
Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children - timr
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050502224.html
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noonespecial
The article misses something important in all of its "Japan is doomed because
of the loss of the children" predictions.

 _Its easy to make more kids._

As the country becomes more empty, it will be more desirable to have kids.
(Perhaps living in an apartment the size of a closet puts a damper on ones
desire to have rugrats in there with you?) The Japanese population may simply
be correcting for the space and resources available, not vanishing in an
x-files-esqe mystery as the over-sensationalized article suggests.

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ilamont
This Washington Post article is pretty thin, looks like the editors cut it
down a ton before it was published ... the Wikipedia article on Japan's
demographic changes is far more informative, IMHO:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan>

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zach
Amazing how the media has gone from "zomg overpopulation bomb" to "zomg
underpopulation catastrophe" so smoothly. Especially with Japan, for crying
out loud, which nobody has criticized as having too much elbow room. Does
everything need to be a disaster?

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mlinsey
I would have to think that if under-population continues to be an economic
problem in Japan, they will relax their strict immigration laws. This is what
is happening in many other developed nations where the increase in population
is attributable entirely to immigration.

Yes, there are strong cultural reason for those laws, but one would think that
at some point the economic consequences would force a change.

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Goronmon
I was not expecting to see this line in the article.

 _The government is subsidizing the development of robots as caregivers for
the old._

That's pretty sweet. Hell, I'd buy my own robot butler even before I got old.

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tx
Seems OK to me: as productivity rises, you don't need as many workers as you
used to. Back in the day we used to rely on our kids to survive, this is why
5-7 children used to be the norm, but now it looks disgusting: we're humans,
not rats.

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andreyf
In my experience, this is more of a social issue not tied to economics.
Consider certain subcultures (religious Jews in the US, for example), where
having lots of kids the social norm, without any obvious economic reason.

Personally, most of my childhood I was a single child (and not too social),
and I think having a big family would have been a lot more fun.

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jsmcgd
Thank god population is decreasing somewhere on the planet. They should be
rejoicing.

