January 4, 2005
HOW DO YOU DOUSE THE HORSE?:
Fiery Horse hobbles Japan's fertility future: At last, Japan plans to do something about the economically deadly combination of an aging population and falling birthrate. It will encourage women to bear more children and urge companies to provide child care, leave and other benefits. While men, it says, should spend less time at work and more time in bed. (Richard Hanson, 1/05/05, Asia Times)
In 1966, as the Japanese economic "miracle" was is full swing, the curse of the Fiery Horse, or Hinoe-uma, galloped through the land like a demographic stampede. An old wives' superstition says that that every 60 years the horoscope's Year of the Horse turns fiery. The unfortunate girls born in that year are not suitable for marriage.Sure enough, 1966 was a baby-boom disaster. The ratio of girl to boy babies born that year hit a historic low. On the flow charts, the Fiery Horse looks like a brief sharp spike downward. What population experts call the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) resumed a gradual rise for the rest of the 1960s.
What Ryuichi Kaneko, a 20-year veteran in the government's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSS), and his colleagues now say is that the curse of the Fiery Horse was more of a warning of a future population planner's worst scenario: that Japan's population that would both age and shrink from the start of the 21st century into the foreseeable future.
"The next five years will be the last chance to try to do something," Kaneko warns. "We are already in an almost permanent Fiery Horse situation. Women realized the problem first, but people failed to realize the whole picture."
The secularism and materialism of the 20th Century did a rather effective job of making folks focus on themselves to the exclusiuon of any concept of the future, obligations to others, and the like. It seems improbable that such a process is reversible, at least in such a short time frame. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2005 8:42 AM
I doubt that it is "really" non-reversible, merely not cheap and therefore not politically easy to reverse. So, yes, improbable. But here's a quick sketch:
Pay each married couple $1 000/ month when they have a baby; $2 000/ month extra (3k total) for a second, $3 000/ month extra (6k total) for a third, and for each additional one. Start this program at a lower, $200 / month level and increase it each year until the birth rate is over 2.2 (or whatever is the target).
Inside of government, only offer promotions to those who have had an additional baby since their last promotion -- increase churn in bureaucracy to send more gov't employees out into industry to get a raise.
Raise taxes on unmarried and/or childless folk over 25; and who are retired and rich.
More housing near Tokyo, more jobs OUTSIDE of Tokyo, are also two trends that could use encouragement.
NOT politically feasible, but not really that expensive -- the payment could be called an "optional loan", to be repaid by future taxes.
Lifetime individual gov't support accounts.
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at January 4, 2005 9:01 AMI used to wonder what it was like for my grandparents to live through amazing changes in their world.
And yet here am I, having lived through Nuclear Winter --> Global Warming, Population Explosion --> Population Implosion, Food Shortages --> Obesity Crisis, Jane Fonda --> Julia Roberts having twins.
The answer is as it always has been: a return to the Faith; and, as always, the United States is the bellwether.
Posted by: Randall Voth at January 5, 2005 7:33 AMEric.
Posted by: oj at January 5, 2005 9:59 AM