February 16, 2004
WHAT ARE THEY WAITING FOR?
Japan's birth dearth (COLIN DONALD, FEB 16, 2004, THE STRAITS TIMES)
GRIM economic predictions have been commonplace in post-bubble Japan but the most potentially devastating of all is only now starting to alarm policy makers and business leaders.The dramatic slump in the nation's birth rate is the economic earthquake that no one knows how to avert. Stirring from policy paralysis, the Tokyo government's struggle to get the Japanese breeding again is looking increasingly desperate.
Recently, in the wake of the launch of the so-called 'Plus One' programme, an initiative by the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry to coax another child out of every couple, a senior official admitted: 'If the low birth rate continues as it is, the nation's population could be reduced to less than a quarter of the current level, or as few as 30 million 100 years from now. If so, the nation's economy as well as its social welfare system would collapse, jeopardising the very foundation of the country.'
However apocalyptic the long-term view, concerns about the next two decades press most heavily on anxious Japanese, compounding their devastating reluctance to spend. The Home Affairs Ministry calculates that Japan's labour force will contract by 10 per cent to about 60 million by 2025, bringing the country's GDP down by a massive 6 per cent.
'The government is not doing enough and the public don't realise how serious this is,' says Mr Kazuyuki Kinbara, spokesman for the influential Japan Federation of Economic Organisations, or Keidanren. 'Right now, they are more worried about 5.1 per cent unemployment, but they are beginning to note the implications of this for the future state of their pension funds.'
So if you only care once you're retired that you left no young folk behind to take care of you in your old age, isn't it too late? Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2004 9:09 AM
While it is encouraging to see more and more lightbulbs switched on on this subject, it is depressing to realize it is going to take decades of passing through progressive silliness before reality is faced squarely. Here is Donald committing a near-fraud:
"Innovations like paternity leave, which halted declining birth rates in Sweden and elsewhere...". Surely he know the slight upward blip of the 80's reversed itself and Sweden's rate has plummeted and is among is the lowest and its abortion ratio among the highest.
Then he calls upon corporate Japan to fix the problem by offering years of job protection for mothers, about as promising as Singapore's experiment with softcore TV. Why do so many supposedly intelligent bureaucrats and academics earnestly promote "solutions" that wouldn't influence them for a second?
What will spur child birth is when the government can no longer support people in their old age.
Posted by: Buttercup at February 16, 2004 1:26 PMLast night, I tried to think of any society that had ever bred itself out, and I could not find one.
About the closest I could come was Ireland, which went from 8 million in 1800 to 4 million by 1950.
Now Orrin tags it as the most vigorous society in Europe.
Go figure.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 16, 2004 3:44 PMThere 30 million Irish in America alone, which demonstrates the falsehood of Darwinism in a different way--adaptation to new environments appears quite easy.
Posted by: oj at February 16, 2004 6:07 PMHarry:
And Ireland is well known for its happy, up-beat history between then and now. Are you suggesting this was mainly as a result of a low birth rate? Ireland?
Posted by: Peter Burnet at February 17, 2004 9:06 AMI don't know where you got the idea that adaptation to new environments is difficult. Darwinism does not say anything like that.
If it were so, we wouldn't have weeds.
Peter, the only thing I'm suggesting is that I cannot think of any society, ever, that bred itself out of existence. Orrin freely predicts such a fate for something like two-thirds of the planet.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 19, 2004 2:45 PMHarry:
That's how you usually explain that things don't ever adapt before our eyes.