Birth rate is rarely the correct metric because it is affected by longevity. The metric most people are interested in is fertility rate, where Germany still has a long way to go to pass Singapore. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
This. Birth rate has a lot of uncontrollable factors like demographics. A slump in people in ages 20-40 will inevitably leas to falling birth rate at the same fertility. And that will repeat in 20-40 years.
The factor to focus on is the fertility and the fraction of working adults. Germany has a very traditional view of the labour market and women often have to stop working for years when having children. This means that a large group of women don't work, or (equally bad for the economy), a large group of women chose not to have kids.
The only proven solution is subsidized childcare, longer parental leave, individual taxation.
The only proven solution is subsidized childcare, longer parental leave, individual taxation.
This is an interesting comment to me, because I'm trying to think of example country pairs in which a country with subsidized childcare, longer parental leave, and individual taxation has a higher fertility rate than an otherwise similar country that lacks those things. The United States continues to have a higher fertility rate than many countries in Europe that have more subsidized childcare and longer mandated parental leave than the United States, for example, so I'm not sure that these public policy factors outdo the effect of other cultural and economic factors in either raising or lowering the country-wide fertility rate.
Bingo. Came here to say this too. Germany has a very large aging population. In 15 years time a large percentage of these will have died (baby boomers). Germany has some interested ng regional issues too. Many old DDR states have lost much of their younger generation. These states are filled with people in their late 50's and older.
Not to mention that in these highly-developed countries with solid education systems and modern career opportunities, the value-creating power of an individual is several times higher than that of an average individual in a developing country.
The fertility rate among founders in Silicon Valley is probably even lower, but that group of people is creating an immense amount of value for society in return for not creating as many kids.
They're creating stuff that's valuable to society. I don't see though how they're so much greater than other people who create value, like medical researchers, biotech researchers, engineers, artists, etc.
All of those professions count too. My point is that the value-creating power of any well-educated individual (in any profession) is higher; thus, the government of a country with a solid education system shouldn't be afraid of a lack of population expansion; value to the country isn't indicated by number of lives.
I'm not sure creating yet another social media photo sharing disappearing anonymous comment app is more valuable, to society or the individual, than children.
As a German who lives in the US since 8 years I am not surprised by this at all. By the time you finish university in Germany you are about 25 years old. They introduced the Bachelor/Master system, but at least when I studied, getting a Bachelor was more of a way to drop out gracefully. In addition there was a culture that expected you to stay at home until your child is at least 1 year old. Therefore there was very little support to take care of very young children.
For well educated couples this leaves an extremely small window in which you can have children. That doesn't even account yet for people with other goals. Having a child means having time to try to bootstrap a startup parallel to your day job or doing extensive travel becomes extremely hard if not downright impossible.
An additional factor is that most Germans aren't religious and even the ones who are are only on paper, but don't actually care very much. Religion often times plays a large role in people's desire to have children. That rarely happens in Germany.
Therefore there was very little support to take care of very young children. For well educated couples this leaves an extremely small window in which you can have children.
Moreover, there are very few day cares that accept children after three months (which is pretty normal in The Netherlands and probably most other Western countries). This creates the perception of having to choose between a career and children (in some fields, leaving for a few years is a high-impact career choice). Luckily, things seem to be changing slowly:
There are tax incentives to have children (e.g. we wouldn't lose much income if my wife decided to stop working), unfortunately it seems that the conservative government (CDU/CSU) does not seem to be realize that most modern people don't want to live the 'man works, wife stays home with the children until they are 18'-lifestyle.
Another problem is that employers are not very flexible towards reducing the work week. Fortunately, our employer was flexible, allowing my wife to work four days. But I hear that it's hard in general for e.g. husband & wife to both work four days.
For the female part of a couple stability is important, and owning your own house/apartment plays a big role there.
I've heard that getting into the house ownership market in Germany is extremely hard, with high requirements set on your own savings to be granted a loan, meaning most people don't until they are well into their 30s and maybe even their 40s.
To me that certainly also sound like a contributing factor. Any comments or perspective on that?
It's unlikely that this is a major contributing factor. German laws are extremely tenant-friendly, there is no social stigma associated with renting, and renting vs. owning is often a lifestyle choice rather than one explained by income (according to a recent study, a great many Germans could afford a home of their own, but choose to rent, anyway). Keep in mind that even Angela Merkel is among those who rent, even though between her income and that of her husband (who is a tenured professor), they could easily afford a pretty nice home.
