https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2073/
Having said that 2070 is so far out, projecting current trends and sensibilities (say towards immigration or family planning) might not be the best way to understand where Japan lands in 2070.
Which countries are those? AFAIK, Japan is the one leading the trend in the demographic crisis, followed by some Eastern European countries.
Canada has been unable to naturally replenish their population since 1972. Now they have one of the highest immigration rates in the developed world which has let them stave off Japan’s problems for decades, enabling their entitlement programs to continue functioning
As for the reason for Canada’s birth rate woes since 1972, it was not socioeconomic (it’s likely due to declining male fertility). Abortion was only legalized in 1988 in Canada. Housing was affordable during that time and its economy was strong during the long period of consecutive population declines.
Of course, like many countries a large portion of Canada’s population, including liberals, are now against immigration due to a combination of housing woes and a healthcare system in turmoil. Unfortunately, Canada has no choice unless they want to see their economy further crater and not have the working adult population to pay for socialized programs such as healthcare. According to statscan, Canada’s NIST, even if they drastically increase immigration; it will only slow down the age population bomb and not prevent it i.e. Retired elderly will still eventually outnumber both working adults and children one day too soon. The speed will likely accelerate due to the Canadian public’s growing distaste for immigration.
Citation needed. Male fertility hasn't fallen anywhere near precipitously enough to make a father incapable of having a mere 2.1 children over the course of his entire reproductive lifetime. People aren't having fewer kids because they're incapable of having kids, it's because they're making the choice not to.
https://news.virginia.edu/content/male-fertility-declining-s...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32168194/#:~:text=Summary%3A...
There’s plenty more on the topic with differing opinions on the root cause
> Male fertility hasn't fallen anywhere near precipitously enough to make a father incapable of having a mere 2.1 children over the course of his entire reproductive lifetime
That’s what defines being unable to naturally replenish the population aka the age population bomb. Countries are below the 2.1 reproductive rate. Even the US went below in 2012. Canada has hit it in 1972. None of this is new or a revelation.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/The-new-popu...
The only places not affected are in Central Africa. The theory is that pollution from industrialization results in less male fertility
I have never seen infertility claimed as a leading cause in the scientific literature and there is vast amounts of contradictory data.
The main drivers are lifestyle choices and availability of contraceptives. 1972 does not predate most socioeconomic changes like women entering the workforce and their education levels. Sexual intercourse and marriage rates are also huge factors. you can look at child birth demographics within countries. There are several demographics or groups that have much higher reproductive rates in there are no good reasons to think that they are somehow free from that impacts of pollution.
Not true. The decline in birth rates actually started in the 1950’s before the sexual revolution. It only came to a head in 1972 ie the problems did not start in 1972, that’s the year Canada became unable to replenish its workforce with native births alone. Canada was also behind the US when it comes to the sexual revolution. Abortion wasn’t even legal there until 1988.
The root cause of declining birthrates is NOT socioeconomic
Births per woman in 1950 was 3.503 (so 3-4 kids), with a peak in 1958 of 3.882 children per Canadian woman.[1] Literally the Baby Boom, which started post-WW2 and carried through the '50s.
The decline started at the end of the '50s, with the biggest drops happening in 1963-64 and plunging all of the way through the 60s.
Further more if you track the rates of change you see the upticks at the same time as economic booms, like the mid to late 80s, and the mid-2000s up until ~2009.
It's economic. People are having kids because they can support them.
I bet if you zoomed in on just Alberta and/or Oil & Gas workers you'd see a corresponding bump during the Oil boom and bust cycle in Canada, too. Everyone I know with 4+ kids was in O&G and had them during the oil boom; ditto for everyone who bought a Ford Raptor.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/fertility-r...
That's one factor, but there is also a huge additional psychological component to people feeling like they can support children.
The higher a family income, the fewer children they have. This tracks every more strongly with your family income as a child. People who were raised in poverty have more children, independent of their current income.
In short, more money you have or had as a child, the the fewer children you will have.
The general consensus is that this has to do with feelings of financial readiness. People who grew up with less money are less scared of raising children without everything money can provide.
Then why does the number of children tend to go down with household income?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
How exactly does this contradict what I wrote? The birth rate did start its decline in the 1950's, and the sexual revolution started later and progressed slower in Canada. Your link also supports my argument.
There's also a lot more data that backs my argument. For one thing, birthrate declines are happening in places where the sexual revolution didn't happen.
This sounds like mental gymnastics as a futile attempt to preserve an anti-immigration narrative.
Going on a tangent, the only way to make ending Canada's immigration rate would work is if Canada can end its socialist programs like health care and social security. Even a lot of self identifying conservatives will balk at ending those entitlements. You can't have it both ways.
