Posted on 12/04/2004 3:41:38 PM PST by traumer
The Japanese government says urgent policy changes are needed to persuade women to have more children.
Japan currently has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Discrimination in the workplace and poor government policies have been blamed for deterring many Japanese women from having children.
But the government says that unless the trend is reversed quickly, the shortage of children risks doing damage to the economy.
The decline in Japan's birth rate is so severe they have invented a word for it - 'shoshika', meaning a society without children.
Unless women here start having more babies, the population in Japan is expected to shrink more than 20% by the middle of this century. Nearly half would be elderly, placing impossible burdens on the health and pension systems.
An official White Paper which has just been published recommends that the government now focus all its efforts on women born during Japan's last baby-boom, who are now in their 20s and 30s, in a final push to reverse the trend.
Today, record numbers of women in this age group are unmarried and without children. But it is not clear what kind of policies would work.
The government has already introduced a so-called 'Angel Plan', then a 'New Angel Plan', and most recently a 'Plus One Proposal' - all intended to offer more child-care facilities and other benefits for working mothers.
But the biggest obstacle to having families could be social attitudes. Men are still expected to spend long hours at the office and little time at home, while there is pressure on women to give up work when they have children.
A former prime minister who is in charge of the governing party's committee on population famously told women to stay at home and breed.
It is attitudes like that, still commonplace here - and not policies - which Japanese women say are putting them off getting married.
As my dad always says..."follow the money trail".
Which is a lie. In most parts of North America, women are strongly encouraged to engage in family planning and work--and they have low fertility rates, as well.
Doesn't China have something like extra 40+ million men ?
Ship them over...
I've read about this problem before in Japan. The main issue/concern is, is that they have this HUGE elderly population that lives off the Government.
No babies means no workers yoked to supporting the elderly until they die, which means their government and economy is going to go down in flames. Just like ours, LOL!
I'll go see if I can scout out those other articles as to what the REAL reasons are behind this panic over no babies being born. It ain't because they just love babies, LOL!
Yeah consequence of the One Child Policy. The Japanese dislike immigration.
It's not that they dislike immigration. They dislike having children because they're inconvient and abortion is very matter of fact in Japan. This is the rest of the world's problem as well anyway. All these nations whining about their birth rates... well stop aborting and have children already and stop waiting till you can 'afford' children.
Guess they need to get an NBA franchise.
More than 34,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, according to the National Police Agency - an increase of more than 7% from the previous year.
Three-quarters of those who committed suicide were male,
Strange. I thought Japan was over populated. My son stationed there and talks about how crowded it is.
Oh I know that but aside from immigration, the problem would be a lot less 'alarming' if they didn't have as much abortions.
"Over-populated" is leftish word.
Why don't they just import millions and millions of Mexicans like we do?
More than 34,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, according to the National Police Agency - an increase of more than 7% from the previous year.
Three-quarters of those who committed suicide were male...
Because of sexual frustration ??
Well,.... I'm am lefty:')
Yes I've written that before esp. after reading articles about children being kidnapped and abused. If I was to get married, I would leave it up to God to decide whether I'd be a good mother or not by not using any birth control whatsoever. I would love to have children but not in the context of single motherhood.
We're headed the same way with inflation and taxation making the buying power of the dollar much less than it was pre world war 1. With taxation over 1/3 of the average taxpayer's income, it takes a lot of extra time (years) to pay off debts, build up a nest egg, and start a family with a reasonable amount of income.
Stop sacrificing our country's future to the wants of political power.
As natural resources get depleted population will decrease and eventually the planet will maintain about 1 billion people.
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