The low birthrate is primarily driven by college-educated women having few or no children (over 30% of all German women who were born between 1964 and 1968 and had a college degree did not have any children). It has historically been difficult to be a working mother in Germany; it was both more challenging (school being out at lunchtime) and society frowned upon you being a working mother.
This has slowly been changing; reunification happened and East German women weren't having any of this nonsense; politicians realized that the net effect was that the fertility rate dropped; and the abortion debate and a subsequent judgement by the Constitutional Court forced legislation that made having children easier. As a result, it is now a whole lot easier to be a parent (single or married, male or female) than it used to be.
This did at least stabilize the fertility rate, which had been dropping before. While nominally, Germany's fertility rate is 1.4, this does not account for the fact that the great majority of German children are being born after their mothers reach the age of thirty; current estimates set the actual fertility rate -- i.e. the average number of children a woman has over her lifetime -- at 1.6. More importantly, this number did stabilize in the aughts and has actually been increasing since then for college-educated women.
Most people rent, home ownership is 43%, so no I dont think people consider they need to own a home before having children. There is a stable long term rental market.
I don't think home ownership is an issue. Lifelong renting is the norm, costs of renting homes are low, quality of rental property is high and relevant legislation is tenant-friendly.
On the aspect of religion, this varies strongly by region. In the "neue Bundesländer" (former GDR), people are generally a lot less religious due to the GDR actively discouraging religion. Meanwhile, Bavaria is very catholic (and quite conservative). It would be interesting to see if/how religion and birth rate correlate in Germany.
It is interesting how a country with a lot of seemingly positive aspects -- abundant natural resources and fresh water, temperate climate, stabile economy and low unemployment, and great infrastructure -- cannot convince its citizens to procreate, whereas a country like Yemen with little in development is exploding in population (doubling every 20 years).
When given the choice, it seems humans have children more out of necessity than desirability.
Having children (and being married) is a tool for survival in harsh environments. Conversely, it can be seen as a trap/burden from a legal and financial perspective in a 'developed' country.
Interesting! It's almost as if we've evolved out the need to have children (no need for free hands working the fields, the ability to have sex for recreation instead of procreation, and children typically providing limited financial return compared to their historical role).
A little known facet of German society is that it is (or rather was) extremely hostile to mothers working. Even if a German couple wanted to have children (desirability), the sacrifices were sometimes too great. Especially as raising a family on one salary is becoming harder and harder, if not outright impossible.
Developed countries offer alternative life goals. This, education and entertainment provide enough reasons not to have a family. Lower birth rate is a good thing in the long term, and getting non-developed countries into developed stage will accomplish that. See Gates' yearly letters.
> Lover birth rate is a good thing in the long term
It most definitely is NOT a good thing to have a birth rate below replacement in a developed country, especially one with European-style social programs. Eventually you run out of workers to support the people who aren't doing so.
If you assume a developed country, you have an attractive place to live for many people from other badly developed countries. So you can simply import them.
I think he means there's a difference between births arising from couples in love, as opposed to births arising either by accident or from couples bound by other arrangments forced out of motives of survival, hence the qualifier being a "lover's birth rate."
As for quantifying which births are "lover's" births, and which are not, well... good luck with that.
If your goal is to live in comfort after you're too old to work, then having lots of children is often the best way to accomplish that in a crappy country. Odds are good at least one of them will survive and do well enough to support you when you're old.
In a nicer place with better finance and social security systems, you can pull it off without having a lot of children.
I'm pretty sure that it's determined by optimism about the future. Germans think that the next generation will have it about the same or even slightly worse than them.
The Greatest Generation were absolutely positive that the future was going to be very bright once they returned home from the war, hence the baby boom and baby boomers.
Once you account for access to contraceptives, etc. (i.e. once childbearing becomes a choice), I think this is largely what determines the birthrate, which is why most efforts to 'engineer' a higher birthrate have been so futile.
I am from India, which is second most populated country in the world. A generation ago, it was common for a couple having 3 to 4 kids. But now, even here most couples (in urban areas atleast) plan for atmost 1 kid. The sheer pace with which life moves has increased compared to one generation back. Couples (especially when both are working) simply do not have money, energy & time.
India is not a developed country and still in last decade or so the birth rate is stabilising, but not decreasing.
According to Google, total fertility rate is at 2.50 as of 2012. This is good news.
Apparently,according to The Hindu at least two populous states - UP and Bihar - have tfr above 3. Is this a matter of concern in terms of politics and public policy?
