
Japan's fertility crisis is terrifying and unprecedented - lisper
http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-fertility-crisis-2017-4
======
arkitaip
"Adult diapers have outsold baby diapers in Japan for the last six years, and
many jails are turning into de facto nursing homes, as Japanese elders account
for 20% of all crime in the country."

Stat of the day right there.

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gumby
I don't understand why the title was changed to the more clickbaity
'terrifying and unprecedented'. It may be unprecedented (unsure) but why
should it be terrifying? The article discusses the solutions:

\- open up the economy to more people (women, in Japan's male-dominated
workforce)

\- open up the economy to more people (immigrants -- while unpopular in Japan,
certainly acceptable in plenty of other places; look at Germany's example of
the Gastarbeiter in the 50s/60s to make up for the labor force lost in war)

\- automation.

It's not like these solutions are unavailable to the rest of the OECD.
Personally I look forward to a massively automated economy to free human
creativity and leisure.

~~~
gozur88
>open up the economy to more people (women, in Japan's male-dominated
workforce)

This may be a short term solution to budgetary problems, but it's likely to
push the birth rate down even farther.

~~~
greglindahl
One reason Japanese women don't have children because they are forced to quit
their jobs if they have a kid. Letting these women keep their jobs and
providing great childcare is one way to help the economy and encourage bigger
families.

The section of the article labeled "The new world of work" discusses this
issue, although it doesn't go into much details about the pressure on new
mothers to quit their jobs.

~~~
candiodari
Why are they so unwilling to fix the problem though ? This sounds like a
problem, and obviously it's not legal.

So let's simply introduce a law:

"Any legal entity that fires any woman within 2 years of her having a child
for any reason has to pay out 10 years of pay to her on the spot. If there is
so much of a suspicion of her getting fired because of having a child, same.
If there is a suspicion of a woman not getting hired for getting a kid, same"

Problem solved.

~~~
gozur88
If you pass a law like that nobody will hire women. "For any reason"? That
would never work.

~~~
candiodari
Then we make that a very expensive proposition for large companies. Just add,
we allow up to 60-40% gender ratio. Anything more costs math.power($1000,
ratio-60%).

~~~
dismantlethesun
I am kind of ambivalent about solutions that require the government to punish
people.

I'd much prefer a nuanced (i.e. not simple) solution that avoids negative
consequences.

------
ahiknsr
interesting answer from a japanese teen ( [https://www.quora.com/Ive-heard-
that-Japan-recently-is-facin...](https://www.quora.com/Ive-heard-that-Japan-
recently-is-facing-a-population-problem-whereas-most-of-the-teenagers-there-
arent-really-interested-in-dating-Why-is-that-so/answer/Kotaro-Hanawa))

~~~
Meekro
Pretty interesting! His answer makes it sound like teen dating in Japan is
simultaneously idolized and condemned. I wonder how a contradiction this
glaring actually works without making everyone's heads spin. For example, does
"the professor [who] endlessly talks about his first girlfriend and how she
degraded with age" then try to punish his young students for enjoying what he
once enjoyed?

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jordanb
I'm not sure what's supposed to be terrifying about it. This planet has way
too many humans on it.

We need to figure out how to cause our populations to decline naturally until
we can get the number of humans down to the point where everyone can live
good, happy, resource rich lives without cooking the planet.

Japan is on the vanguard of figuring out how to do that. Obviously there are
difficulties involved. Not the least is dealing with the relentless march of
Capitalism which requires every year be more, and bigger, than the year
before, lest the whole thing fall over.

~~~
keerthiko
> This planet has way too many humans on it.

I can get behind this. but...

> I'm not sure what's supposed to be terrifying about it.

So, so many things. The world is not as unified as it needs to be for this to
be a good thing. Population decline is Japan is a) too small to ease overall
resource burden on the world, b) _increasing_ resource burden on Japan itself,
c) Japan's situation to enjoy/deal with, the rest of the world is hardly going
to reward it for it. Trying to maintain a functioning economy is going to get
harder with a shrinking able-bodied workforce in the near future, I would not
want to be responsible for addressing that.

If and when the Japanese economy collapses in the current world immigration
climate, people will have little recourse too -- with their language and
culture isolation so far, they'll just be stuck in their crumbling economy.

One of the reasonable solutions is to increase worker mobility, and encourage
economic contributors to migrate to and operate in Japan, and not worry so
much about indigenous population decline. But this is a major big cultural,
economic and social change to embrace, which is starting to get harder to
adopt in today's increasingly isolationist rhetoric.

~~~
ekianjo
> Trying to maintain a functioning economy is going to get harder with a
> shrinking able-bodied workforce in the near future, I would not want to be
> responsible for addressing that.

Japan has way too much fluff in its economy: People working with almost zero
productivity, or completely useless jobs (purely bureaucratic) or facade kind
of jobs (folks just hired to stand around) - it's actually very good to see
the worker base shrinking, it will bring a lot more focus in the long run,
hopefully.

> and not worry so much about indigenous population decline

Japan became a major world power when it only had something like 40-50M
inhabitants. You don't need 120 Millions folks in Japan to be a powerful
country. Like, not at all.

