Japan is at a critical juncture in its demographic development. As pointed out in a Washington Post article today, the Japanese population is experiencing critical population growth problem that is unprecedented in its history. Whereas past population crises were those of runaway growth, as in India, China, or in the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, for Japan it is the opposite. The Japanese population as of 2010 is at around 127 million. Until around 1990, the Japanese population enjoyed a growth rate of a bit over 2.0. Since 1990, Japan’s growth rate has been on steady decline and has now reached a point in which its population is no longer growing at all, but in fact experiencing a rate of decline that will more than halve Japan’s pollution by 2100. For a country to maintain its current population level, it needs a rate of 2.0, which is known as the natural replacement level in demography. But, Japan is quite far below this level. In fact, its current fertility level is at 1.5, a number which stands in great contrast to Japan’s fertility rate of 4.0 in 1950.
What does this imply for Japan’s future? At the moment Japan’s population of senior citizens and soon-to-retire citizens is larger proportionally larger than almost in any other nation. Due to good health standards, eating habits, and Japan’s healthcare system, many Japanese live well into their 80s and 90s. Consequently, Japan is no facing a potentially devastating perfect storm of large financial proportions. Many of these retiring citizens will be drawing pensions from the government or from their former workplaces. This, coupled with the increased demand on government sponsored healthcare services will prove to be an enormous burden on the Japanese state. The burden is primarily caused by the fact that the supporting tax base is increasingly shrinking. The Japanese population pyramid resembles an umbrella. The top large canopy is Japan’s population of middle aged and senior citizens, while the thin handle represents Japan’s population of those who are about to join or are in the work force currently. This graphical representation reflects the enormous problems facing the Japanese state in figuring out how it will both pay off its current enormous debt, maintaining funding for all of its current day to day expenses, paying for its government healthcare system, and most importantly, paying the pensions of its millions of retiring workers.
Japanese politicians have attempted to come up with solutions to the problem of population decline, but none have proven viable or effective. The reality is that Japan, like most of the first world, is experience population decline which is directly correlated to the degree one’s own nation’s increase in prosperity and living standards. Perhaps it is one of the greatest ironies of economic success, but a nation’s human capitol becomes increasingly more strained the greater the living standards improve within its own borders. With the rise in living standards, living expenses also increase, but the need for having more children as assets to supplement one’s family income dramatically decreases. Therefore the trend for many middle class families in first world nations to have 1 or sometimes 2 children is commonplace. But in developing countries, families who have many children remain common because often the incomes of two parents is never enough to supply all of the needed income for the family’s needs.
In Japan’s case, like in Western Europe and for many middle class Americans too, raising families of more than 1 child is particularly expensive due to the increase in living expenses for maintaining a middle class life style. In Japan’s case, this is compounded upon by the fact that women have increasingly entered the permanent workforce at higher levels either out of desire for a career or out of the need to make additional income for their family to cope with the general across the board rise in the cost of living for middle class Japanese families. As a result, it has become even more difficult for children to be taken care of at home. But unlike the West, Japan’s population woes also have some unique factors. One is that up until recently, traditionally many Japanese families lived in three generational homes. Often grandparents served as primary child caretakers when the parents were out working or doing chores. Now, the trend has increasingly been for couples to move away from their ancestral towns and raise a family far from their grandparents. Consequently, the primarily child caretaker no longer exists. Daycare centers provide some form of childcare, but Japan currently suffers from a significant lack of sufficient number of daycare centers. One more unique feature Japan’s situation is the general absence of babysitters. For Japanese culture, it is highly unusual to have a stranger or the child of someone one might only know come and regularly take care of one’s children. Because of Japanese sensibilities towards privacy and what constitutes as socially permissible, this very common Western practice has never taken hold in Japanese society. As a result, many aspects of Japanese society conspire to create an environment where child rearing is enormously difficult as long as one parent is not at home.
Parallel to these considerable demographic liabilities Japan is experiencing the disappearance of its rural communities, lack of agricultural laborers and for the first time a labor shortage in both the industrial and high tech sectors of its economy. The Japanese state risks the loss of political and economic power with the rapid decline in its labor output and human strength in the 21st century. Between declining birthrates, an ageing society, and increasing labor shortages in the most basic sectors of Japan’s economy, a potent socioeconomic storm is gathering over the Japanese state.
On the second part of this piece, I will explore the particularly controversial solution of opening Japan up to expanded outside immigration for abating Japan’s demographic crisis. As it stands, all solutions for Japan’s demographic crisis have been dismal failures, while the solution of implementing a large scale immigration policy to provide the future desperately needed industrial, agricultural, and healthcare sector employees has been widely avoided both liberal and conservative politicians as if it were toxic. Yet, no matter what personal anxieties about this topic may exist among the Japanese populace, it nonetheless is an irrefutable fact that Japan is in the midst of a rapidly worsening demographic nightmare which demands the serious consideration of its leaders and citizenry before the forecasted financial crisis over paying Japan’s baby boomers’ pensions makes landfall.
No comments:
Post a Comment