I'm not so sure I understand the point of view that labor shortages will be such a bad thing for the economy. If you are a worker, "high labor costs" is a very GOOD thing. For decades we've seen the value of labor fall behind the value of capital, and a more constrained labor supply might help change this.
Labor costs and salaries are declining at a staggering pace. Workers get squeezed between declining wages, asset price inflation (Germany has one of the lowest house ownership rates) and taxation. The the same time, hordes of young, male, aggressive and uneducated immigrants who believe that they have a superior religion, flood Germany. Run as long as you can.
Uneducated you say, strange, I live and work in Germany as a software engineer in an IT company with 25 others immigrants, there isn't a SINGLE german there...
And you came via a boat from Africa as an illegal immigrant. Congratulations. Impressive. You must be the exception.
I am an immigrant for the second time. This time in Asia. But I did not come with a boat, did not clandestine cross the boarder, do not live on other peoples tax money and I have a valid work permit. I also don't harass the local population. If I did, they would throw me out faster than a rabbit gets fucked.
My point is without educated immigrants who pays the pension of old people, Germany would face a hard time.
"I also don't harass the local population". I am pretty sure they disagree, pushing people without saying "Entschuldigung" IS a harassment. How did the people on your city, on Asian, react to your more than 10 seconds out of blue stare? Didn't they think is is a harassment too?
I don't disagree that Germany needs skilled immigrants. But there is actually currently much less demand than some lobbyist claim and salaries are so low that mostly this is only attractive to 2nd class 3rd world immigrants. The very good ones go to the US, UK,CA or Australia immediately. Easier, much more pay.
Germany had immigrant waves from countries like Iran or Afghanistan some decades ago. But this were very highly educated people that fled due to the circumstances and were able AND WILLING to adapt.
The current African/Middle Eastern immigrants are not willing and probably not even able to adapt. "Harassment" was a polite correct way to speak of all the violence, rapes and sometimes murders that are committed.
Do you know the country with the highest cases of rapes? It is Sweden! Guess why? Yes, must be terrible people this tall blond Swedish Vikings raping their women....
Australia solved her immigration problem by just sending the people in the boats back home. Europe can not solve the problems of the world by accepting everyone that comes. In Germany, one of the most dense populated countries, alone 300.000-400.000 a year.
You can't have both. Free, unlimited immigration and social welfare. The people in Europe will have to make a decision about this.
Worse, this people are not solving their problems at home when they come but they import their problems into Europe.
Uh, didn't feminists change the rape legislation too (cf. Assange) so that Sweden has one of the highest reporting rates in the world. I'm not ruling out what you say but you have to disentangle these things.
Don't forget that most of these people come from very tribal regions and backgrounds. In many places where they come from, a rape of, let's say a Christian women, that walks openly dressed and unaccompanied on the street would be considered not a big thing.
Many ideas the west has sound really absurd to these people.
Why does Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Emirates and so on not take these "refugees"? Based on their language, food requirements and religion this should be a much better fit. Yet, it would sound absurd to this countries letting them in and "feeding them for free'. Why? Because they are tribal systems as well.
Uh, the only person that ever called jihad a 'pillar of Islam' was Maududi, who is hardly a mainstream Islamic figure (a warmed over ex-Marxist clerical fascist journalist with zero formal religious training)
As long as it isn't global it will just mean that German industry will have to move production elsewhere and/or it will be cost effective to employ ever more expensive robots to do the work.
But it's already true that German workers are much more expensive than most other countries, yet Germany still has very low unemployment.
Yes, a constrained labor supply will be problematic for everyone who is NOT a worker (most importantly, a large elderly population), but if you are a worker, it's almost always a good thing.
Note that Japan fertility rate is not the worst out there: for instance Hong Kong (1.1), Singapore (1.2) and South Korea (1.2) are all bellow Japan (1.4).
Birth rate and fertility rate are not the same, so of course I distinguish. Though to be fair I think the correct term is total fertility rate, as sometimes fertility rate is defined as birth rate.
Birth rate (technically, births/population rate) is the total number of live births per 1,000 of a population in a year. It is abysmal in Japan because the population is very old, so not many people are in age of making children.
Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with current age-specific fertility rates. This rate is going up as Japan is slowly making it easier for couples to have children: more day-care facilities, and most importantly Japanese society is (slowly) becoming more tolerant to mothers going back to work.
> and most importantly Japanese society is (slowly) becoming more tolerant to mothers going back to work.
Yup, but that won't prevent Japan from going right into the demography wall within a decade or two (with serious consequences on its economy, since current workers have to pay for retired ones, in a growing deficit and a climate of increasing taxes).