~~~
keerthiko
Good points.

All economies have a lot of fluff, but yeah, it would be exciting if the
shrinking workforce meant a focus on optimizing the productivity of individual
workers, while the country doesn't have to deal with unemployment at the same
time. Really the only issue is the short period of time in the immediate
future of providing current levels of welfare to the large elderly population
with a much smaller still-inefficient younger workforce facing the burden of
doing so.

It's possible if they figure out a good short term solution, it could put
Japan into a lean diet that is really good for it in the long-run.

However they also run the risk of suffering some serious long-term economic
damage if this rough patch doesn't go well. Way too many things can go wrong
-- if the young decide to also ditch the workforce and rely on state welfare
while it lasts, or are not supported enough, or the focus goes too heavily on
making babies and not on optimizing economic output, etc.

------
sien
It's remarkable how when people talk about how there won't be any jobs due to
automation they rarely, if ever, look at how there will quite likely be fewer
people and people will be older.

That's going to take demand out of the system for many things and add demand
for things where automation is hardest such as taking care of the old and
infirm.

Some aspects of automation, like cheap autonomous meal delivery help, but
taking care of people is highly labour intensive.

That coupled with lower productivity growth is going to have big impacts
everywhere. The Welfare state might become unsustainable.

Places like Australia and the US with high immigration will delay these issues
somewhat, but even there as the countries where immigrants get richer and
themselves have fewer children immigration is likely to reduce in the next
20-50 years.

~~~
ekianjo
> The Welfare state might become unsustainable

It's not "might become", we already know it's unsustainable. It's just that
presently we are taking on so much debt to make up for the ongoing costs of
it, but at some point the future generations of workers may wonder why they
have to pay so much when they don't get any of the benefits.

~~~
lz400
Perhaps it would be sustainable if most of the wealth wasn't going to a few
people with little redistribution. I'm not even talking about communism, just
fair taxation and contributing and no loop holes (double irish tricks and the
like).

~~~
ekianjo
> most of the wealth wasn't going to a few people with little redistribution

What are you talking about? Corporate profits are nothing compared to the
national budget for redistribution. Check your figures.

~~~
lz400
US Corporate _profits_ are about 1.6 trillion, _total_ national budget is 3.8
trillion. Looks very comparable numbers, don't they? And this is profit, after
everyone already got paid and all the tricks have been performed in the books.
I think definitely globalization and global tax dodging is affecting the
ability of states to support a welfare state.

~~~
sien
And corporations paid 770Bn in taxes in the US according to USA facts.

[http://usafacts.org/the-big-
picture/revenue?return_to=%2F](http://usafacts.org/the-big-
picture/revenue?return_to=%2F)

In addition they employ a lot of the people who pay the 1.7Trn in Income and 1
Trn in payroll tax the US government gets.

~~~
lz400
Yes. I'm not sure what your point is. Do you mean "they already pay a lot of
tax!". I think things like this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)

Point to the fact that global corporations spend a lot of effort making sure
they get away with paying less than they should. If there was a fair taxation
of corps at the level they should be taxed, they would be paying more.
Obviously the corporations keep getting bigger and richer, and the 1%
wealthier, yet we see countries struggling with welfare state. Doesn't seem
right.

~~~
candiodari
Nope, this is tax avoidance, not tax evasion.

In practice, of course, the law across different countries effectively allows
for different tax rates. This was decided and entered into law.

Of course all of these tax rates are agreed to be what the corporation
"should" pay.

Corporations simply select the lowest of the choices available to them. Is
that not what they "should" pay ? Not a problem: congress can vote laws that
make these constructions impossible. They are not doing so.

Don't blame corporations here, they're simply responding to incentives
congress put there for them. Instead, blame congress. They can change the tax
rate, even for international profits and revenues (in fact the US is infamous
for doing that in several ways already), and they make the rules about what
can be tax deferred and what can't. They're not changing those rules, and you
can bet they know what they're doing.

I think the bigger issue is that because states are paying for things that are
unsustainable (ie. the welfare state, even in the US, is unsustainable) the
tax level doesn't matter : it's too low. Changing the tax level simply changes
the point in time where the system crashes, but fixing is not possible. We
simply cannot put the current level of economic activity into elder care in
the future.

~~~
lz400
I agree that corporations behave rationally avoiding tax. I agree it's the
government's (global gov not just US) fault. I agree it's a complex problem
because it probably needs a global, not local/nation level solution. But yes
basically those tax avoidance tricks loopholes should be closed.

