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 is now around 125 million, but projections foresee a precipitous drop to only 87 million until 2070. Japan’s fertility rate hit its lowest point of 1. 20 last year in terms of expected births consistent with a woman’s lifetime, well below the replacement rate of 2. 1. At the same time, the proportion of seniors aged 65 and over is expected to increase from 30 to 40 percent throughout this year.
This has lit a fire among policymakers, who have warned that the country has until around 2030 to buck the trend.
Japan’s demographic crisis is a wake-up call for much of East Asia. Neighboring countries such as South Korea and China are also suffering from plummeting fertility rates and an aging workforce. According to analysts, the challenge lies not only in more policies, but also in reexamining the circle of family and office roles.
Newsweek reached out to the Japanese Children and Families Agency via email with a request for comment.
The government has deployed all its means to solve the problem, from monetary incentives to matchmaking apps. Since taking office in October, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru has announced a series of new measures for families and easing pressures on the “super-aged” society.
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.
Japan has also begun implementing its notoriously inflexible immigration policy. With sectors such as aged care and agriculture in desperate need of staff, the government made the decision this year to amend visa regulations to allow more foreign staff to stay longer, replace jobs and bring their families.
Officials hope to triple the number of foreign workers by 2040 as Japan’s workforce continues to dwindle.
Japanese pictorial culture has long been blamed for discouraging fatherhood, especially for women who fear squandering career opportunities. Starting in April, Tokyo will adopt a four-day workweek for its more than 160,000 civil servants. A separate policy will allow parents of young children to clock in 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 is taking advantage of the 12 months of parental leave they have, which just over 3% of men took in 2019, according to a study.
Another challenge is that of marriage, which in Japan and other East Asian societies is strongly linked to childbirth. Last year, the number of Japanese people getting married fell below one million for the first time in 90 years.
Hertog highlighted the influence that classical attitudes continue to exert on the institution.
“Marriage trends in Japan and South Korea are shaped by economic situations and their intersection with gender roles,” he told Newsweek. He cited “traditional expectations of men as breadwinners” as an example and noted the tendency among lower-paid men to postpone marriage or skip it altogether.
“Another set of important points are family norms, which require older parents to have children and the difficulty of negotiating this in societies that have had low fertility rates for decades,” he added.
This duty historically falls to the eldest son and his wife, which would possibly clash with the preference of younger generation Japanese women to prioritize their own parents, Hertog noted.
Update 1/1/25, 8:00 a. m. ET: This article has been updated with more data and observations via Ekaterina Hertog.
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian security issues, and cross-strait ties between China and Taiwan. You can get in touch with Micah by emailing [email protected].