One of the disgraceful things when traveling abroad is the "ghettoes" where all you see are foreign retirees, ex-pats and other "nomads" where local culture is replaced and a new culture emerges to cater to this new influx in order to extract commercial benefit. So the Spanish Riviera, Thai beaches, Dubai, (also in FL who cater to Spring Break, for example
It's the cultural equivalent to the Strip Mall. In the US and Canada lots of towns have the similar feel because they have the common thread of national and regional chains which mimic national chains. This is something most people lament --but this is what would happen to Japan if they allowed mass migration so supplement their own population targets. It would be a country like many others with nothing distinguishing it apart.
Is Japan of 1950 also Japan of 2050? Its a sort of ship-of-Theseus issue, but when we recognize that cultures evolve, grow, mix, adapt, and continually become something wonderful, it's less of a concern in my mind.
> Tibetans are better off with the lesser dictatorship of the CCP over the theocracy of a Dalai Lama.
Oof, I doubt this is anywhere close to true given the treatment of minority groups under CCP policy. Sovereignty, forcibly taken, is rarely an improvement and is detrimental both to the people whose sovereignty was taken and to the people who took the sovereignty. Much better to engage in economic trade and diplomacy.
Remember monocultures (as in one world monoculture) are not ideal? That we aspire to celebrate differences? Eventually, we'll have a homogenized world culture --that is not something I'd like to see. I prefer there being many different cultures with their OWN idiosyncrasies and ways of life.
Therefore, what?
Is a house the same house if your tear it down and build a factory?
> but when we recognize that cultures evolve, grow, mix, adapt, and continually become something wonderful, it's less of a concern in my mind.
It should be noted that's the opinion of Western liberals, who are pretty culturally imperialistic and expect and demand that other cultures adopt their values and adapt to their preferences.
> The house argument is silly when applied to Japan of all places, which is known for frequently doing demolish-and-rebuild for wooden construction. Even one of the famous castles.
You misunderstood what I said, read it again. Is a factory the same house, if it was built on the same plot of land? It's an entirely different thing, and it's just nonsensical to bring up ship-of-Theseus in a case like that.
No, it's my personal opinion and observation.
Synthesis of external influence is unavoidable -- people being people -- and paradoxically faster when formally made verboten. Else why does China have a Great Firewall (proves external influence is attempted to be avoided) to prevent cultural intrusion and a massive flow of graduate students expatriating (evidence of the paradox)?
A culture can avoid or embrace. It's not a normative "Western Liberal" value called out, it's a positive acknowledgement of human behavior.
Yeah, but that's not what's being discussed here, which is the importation of literal foreign people (immigration) in order to keep declining population numbers up, which is quite different. Immigration is a solution that strongly reflects Western liberal ideas and priorities.
I disagree. Especially in modern times, immigrants moving somewhere else (i.e. exercising their natural right and freedom to move elsewhere) is a difference of degree of external influence, not a difference of kind.
Thus, in scope for discussion.
If it is, you're being too fuzzy about it in a way that makes claims that are simply not true. Specifically, some "synthesis of external influence" may be "unavoidable," but that does not mean immigration, especially legal immigration, is unavoidable. Embracing immigration is a policy choice the Japanese can decide not to make, even if Western liberals really disagree with the choice.
Yes, the current administrators of Japan can set a governance policy on who it attempts to allow to go through "approved" channels. Enforcing it, and especially attempting to enforce it to prevent, what I believe would be fair to summarize your prior comments, cultural contamination, won't work for the cause I've already mentioned: synthesis of external influence.
Where do these states gain these rights? Divine investiture? Might makes right? Inertia? What is is not what could be.
I'm unconcerned with what Lenin thought, personally.
They’re not pulling up any ladder. They made the country for themselves. Others can make their own to their own liking as well.
W/re Japan, it would be overwhelmed by Chinese, if they just let anyone in. China is big and strong enough for them to take care of their own people without needing to colonize Japan.
Which attempts to abrogate the right to free association and movement. "People vote with their feet" is a truism that applies here as well, in my view.
> They made the country for themselves.
When did Japan first incorporate? Long before the lifetime of the current population.
> Others can make their own to their own liking as well.
Where? What if three or four Japanese people want to declare an open border, making their own to their own liking? This principle falls apart.
> W/re Japan, it would be overwhelmed by Chinese, if they just let anyone in. China is big and strong enough for them to take care of their own people without needing to colonize Japan.
Therefore, what?
See the United States and Canada
Xenophobia is both Japan’s strength and weakness
Modernization has similar effects but locals can modernize in their own way rather than import wholesale a new culture (India vs China).
Even if culture was destroyed, I don’t see it as a bad thing. Different languages and cultures are a barrier to empathy and historically it’s been a leading cause of conflict and violence. It’s too easy to “other” people whom you can’t communicate easily with
Preserving culture at all costs for its own sake is backwards and it prevents progress
I dunno. Lots of groups even within the US lament their culture being overrun by US pop-culture or mainstream culture. Are these people wrong and counter-productive?