The number of children born in Japan in 2025 fell from a year earlier to 705,809, the fewest since data became available in 1899 and hitting a new low for the 10th consecutive year, health ministry data showed Thursday.
They haven’t tried nothing, they consistently raise taxes on consumer goods while salaries remain stagnant. And since it hasn’t solved anything yet they’ll just keep trying it until it works.
Idk at this point it might be a good gamble. An attitude I hear a lot in Europe is “we don’t have a bunch of kids like those immigrants”.
If there’s no immigrants to compare yourself to, what happens then? I guess we find out in Japan.
The immigrants aren’t the reason. Not here in Europe either.
It’s well documented at this point that people start having fewer children when medicine and economy develop in a country. It’s no longer necessary to have 10 children just in case a few die in the early years, plus there are social safety nets for the elderly so they don’t have to be entirely dependent on their children to survive when they’re too old to work.
However, while the economy is great on paper, a lot of people are finding life less and less affordable. Since the 2008 crash, in much of the world, buying a first home has started becoming harder and harder. Covid exacerbated things. Food is pretty expensive these days. A lot of people just don’t want to have children unless they can be sure they can provide for them. Now we’re also talking about the threat of being made redundant due to AI, in careers previously thought to be mostly immune to automatization. And let’s not forget the looming threat of climate change.
Really, Japan, and us here in Europe too, have to adapt to a new economic reality. Things are going to be more expensive, and there will be fewer children to cover everyone’s retirement economically - so we’re ALL going to have to make sacrifices in our lifestyles. It’s not going to be pretty, and social safety nets for the weakest among us need to be improved everywhere.
If immigrants have more children, it’s just because they’re from societies where it’s still a necessity, and normal, to have a lot of children. Fairly sure that a few generations in, it becomes normal for them, too, to have fewer children.
Japan already has fairly low immigration numbers. Currently they’re at like… 4 million, or about 3% of their total population. Contrast with America having around mid-50 million, or about 15% of their population being immigrants.
Immigrants are absolutely not the problem for Japan. A weak yen, high cost of living, work culture that glorifies basically never being home to the point folks were dying (Look up Karoshi.). Heck, probably some culture norms shifting on top of that, as it becomes more acceptable to just not have kids at all, which friends get because, well, gestures broadly
We already know what happens though. Never heard of the hate between two neighboring villages in the past and “them over there” being evil manifest? Humans like to separate between in and out group. If skin color isn’t easily to blame anymore, it will fall back to regional differences. So we can stop that experiment and try to improve as a species again.
And they elected a conservative leader that’s wants to reduce immigration.
We’ve tried nothing and were all out of ideas!
They haven’t tried nothing, they consistently raise taxes on consumer goods while salaries remain stagnant. And since it hasn’t solved anything yet they’ll just keep trying it until it works.
Idk at this point it might be a good gamble. An attitude I hear a lot in Europe is “we don’t have a bunch of kids like those immigrants”.
If there’s no immigrants to compare yourself to, what happens then? I guess we find out in Japan.
The immigrants aren’t the reason. Not here in Europe either.
It’s well documented at this point that people start having fewer children when medicine and economy develop in a country. It’s no longer necessary to have 10 children just in case a few die in the early years, plus there are social safety nets for the elderly so they don’t have to be entirely dependent on their children to survive when they’re too old to work.
However, while the economy is great on paper, a lot of people are finding life less and less affordable. Since the 2008 crash, in much of the world, buying a first home has started becoming harder and harder. Covid exacerbated things. Food is pretty expensive these days. A lot of people just don’t want to have children unless they can be sure they can provide for them. Now we’re also talking about the threat of being made redundant due to AI, in careers previously thought to be mostly immune to automatization. And let’s not forget the looming threat of climate change.
Really, Japan, and us here in Europe too, have to adapt to a new economic reality. Things are going to be more expensive, and there will be fewer children to cover everyone’s retirement economically - so we’re ALL going to have to make sacrifices in our lifestyles. It’s not going to be pretty, and social safety nets for the weakest among us need to be improved everywhere.
If immigrants have more children, it’s just because they’re from societies where it’s still a necessity, and normal, to have a lot of children. Fairly sure that a few generations in, it becomes normal for them, too, to have fewer children.
Japan is collapsing already.
Japan already has fairly low immigration numbers. Currently they’re at like… 4 million, or about 3% of their total population. Contrast with America having around mid-50 million, or about 15% of their population being immigrants.
Immigrants are absolutely not the problem for Japan. A weak yen, high cost of living, work culture that glorifies basically never being home to the point folks were dying (Look up Karoshi.). Heck, probably some culture norms shifting on top of that, as it becomes more acceptable to just not have kids at all, which friends get because, well, gestures broadly
We already know what happens though. Never heard of the hate between two neighboring villages in the past and “them over there” being evil manifest? Humans like to separate between in and out group. If skin color isn’t easily to blame anymore, it will fall back to regional differences. So we can stop that experiment and try to improve as a species again.
Please?