Except that is not what the graph shows at all. Yes,
government forecasts are way off (forecasting is hard).
But for over a decade, the Japanese government has
been too pessimistic about the fertility rate.
Just Look. At. The. Graph! Since 2005, the black line
- the actual fertility rate - has been going up! It is now
higher than the blue line representing the forecast
from 2002. It is even higher than the blue like
representing the forecast for 2008. The graph only
looks like it goes through 2010, but a quick Google
shows that the fertility rate is still over 1.4, i.e. higher
than the 2002, 2006, or 2012 forecasts.
In other words, Japanese fertility has been surprising on
the upside for ten years and counting!
Thanks for this. I was confused by the title of the article when, in fact, some of the most recent predictions were below the actual fertility. Hardly the definition of "worse than anyone imagined", it seems quite the opposite.
The rebuttal seems pretty convincing if you only look at the graph between 2002 and 2008. You could lop everything off after 1985 and have the same rebuttal.
The rebuttal would be convincing if he went into detail as to why the government forecasts are wrong, but he doesn't. He just says "hey they're wrong" without delving into any of the history of the forecasts, how the forecasts are made (which would be interesting, because then he could really say why he thinks they're wrong), what his forecasts might be... But instead, he just says "hey they're wrong" without anything else.
If anything he's guilty of cherry-picking, which is something we rage against when climate change denialists do it. Why is this guy convincing while they're not?
The original article's premise was reflected by its title;
"Japan’s birth rate problem is way worse than anyone imagined"
But it's not worse than anyone imagined, at all. It's actually better than people 'imagined' (i.e. forecast) in 2002, 2008, and 2012. Japan's fertility rate might be a big issue still, but it's been beating the forecasts for 10 years now.
As for expounding on why the forecasts are wrong, or more substantive articles about fertility and gender issues in Japan, you'll have to read some of his previous posts. I'd suggest:
"Time for gaijin to take a second look at Abe's Womenomics" [1] Where he discusses how the landscape is changing for women to enter the Japanese workforce and how that might affect birth rates further.
"The Japanese tragedy, causes and consequences"[2] Where he discusses why forecasts for GDP and growth rates have been notoriously bad in Japan.
I didn't post his original article to serve as a complete and thorough treatment of the birth rate issue in Japan, but only to counter the original WaPo article that was pretty misleading.
In the current financial system there is always more debt than there is money to pay it. It's mathematically impossible to pay the interest. That is how slavery works.
It is when you have a massive aging population that requires social services which requires a young population working and contributing to that social services fund.
A massive baby surge right now would actually make the situation worse since you will drastically increase the number of dependents. Increasing young working age immigration might be an option, especially for blue collar jobs that most young Japanese do not want to do. Almost certainly won't happen in xenophobic Japan.
This isn't strictly true. It costs considerably less for the state to support a child than an elderly person. Furthermore, your plan results in a massive baby surge regardless - if you start allowing mass immigration of young workers, many of them are going to have children anyway.
>It costs considerably less for the state to support a child than an elderly person.
I would like to see the numbers on this...
In today's world, a young person is supported for at least 20 years, sometimes more. Life expectancy in Japan is 84.6 yr (the minimum Japanese retirement age is 61 yr, set to increase to 65), so older people are supported for at most 23.6 yr.
Further, older people are most often supported by their own investments and assets, which can be invested in any productive location, rather than by the earnings of a couple of related adults.
But at what point are a procreating mass of young workers considered replacing the native culture? Is it still [insert country with plummeting replacement rates] if [insert labeled high-fertility immigrating group], bringing their own genes & memes, out-populate the host population?
There is a trick to prevent this. In Britain, at first they brought in many male immigrants from Pakistan. Since they didn't have their families or female kin with them, they assimilated well. They stopped assimilating once they brought their families.
For immigrants to assimilate better, it would be a better policy to bring onky one gender. Like say a quota of 500k women from the Philippines and a 500k quota of males from another country.
There are too many people on earth right now, it is unsustainable and growing. However in Japan if they have a lot of older people and nobody to do the actual work society needs (e.g. food, utilities, transport, etc) and or to take care of those older people, then you'll run into a problem.
The problem for Japan isn't a decline, it is too fast of a decline. If the decline happened much slower it might be a non-problem.
If Japan accumulated a sovereign wealth fund during the "boom" times, they could draw upon this fund during the absence of exports due to aging workers. The problem is in the current pay-as-you-go social security system.
Japan's labour force is proportionally higher than at least that of the UK and USA, their debt crisis is much more pressing than any labour issues right now.
Earth is far from running out of resources. Earth had limited charcoal resources until coal was found and then the other fossil fuels. While fossil fuel is limited at an accelerating rate of consumption (maybe 100 years or more), it doesn't mean there aren't other forms of energy to pick up the demand, given economic development. Think: nuclear, solar, wind.
But really, people aren't just mouths to feed, they are also hands and brains for thinking. Collectively, they add more to each other the more there are, provided they are allowed to develop themselves. The restrictions they face are mostly ideological and political, not related to physical supply or logistics.
