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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Noah Smith (Econ professor at SUNY Stony Brook with a background in Japanese) took umbrage with this article;

http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-fertility-...

    Except that is not what the graph shows at all. Yes, 
    government forecasts are way off (forecasting is hard).
    But for over a decade, the Japanese government has
    been too pessimistic about the fertility rate.

    Just Look. At. The. Graph! Since 2005, the black line
    - the actual fertility rate - has been going up! It is now
    higher than the blue line representing the forecast
    from 2002. It is even higher than the blue like
    representing the forecast for 2008. The graph only
    looks like it goes through 2010, but a quick Google
    shows that the fertility rate is still over 1.4, i.e. higher
    than the 2002, 2006, or 2012 forecasts.

    In other words, Japanese fertility has been surprising on
    the upside for ten years and counting!

View on HN

Thanks for this. I was confused by the title of the article when, in fact, some of the most recent predictions were below the actual fertility. Hardly the definition of "worse than anyone imagined", it seems quite the opposite.

Alright, since the title of the WaPo piece is both misleading and linkbait, we changed it to Smith's title.

Should we change the URL as well? The rebuttal seems pretty convincing.

The rebuttal seems pretty convincing if you only look at the graph between 2002 and 2008. You could lop everything off after 1985 and have the same rebuttal.

The rebuttal would be convincing if he went into detail as to why the government forecasts are wrong, but he doesn't. He just says "hey they're wrong" without delving into any of the history of the forecasts, how the forecasts are made (which would be interesting, because then he could really say why he thinks they're wrong), what his forecasts might be... But instead, he just says "hey they're wrong" without anything else.

If anything he's guilty of cherry-picking, which is something we rage against when climate change denialists do it. Why is this guy convincing while they're not?

I think you're missing some nuance..

The original article's premise was reflected by its title;

"Japan’s birth rate problem is way worse than anyone imagined"

But it's not worse than anyone imagined, at all. It's actually better than people 'imagined' (i.e. forecast) in 2002, 2008, and 2012. Japan's fertility rate might be a big issue still, but it's been beating the forecasts for 10 years now.

As for expounding on why the forecasts are wrong, or more substantive articles about fertility and gender issues in Japan, you'll have to read some of his previous posts. I'd suggest:

"Time for gaijin to take a second look at Abe's Womenomics" [1] Where he discusses how the landscape is changing for women to enter the Japanese workforce and how that might affect birth rates further.

"The Japanese tragedy, causes and consequences"[2] Where he discusses why forecasts for GDP and growth rates have been notoriously bad in Japan.

I didn't post his original article to serve as a complete and thorough treatment of the birth rate issue in Japan, but only to counter the original WaPo article that was pretty misleading.

[1] - http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/time-for-gaijin-t...

[2] - http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-japanese-trag...

He could have written the same article between 1980 and 1985 though, when Japan's fertility rate was increasing.

Wow, yes, that is embarrassing.

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