The debt of Japan is so huge (to put it in relative terms, Greece's debt is nothing compared to it) that they would need half of the developed world to cater to it.
Not really. In the end Japanese will have to pay, in one way or another, and that will be either with huge taxation, or dramatic inflation. Or Default. No good options out there, really.
The Japanese can themselves decide which option to take, rather than being forced into one from the outside. The current elected government seems to have taken the route of inflating away the debt.
> The current elected government seems to have taken the route of inflating away the debt.
Yeah, and it's not a pretty way to go with solving the debt problem. This will result in higher prices for everyone, destroying savings and hurting in result the private sector. "Just" to save the government.
It is not to save the government, it is to save the money from the people who own the government bonds, who are mainly Japanese. It is a redistribution issue.
I think he/she might have meant that immortality isn't really sustainable because of overpopulation concerns unless population growth rate is negative.
Even if population growth rate is negative, that only means that birth rate minus death rate is negative, not that birth rate itself is negative. If immortality makes the death rate zero, the growth rate can't be negative, and the birth rate would have to also be zero or growth rate would become positive again.
True, and I wasn't necessarily advocating that point of view, only trying to clarify what the OP might have meant. However, I'd also add that immortality being an option doesn't necessarily mean that the death rate would become zero. Some people may opt to die or be unable to afford whatever the cost may be (not to mention homicide, accidental deaths, etc).
Is a normal consequence on the poverty fuelled by the policies of those last years, probably. You can not expect that people think too much about having babies whereas struggling to live on microjobs. No real jobs, lots of cats and dogs. No real new babies.
Are they worried about being killed by famine (after having eaten their own cats and dogs), war or pandemic soon? If not, then they are not "struggling to live", which in turn means there is no need to reproduce that much.
From the biological perspective, excessive population growth can be dangerous to the species [1].
Probably not but I can't see why "to be killed by famine" is a relevant point here (A lot of alive germans had experienced the fear to be killed by famine in their past, that's for sure, as many other people that was children in the wars and postwars).
Today 7 millions of germans live with minijobs and for most of them is its only source of income. I don't really see those people reproducting like bunnies, but well... I can be wrong. Is a different kind of poverty, not the classic one.
> Excessive population growth can be dangerous to the species
I guess that you don't encourage the reproduction of this people?. Again, this is not the point here. We are trying to understant why germans have a low natality, not if this is convenient or not for the rest of the planet.
Those who remember famine and war are usually past their reproductive age. The young people take it for granted that they will live until their eighties, even on their low paying jobs.
If poverty was causing reduced birth rate, we should have gone extinct long time ago. I suspect though that increased competition for non-essential resources and territory (like a new car or a house) might somehow turn off our reproductive instincts because in the past this was usually a prelude to self-destructive competition for essential goods.
I'm not encouraging or discouraging anything, I just don't see the problem. Everything seems to work according to the nature. The only thing that needs adjusting is the social security system which is based on the flawed assumption of infinite population growth.
Yes, typically they are, even in Germany. That being said, very rich people who don't have to compromise and have others raise their children also tend to have more than average children I believe.
A diminishing population only has negative consequences for an economy in the short term, right? In the end, less people means less money needs to be made to sustain a certain standard of living.
It has a huge impact on long term quality of infrastructure and an immediate impact on social security (pensions especially).
Infrastructure needs a certain population density in order to be maintained and since countries usually do not give up territory when their population drops the number of people available as a tax bas dictates that if the quantities of infrastructure remain the same that the quality should decrease.
Canada would be lot more efficient for instance if it moved all of its population to the west coast but of course that's not an option for many practical reasons.
Can I just say that it is not a problem for Germany because they figured out they need to let immigrants in, unlike Japan. Germany has a very high number of immigrants, including (actually, mostly!) young adults who are eager to work.
By all means, the country is more than safe in this regard, in stark contrast to Japan, which is trying to turn to robots for future workers (which is fine for the rest of the world, imo).
Well, that is very close to the meaning of 'nation', which is why international relations students often talk of the nation-state; the nation is the cultural community, the state is the national-level government.
Some nations have no state, such as the Kurds.
Some states have multiple nations within, such as the USA (which is where the hyphenated-American thing had actually started; it made perfect sense to speak of a German-American or an Irish-American, because these persons would often merge elements of both nationalities).
Yes, Japan has managed to brew the deadly mix of aging population, extremely traditional values leading to very low fertility, and an extremely low acceptance of immigration.
it feels almost dystopian to think about the demographics in a few decades: elderly and robots will far outnumber the rest.