To extend that: there is Methane Hydrate in the ocean floor, 6X all the oil we ever discovered so far. Unfortunately that's also carbon. But we're far, far from running out of fossil fuels.
Japan is already harvesting methane hydrate in test wells.
I would like to see a list and calculation of the advantages of a declining population.
In today's economy, white collar workers are not productive for almost 25 years, whereas 50 years ago most people were in partial paid employment by the time they were 16 and fully employed at 18-20.
Off the top of my head I can envisage: cheaper housing, reduced cost of public services, schools, universities and medical care for children.
Is there any reading material that covers WHY this is? Is it actual fertility issues (i.e. trouble having kids), people having smaller families (e.g. two people, one baby), people skipping kids entirely, or something else?
From what I understand, it's the culture. Watch VICE documentaries on Japan's sex culture. No one wants to have kids when the price of living is high, 80 hour work weeks, both male and female are the work force, and sex is viewed as a non-romantic "come and go" as you please pass time. Having kids in Japans high level business/work culture is a tremendous setback. They can't afford that kind of downtime.
I'm not an economist, but Japan has accumulated a lot of capital. If they simply invest it well, shouldn't it be able to provide enough income to the aging population to take care of their needs?
Of course, the economy cannot follow the usual template of growth: more people producing and accumulating wealth leading to continued prosperity for everyone. I don't know what the situation is with Immigration, perhaps the Japanese should consider making it more attractive for immigrants? But I believe Japanese society is very homogenous and maybe not that accepting of other cultures as, say, the US.
Ultimately, finance is just a game. A really complicated and extremely useful game, but money itself is useless. What matters is what people can produce. Finance is merely what convinces them to put effort into production, and what convinces them to hand over some of the output to other people.
For an extreme example, consider if they just stopped having babies altogether. By the time the current crop of newborns reached retirement age, it wouldn't matter how much money they had saved up. There would simply be nobody to take care of them.
Ultimately, retirement savings schemes are just a way to address the question of what proportion of future productive capacity goes towards retirees, and of how to convince future workers to hand it over. If the pool of future workers is too small, it doesn't matter how much you save in the meantime.
If Japan and other aging countries created a sovereign wealth fund funded by taxes during "boom" times, like Norway has done, then it wouldn't be as dependent on a pay-as-you-go system. This fund would be held in other currencies and could be drawn down as necessary to keep the local currency stable in the absence of exports.
True, much of the domestic economy would be providing care to older people (and few tangible exports) but distributions from the sovereign wealth fund would ensure the Japanese still have a high standard of living.
Pay-as-you-go social security systems are the real problem, not low birth rates.
I have to disagree with the article's claim that the forecasts have all been bad. Since 2002 the forecasts have been realistic, although probably not useful. The more interesting bit is what, if anything, can be made of the uptick since 2005 in actual birth rates.
> I think Japan can beat fertility problems with tech
You are making an assumption that Japan's problem with falling birth rates is biological, but it's not: it's cultural and economical. Like many other developed countries, people in Japan are waiting longer to have children - and yes, that results in declining fertility due to the health problems associated with older parents.
But that's only part of the story: to ensure population stability the average family needs to have > 2 children. Many Japanese couples cannot support two children, whether it be due to pressures at work, or more obviously a lack of appropriate and affordable family housing in major urban areas.
> An aging population leaves the country with fewer workers and more dependents.
How does a low birth rate create more dependents? If the birth rate was zero, then there would be no dependent children in 20 years. Increases in the birthrate would create more dependents in the short-medium term, but would only create more workers in the medium-long term.
Can't pin down now what I researched a while ago, but do recall that a replacement rate under 1.4 is unrecoverable - the culture just isn't, and can't, reproducing fast enough to avoid a complete population implosion.
That doesn't even make sense. Any sort of replacement rate is recoverable over the short term. The replacement rate could be zero for several years and the population could still recover with vigor.
If you assume an established nation (which Japan is for the most part if you ignore WWII), the realistic maxima for replacement is about 8%. So you could sustain population loss for quite a while (which brings down that maxima) and still recover.
Could in theory, but how practical? Fertility is limited to a theoretical maximum of roughly once every 2 years for 30 years (a friend has lived it, having 15 kids), but the cultural changes to go from sub-1.4 to "recover with vigor" are drastic; couples living in high-density micro-apartments and thriving on high technology are a long way from living on a farm (as my friend had to resort to).
Obviously this isn't a binary issue, so what constitutes "unrecoverable" is subject to debate - one has to consider what constitutes "cultural collapse" and, in a highly mobile world population, what other distinct groups will move to fill the relative void.
Well then you're omitting the group that transitioned from productive to dependent from old age. If the other numbers are any clue, then it is over a million.
Right and with fewer newborns replacing the retirees (who exit the labor productive market) fewer workers will have to support a larger older pop. That's the biggest issue --who will provide the tax revenue to support retirees, secondarily the economy becomes less vibrant with fewer minds entering the workforce.
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-fertility-...