The Decline of Japan's Population

A description and analysis of Japan's declining population due to low birth rates and policies.

Japan's population has been on the decline since 2012 where it peaked at 128 Million people, and with the aging population and low birth rates, this is not projected to end any time soon.

Population Pyramid of Japan from 1888-2019

As the population pyramid shows, the population of Japan has been getting older and older with very little youth being added to the population. In 2020 the percent of the population over the age of 65 is 28.4% with only 12.5% of the population under the age of 15.

Average age in Japan by prefecture (2015)

Another factor causing the declining population alongside the aging population is the low birth rates in present Japan.

This links almost directly to the marriage rate of Japan, since only around 2.3% of children are born outside of marriage, which is very small compared to the U.S. at 40%.

So why are birth rates declining?

Economic stability is a huge factor.

Economic Stability

Most people don't want kids when they don't have a stable income!

Irregular Jobs on the rise

About 40% of the Japanese workforce are now in irregular jobs, and less than 20% of these workers are able to shift to stable regular jobs!

Stable Jobs

Stable jobs, 'regular jobs,' where they are guaranteed employment for life are falling to a low, especially compared to before when these jobs we guaranteed!

Perspective of Others

Many Japanese people are judged to be a failure if they aren't able to land one of these stable jobs! So what happens when you finally get one?

Exploitation

Knowing the desperation of people to land these regular jobs, many companies hire many of these people and force them to work long hours of unpaid overtime, assuming most won't be able to make it!

Karoshi

This phrase is a popular one in Japan referring to "death by overwork." This has little to no repercussion on the industry, but keeps the youth they hire from being able to meet people, let alone a relationship!

The main issue

With little time for anything other than eating, sleeping, and working, birth rates, and population, will continue to decline!

How can we stop this?

Regulations against corrupt business practices would be the best step to increasing the birth rate, since if jobs were less brutal and more available, the younger workers would have more time for relationships.

So what are the other issues?

Another issue involves Japanese women

In the early 1990's Japan hit a major snag in their economic growth. The period from then to 2001 is called the "Lost Decade" in Japan

To deal with this economic stagnation, women began to be integrated into the workforce.

Awesome! Women have more freedom and can join the workforce to be able to support themselves!

So what's the problem?

Originally in Japan, women would stay at home and watch over the children, and they are still somewhat expected to even now. Japan has the highest gap between genders in time spent on household chores with men being around 15 minutes a day and women being nearly 2 and a half hours!

With this sort of expectation, and women now being in the workforce, while some still do quit their jobs to focus on home life, many don't want to.

Many women don't want to give up their work, so some try to do both and are overwhelmed with little to no time for themselves.

To avoid this, most women just don't marry. And by proxy, don't have children.

Even with the issue of less children, women in the workforce is insanely valuable and not worth giving up, so what are some ways to remedy the issue?

Well, the best remedy would be a shift in the expectations of home life! Men should be expected to work more at home with the children so that they have a balanced relationship. While this sounds simple, it isn't that easy.

These expectations are deeply ingrained in Japanese culture. There are many trying to break these expectations already by trying to take on more parental responsibilities, such as trying to take paternity leave. These sorts of changes are slow to spread though, so only the future can tell us how this will improve the situation.

So is that it?

Well, there's one more issue to mention.

Immigration

Japan is very selective with it's immigration and allowing foreigners into the workforce.

While this might be helpful to some of the Japanese population by keeping jobs more open to them, it still hurts their population issue.

Immigration can help

Immigration would help bolster the population in Japan and even if its a very small amount, it will go a long way.

Current changes

Even now Japan is opening up more to foreigners a bit more, but the changes are very small. One of the changes is allowing migrant workers, but only the worker is allowed into Japan, not his family, so its a bit anti-productive.

The Future

If Japan keeps working to improve migration it might be able to offset the decline of their population and reinvigorate the birthrates.

While Japan's population issues are present and very threatening, it can be remedied.

The main points each have ways to fix them, the main issue is just that they will take time. While regulation of the businesses may seem pretty easy, Japanese business structures make this difficult.

For the issue with responsibilities at home, this cultural shift requires time, while the final main point, immigration policies, is something that will also take acceptance from the populace, which takes time.

This does mean that it is possible though. So with understanding from the populace and further role models working for change, the concern for population may be fully removed from Japan, but until then, we just need to hope for change.

Bibliography

“Fertility Rate, Total for Japan.” FRED, April 27, 2021. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJPN.

Kopf, Dan. “The World Is Running out of Japanese People.” Quartz. Quartz. Accessed April 15, 2022. https://qz.com/1295721/the-japanese-population-is-shrinking-faster-than-every-other-big-country/.

“Marriage Statistics in Japan: Average Age of Couples Continues to Rise.” nippon.com, July 8, 2020. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/.

Semuels, Alana. “The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having so Few Babies.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, June 30, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-mystery-low-birth-rate/534291/. “A Shrinking Society in Japan.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 5, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/podcasts/the-daily/japan-birthrate-ageing-population.html.

Kayleigh Bateman, Senior Writer. “Birthrates Are Shrinking Faster than Expected in Japan - and It's Part of a Worldwide Trend.” World Economic Forum. Accessed April 15, 2022. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/japan-global-birthrate-decline/.

Images

Images gathered from common creative licensed media from: Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, PXHere, flickr, and Pixabay

Population Pyramid

Wikipedia and Statistics Bureau of Japan

ArcGIS Map Layer

Esri, Esri Japan, and Esri Demographics

Population Pyramid of Japan from 1888-2019