Posted on 05/06/2008 3:08:43 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning.
For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world.
The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.
The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.
Japan also has a surfeit of the elderly. About 22 percent of the population is 65 or older, the highest proportion in the world. And that number is on the rise. By 2020, the elderly will outnumber children by nearly 3 to 1, the government report predicted. By 2040, they will outnumber them by nearly 4 to 1.
The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate.
Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.
Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.
In what is now being called a "super-aging" society, department and grocery stores have recorded declining sales for a decade...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Robot children.
Problem solved.
Children would only contribute to Gorbal Warming.
ZPG
The Saline Solution for population control comes back to bite.
http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa063000a.htm
The results of decades of bad karaoke.
Most people working for Japanese companies don't live in Japan, and aren't Japanese.
At least, everyone living in Japan in 2050 will be Japanese — almost all of Japanese extraction.
Godzilla’s fault?
The price of housing is sky high, because of rules to protect farm land from development, and protectionism is so bad the Japanese pay 2- 3 times what everyone else does for rice.
Allow more homes to be built and competition for food dollars, and more people can afford more children.
“Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.”
Yes, I think they have a 50 YEAR PLAN. I suspect there are plenty of others. The UN sponsors plenty of ‘depopulation’ dialogue, and is institutionally well apprised of ‘Japans’ progress’.
Actually, Japan is too crowded right now. A population decline is not necessarily suicide, it may increase the quality of life. Trying to solving this problem through massive immigration, however, would be suicide. I think the Japanese are smart enought not to let that happen.
I’ve proposed what to do about population collapse in developed countries here but I’ve usually been shot down. Large populations of the elderly tend to suck up resources which should be going to new parents and younger children. Eventually you get to the point where its too expensive to have even one child, Japan is just an extreme example.
The young die and the old linger.
In A.I., the movie, that contributed to human extinction. Why have a real baby, when the artificial one is perfect?
I’ve been teaching at the same junior high in Japan for 13 years . In my first year , there were 232 students . Now the total is 124 , an almost 50% decline .
Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.
Above is an excerpt from the article. As there has been no hue and cry from the Japanese govt. or business community with active govt. programs for increased children, one suspects a formal and unadvertised 100 YEAR POPULATION PLAN with a 50 YEAR WAY STATION for adjustment purposes at play. Japan is certainly in line with UN depopulation dialogues, agendas.
While developed nations are encouraged to use restraint when it comes to new children, the third world is not only encouraged, but the developed nations (read that people who are encouraged not to have children) are demanded to feed them.
Our government sends out tens of billions of dollars of aid to nations that will not get their own houses in order. On top of that, we are guilted into allowing foreign nationals over-run our own nation.
There is a sickness in the land, and it’s being micro managed by folks who hate the western industrialized nations. And pardon me if it doesn’t look like a number of these projects are funded and run by western people hell bent on national or even international societal suicide.
The western civilization better wake the hell up!
Incidentally, my son and his Japanese wife did their part by giving me three of the finest grandkids anyone could hope for.
Will climate change be blamed for this catastrophe?
Not to be an devils advocate, but I think your statement is completely off base.
Wars and disease do the same thing (population decline) but with far different results. You still have a young population to rebuild society
The type of population decline Japan is experiencing is a death cycle, the population isn't simply getting smaller, it's also getting older, very old, very fast.
Civilization can not progress or improve if you have no workers to do the daily tasks it takes to make a society work.
Japan is also very xenophobic and immigration solution won't work.
Is this happening in the United States, as well?
Does anyone know the child-bearing status amongst citizens of the US?
I had one single relative when I was growing up who didn’t have children. Now we are amongst the only ones in our families with kids.
In our circle of acquaintances, we have a few friends who have more than one child, but for the most part, they have none at all or only one. But there are many more with “none” than “one”; and we only know one other family with “two+”.
Think of an inverted triangle.
Who will do all the jobs?
Fertility rate in the USA is 2.1 which is the rate you replace yourself. So we are not anywhere near the trouble Japan and most of Europe is in
But, your question asked about U.S. citizens, there is the rub. Every child born in this country is a citizens regardless of whether the parents are legal or not.
Google CIA FACT BOOK and they have a great site for this information
My guess is that one reason Japanese aren’t reproducing is that its already too damn crowded there. I used to see pictures back in the 80s of conductors packing people into commuter trains like sardines. Its no doubt gotten worse since then. Housing is also very expensive there and sucks the financial oxygen out of young couples. People are too broke and work too hard to want to bring kids and make their country more crowded. As the herd thins, that will eventually change.
This isn’t news to me, but it still boggles the mind.
How is it that the desire for children can be removed from a populace on such a large scale?
There will always be people who would rather not have children, but on this scale? That is not natural. What explains this beyond just narcissism, materialism and hopelessness?
It is only because 83% of the land is uninhabitable. Therefore, it is not necessarily that Japan is crowded. It is that Japan’s cities are crowded. If there was any way to make rugged terrain more liveable, and spread out the population, things would not be so bad here in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Kobe, Yokohama, Sendai, etc. etc.
What do you observe is behind this large-scale rejection of childbearing and rearing? Are average citizens concerned about it? What are the attitudes toward those who have children and those who have decided against it?
I’m just asking about it from your point of view as someone who lives there.
Very good points.
Interesting fact: Public debt (% of GDP)from CIA Factbook
Japan is carrying 194.4 % of pubic debt # 1 in the world even ahead of Zimbabwe!!!
Not only will there be very few workers, but they all will be taxed to death to pay the public debt.
I am amazed at the number of young people today who declare “I don’t want kids.” You’d never hear that from average kids 25 years ago.
Of course, some of them may just be jawboning. But still. To say that at all tells you something.
Besides the general hedonistic tendencies of an evergrowing number of young Japanese , I would say a large % of the women who would like to give birth are worried about what their company will do without them, and whether they will have a job to go back to. Japan still expects women to quit when they give birth (or at any rate is unwilling to give them leave unless they are schoolteachers , for example ), but would really prefer that they stay and just not give birth. Also , many women these days are putting careers ahead of motherhood.
I don’t hear people talking about the problem much . The average person is more worried about making ends meet while paying off loans .
Speaking personally , it wouldn’t bother me in the least if my daughter ( now 20 and in college ) decided not to have children .
I have seen my oldest kids, now in college, evolve in this exact way.
They now say “when I have kids”, rather than “if”.
Thankfully.
I want to be a grandmother someday.
After they are out of college, in good jobs, and married.
In that order.
Thanks.
Yes, but don’t encourage them to wait too long! The dirty little secret my generation learned through many tears was that putting off having children until in one’s 30’s left a lot of people struggling with difficulties conceiving.
Sure, it might not happen, but for people who really want to have children, why risk it?
I lived in Japan many years. I think it may appear there are many more kids because of how they all walk, bike or ride public transportation to get to and from school. They are more visible than kids here are even if there aren't as many.
Oh I should have added a /sarc. Then again in Japan robotic children are quite possibly going to be the official policy cuz as one demographer put it “Japanese people stopped having sex”.
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