Japan ‘on the verge’ of social collapse due to falling birth rate

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke in desperate terms about the country’s birth rate in a speech to his country’s parliament on Monday.

“It is now or never, when it comes to policies relating to births and child-rearing, it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer,” said the Prime Minister. “The number of births dropped below 800,000 last year.”

“Japan is about to find out if it can continue to function as a society,” he added.

For perspective, Japan experienced nearly 2 million births a year during the 1970s.

Although the Asian island nation has a population of approximately 125 million, its demographic pyramid is aging rapidly. Only Monaco, the city-state on the French Riviera, has a higher proportion of residents aged 65 and over.

Rising cost of living and low immigration hamper Japan’s ability to raise its late birth rate. Only 3% of the country’s population is foreign, compared to more than a quarter of Americans.

Kishida pledged to double spending associated with child-related initiatives and announced the creation of a new government agency tasked with dealing with the problem.

“Focusing attention on policies concerning children and early childhood education is an issue that cannot wait and cannot be postponed.”

Demographers use the measure of a replacement or fertility rate, the average number of children born to each woman, to assess the health of a society. When the fertility rate drops below 2.1, a society begins to shrink.

In 2020, Japan recorded a fertility rate of 1.34. In the same year, a team of researchers designed in the lancet that Japan’s population would dwindle to just over 50 million by the end of the century.

Japan is among a growing list of East Asian nations expected to face severe demographic problems in the coming decades.

Last Tuesday, the Chinese government released demographic data showing that the country’s population had declined from a year earlier for the first time in six decades. The news surprised many academics who had projected that China would not experience such a precipitous fall this decade.

“I don’t think there is a single country that has dropped as much as China has in terms of fertility rate and then recovered to the replacement rate,” said Philip O’Keefe, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and an expert on demography, to the New York Times.

India is poised to become the most populous country in the world by 2023.

©2023 National Review. Published with permission. original in English.