I disagree that a welfare state is unsustainable. I think it's not and if
anything, seems most of the thinking of the future once automation and ML take
over most of the world is that some type of UBI will be necessary. I don't
know the exact form but I agree. The brutal increase in productivity and value
added by technology will have to be offset with a redistribution of that
wealth if we want a functioning society. We might start now and fix the
welfare state.

~~~
candiodari
The problem is that you sidestep the obvious issue as if it doesn't exist.
Money represents economic activity.

Healthcare and elderly care currently consumes 20% of all economic activity.
That is what's unsustainable. This is out of the question towards the future,
since those people do not contribute 20% of GDP in the first place (and they'd
need to contribute almost 40% to justify that).

I guess the question I'm asking is simple: you want to increase this
expenditure ... ok. What do you drop ? Please pick other parts of the economy
that we can just drop ...

Please don't just handwave "just automate it and save 50%" but ...

~~~
lz400
First, elderly healthcare is 34% of healthcare spending in the US (and
healthcare is 16% of GDP) so it isn't be 20% of all economic activity in the
US. And US healthcare is very expensive compared to other countries. Second,
seems to work in Europe and Japan (Japan has a very old pop and total
healthcare spending is 8% of GDP). Maybe the US has the wrong healthcare
system? :) Third, the welfare state is not only healthcare for the elderly.

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flukus
Why is it terrifying? For the first time in history (aside from plagues and
disasters) the wealth accumulated by the previous generation will be divided
by fewer descendants.

~~~
Double_Cast
One reason is that Social Security transfers wealth from the young to the old.
The shift in demographics may strain the program.

------
autokad
This is not just a Japan problem, much of Europe and the United States is also
in the same boat.

~~~
altstar
China too. [http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/china-now-has-
the-...](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/china-now-has-the-lowest-
fertility-rate-the-world-18570)

~~~
ekianjo
China will get there much faster because of the 1 child policy, indeed.

~~~
stevenmays
The one child policy has been abolished. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
child_policy#Abolition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
child_policy#Abolition)

~~~
ekianjo
I know, but the effects of keeping it for so long will still be felt for a
very long time.

------
cm2012
South korea fertility rate is now lower.

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m23khan
+1 for Toronto, Canada. Life is very stressful and free time is very limited.
Combined that with a culture that is spend-all and very selfish (me time),
voila - you come across a society where people are willing to stay single and
not have kids (or have a max of 2 kids).

~~~
eddyg
Nothing wrong with a max of two kids.

"According to some, zero population growth, perhaps after stabilizing at some
optimum population, is the ideal towards which countries and the whole world
should aspire in the interests of accomplishing long-term environmental
sustainability."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth)

~~~
m23khan
Incorrect - the fertility rate for a given population in order for that
population to 'not decline' is 2.1 (not 2.0). In Canada, we are not even
hitting the 2.0 mark (we are at 1.6).

source:

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ca.html)

~~~
harshreality
To save others from having to google it, the >2.0 rate (cited various places
as a range, roughly 2.07-2.1) is due to two things:

1\. The birth rate for males is usually (always?) slightly higher than for
females, roughly 105:100, and the fertility rate for a stable population is
the average number of children a woman has to have to replace herself, so the
ratio disparity makes the needed replacement fertility rate slightly more than
two.

2\. Not all females survive and remain fertile through their child-bearing
years.

There are various environmental factors thought to cause variations in sex
ratios by way of slight hormone variations, so one shouldn't expect the
male:female ratio to be constant from region to region. Medical care and
disease and mortality rates vary, too. So there's no single exact fertility
rate for a stable population, but it's _roughly_ 2.07-2.10 for developed
countries.

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rabboRubble
Finding childcare is nearly impossible. Sponsoring visas for domestic help
(like what professional women in HK do) is nearly impossible unless the
sponsor is C-level in a major corporation.

------
Meekro
We've had 14 hour workdays in the U.S. and elsewhere during the industrial
revolution, and yet people somehow found the time for relationships and
babies. What's different now?

~~~
sien
Women also work more in the paid workforce.

Also people have reproductive control.

Also people are richer and have more choice about getting married and having 5
kids (of which only half used to survive to 5).

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TazeTSchnitzel
A start to fixing it might be a 40-hour work week.

The problem is extremely long hours are surely deeply ingrained in Japanese
work culture at this point.

~~~
ekianjo
Most contracts are 40-hour weeks, but they are not enforced. "Tada-zangyou"
(free overtime) is the accepted practice.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Ah, I was thinking such rules wouldn't be enforced. Makes sense that they're
already in place.

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bobsgame
This is why we need more anti-aging and longevity research. Reproduction is
obsolete.

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IIAOPSW
Japan doesn't have a fertility crisis. They are merely in the process of
replacing themselves with robots.

