue that a Ponzi scheme, once exposed, should be continued by force, by heavily taxing people to support it. Yet, that's what's happening. "Have more babies so they can be taxed to death as soon as they are old enough!"
So money that could go to support the future for young people, and could be invested in healthy projects that will allow Japan to grow, will instead be poured into a dying Ponzi scheme to keep it alive a little longer. At the cost of Japan's future.
The government is hopelessly in debt. Admit it, let the cards fall as they may, and quickly reform the bloated and corrupted government. The economy will be booming within a year or two and people will have more babies again.