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By Micah McCartney
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Japan is staring down a demographic cliff. The population has shrunk for 15 straight years, with births hitting a record low of 730,000 last year and deaths a record high of 1.58 million.
It now stands at around 125 million, but projections warn of a staggering drop to just 87 million by 2070. Japan's fertility rate hit a low of 1.20 births expected per woman's lifetime last year, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Meanwhile, the proportion of seniors aged 65 or older is forecast to rise from 30 to 40 percent by that year.
This has lit a fire under policymakers, who have warned the country only has until around 2030 to reverse the trend.
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Why It Matters
Japan's demographic crisis is a warning sign for much of East Asia. Neighboring countries like South Korea and China are also grappling with plunging fertility rates and a greying labor force. Analysts say the challenge lies not just in more policies but in reexamining family roles and the workplace.
Newsweek reached out to the Japanese Children and Families Agency via email with a request for comment.
The government has been throwing everything it has at the problem, from cash incentives to matchmaking apps. Since assuming office in October, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru has announced a slate of new measures aimed at supporting families and easing the pressures on the "super-aged" society.
Cash for Kids
This year alone, the government earmarked 5.3 trillion yen (about $34 billion) to help young families. Over the next three years, an annual 3.6 trillion yen will be poured into extending child allowances and boosting childcare and education support. Officials hope these moves will convince couples that starting a family doesn't have to be a financial gamble.
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Opening the Doors
Japan has also begun loosening its notoriously rigid immigration policies. With industries like elder care and agriculture desperate for workers, the government this year moved to relax visa regulations to allow more foreign laborers to stay longer, switch jobs, and bring over their families.
Officials hope to triple the number of foreign workers by 2040 as Japan's workforce continues to dwindle.
Work-Life Imbalance
The grind of Japan's work culture has long been blamed for discouraging parenthood, especially for women who fear losing out on career opportunities. Starting in April, Tokyo will adopt a four-day workweek for its 160,000-plus state employees. A separate policy will allow parents with young children to clock off two hours early in exchange for a pay cut.
Analysts such as Ekaterina Hertog, an associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Institute for Ethics in AI who researches the societal impact of Japanese labor practices, have warned real change won't happen unless more men step up to share in parenting duties.
This means taking advantage of the 12 months of parental leave available to them, something just over 3 percent of men did in 2019, a study showed.
Marriage In Decline
Another challenge is marriage, which in Japan and other East Asian societies correlates highly with childbirth. Last year, the number of Japanese who got married dipped below half a million for the first time in 90 years.
Hertog stressed the strong influence traditional attitudes continue to have on the institution.
"Marriage trends in Japan and South Korea are significantly shaped by economic conditions and their intersection with gender roles," she told Newsweek. She cited "traditional male breadwinner expectations" as an example and pointed to the tendency among lower-paid men to postpone marriage or skip it entirely.
"Another important set of factors are family norms, that prescribe children's support of elderly parents and the difficulty of negotiating them in societies which have had low fertility rates for decades," she added.
This responsibility traditionally falls to the eldest son and his spouse, and this may conflict with a preference among Japanese women of younger generations to prioritize their own parents, Hertog noted.
Update 1/1/25, 8:00 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and a comment from Ekaterina Hertog.
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