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Number of Births in Japan To Hit Record Low in 2017 (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The number of births in Japan this year has fallen to is lowest since records began more than a century ago with about 941,000 new babies, the health ministry said on Friday, proof if any were needed that it faces an ageing and shrinking population. The number of births will be about 4 percent lower than last year and the lowest since the government started compiling data in 1899, the ministry said.
Proof that slashdot editors are not robots, otherwise they wouldn't make such silly mistakes.
Why is overpopulation a laudable thing? The Japanese home islands are already highly populated -- no need to increase the population. Stabilizing at early-1900s levels would be much more sustainable.
Stop it, your kids are confused. Never going to knock up their GFs/wives that way.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Now the rest of the world needs to follow suit.
For these countries, they will have to rely on immigration which some of them are already doing.
I guess that in about 50 years, these countries' demographic makeup in terms of race will be very different.
The biggest reasons why this is a real issue are:
1) This rate is not stabilizing anything - it's well below replacement rate, which means population is shrinking.
2) Short term a shrinking population means fewer workers to pay into government funds to help the elderly,
3) Fewer elderly with children mean more reliance on the state in old age.
4) Fewer people mean shops have fewer customers, demand for housing drops, construction starts waning, economy goes down.
5) Long term, what happens when a country cannot sustain a population? Eventually it becomes a totally different nation as others will eventually take it over. I guess if you don't care about the preservation of Japanese culture that's not a problem.
If they were going to a sustainable level that would be one thing, but like I said what is happening is not sustainable without some really bad consequences.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sigh, you can't help but feel (a little) sorry for the Japanese people. They have such amazing and interesting qualities, among them courtesy, care/attention to detail, social cohesion, respect for government/authority, reverence of technical ability.
On the other hand, it produces really weird side effects like social repression, workplace stress, conformity in a bad way, racism / xenophobia, and relevant to this point... high cost of living.
If they don't start letting immigrants help them, and in a big way, this amazing culture will really die out. I mean, their countryside is basically emptying out.
and work them less. This isn't because they don't want kids. Multiple studies and surveys have shown that. They can't afford to have kids and only work 12/day, 6 days/week. Since they don't have the Christian hang ups about using birth control that Americans have the birth rate keeps going down. Meanwhile their prime minister is coming up with all sorts of crazy schemes to try and get people to keep up their crazy pace of work and still squeeze out 3-4 kids.
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You seem to prefer a more! more! more! people attitude. Why?
More people means more new ideas, and more progress.
Why do you want to continually increase people on this planet?
We don't. But the world would benefit from more educated and productive people like the Japanese. The country with the highest population growth is Niger, which is a poor war-torn drought-ridden country suffering from overgrazing, desertification and unable to even feed themselves. Many of the women in Niger would prefer smaller families but have no access to contraceptives, and have cultural pressures for large families.
We would be much better off if birthrates in both Japan and Niger were stabilized at or near ZPG.
What is with this need for us to continually breed like a virus?
You might want to learn a bit more about how viruses "breed".
More people means more new ideas, and more progress.
This is a pile of hogwash. All cultures are not created equal. Some cultures can become worse through immigration because those immigrants often bring bad cultures with them. Similarly, some cultures improve through immigration when the immigrants bring a better culture with them.
The idea that lots of immigration and diversity lead to the best ideas bubbling to the top is just wishful thinking.
I'm not anti-immigration, but I think the citizens of any country would be wise to have careful selection criteria for immigrants.
Also, higher population always means more pollution. This is also a good thing for countries to keep in mind.
68 is an extremely high retirement age
Indeed it is, but if it is any lower the math doesn't work. The longer Japan waits, the worse it will be. My prediction is that it will get a lot worse, since Japan has a very strong cultural preference for inaction, even when delay is obviously foolish.
I feel like the world economy is slowly moving toward "you work until you drop dead". I think that's unfortunate.
Two solutions:
1. Have more babies.
2. Build more robots.