I read posts like yours and it really saddens me. It's hard for me to respond without sounding insulting or condescending, but you are wrong on pretty much every word you write. Unfortunately, you are probably the victim of biased writing about Japan.
Scroll down to the section about getting a working visa. Have a look at what is required to get such a visa and compare it to your own country. (Hint: you need a university degree and a job offer -- after that you're pretty much golden). In contrast I can't even take my Japanese wife home to Canada without paying $1500 and waiting 12-18 months to get health insurance and working privileges. I've lived in Canada, the US, the UK and Japan and Japan is by far the country with the laxest immigration policy.
If you were to research the topic, you would discover that the low fertility rate is mostly due to the fact that the average age of marriage is 29.7. The average age of a first child is 30.3. Women in Japan live with their parents until they get married for the most part. Usually they work so they are both rich and free and not particularly interested in getting married (or having children).
Have a look at this graph of the average age of women having their first child in the UK: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/20/article-2051374-0E... (source is the Daily Mail... sorry, but I'm sure you can find a similar graph from a reputable source if your are bothered to look harder than me).
The west is catching on to a good thing and following Japan's lead. Just like Japan, as women take less traditional roles in society the fertility rates drop. It is practically the opposite of "extremely traditional values leading to very low fertility".
I'm sure you've read plenty of pieces in the BBC or the Japan Times talking about how backward it is here. I'm sure you've heard many people talk about xenophobia in Japan because the immigrant population is very small. But in reality, like all stereotypes it is a small seed of truth covered up by a mountain of BS.
It is true that the population is aging here. What young people there are seem to be flooding to big cities too, leaving a pretty big gap in the agricultural industry. There are definitely going to be problems. I often wonder if Japan will keep its position in the G8 (currently 3rd largest economy by GDP). I'm not sure that it matters all that much, though.
Japan will be fine even if it is not a world economic super power. Life here is extremely good -- even for an immigrant like me. I don't think it will change that much.
As for immigration: If rules are very liberal, why is immigration so limited? Is it hard for foreigners to get these jobs? what about refugees and other non-professional immigration? Note that I don't think Japan is necessarily xenophobic (recent polls suggest a majority is pro immigration) but it's traditionally quite conservative and a bit "introvert" and let's agree it's not exactly a haven for the worlds poor immigrants...
The fertility rate in Japan is low, and there are many reasons for that. Like you say, as a society becomes more progressive and equal, more women will choose professional careers. This means longer educations and smaller windows for having family. That isn't the problem, the problem is that when this good thing happens, in order to keep fertility from dropping (assuming we want it to), a society must adopt things like subsidized daycare, parental leave and so on. Failing to do so means women have to choose between careers and family.
Japan will survive but an aging or shrinking population is problematic economically. It would really benefit Japan to have a higher fertility rate, and hopefully it can be done without women having to stop having careers.
Thank you for your follow up post which describes your ideas a lot more clearly. I know it's quite a lot more to type, but if you write like this it is much harder for people to misunderstand what you mean. For me it is important because I am constantly trying to correct misunderstandings about Japanese culture.
I will attempt to answer your questions as best as I can. It is not hard for foreigners to get a job in Japan. There are 2 kinds of jobs: permanent positions from which it is difficult to lose your job and temporary positions which are usually renewed every year.
The first kind of position is hard to get unless you are just graduating from some kind of Japanese school (high school, trade school, university, etc). Even for Japanese people it is extremely difficult to get one of these jobs if you didn't get one right out of school. If you left your job, or were let go then it might be nearly impossible. As such, this kind of job is usually out of reach for most foreigners.
This is not necessarily a problem because there are lots of contract positions available and most foreigners are in Japan for a limited amount of time. Your initial visa is for 1-3 years (mostly depending on how much the government thinks you are at risk for not being able to support yourself if you lose your job). If you maintain your position in your job, my experience has been that the renewal is pretty much a rubber stamp. The last time I renewed it was literally a rubber stamp. The immigration official looked at my application for 10 seconds, asked me if I was still working at the same place and stamped the application -- visa renewed for 3 years!
Immigration without a university degree is quite a bit more difficult (but no more so than any other country I've lived in). I live in Shizuoka prefecture which probably has the highest migrant worker population in Japan, so my experiences may not reflect the whole of Japan. But as long as you can get a visa, there are many, many factory jobs available -- in fact there is a real shortage of workers.
The factories like to work with 1 year contract positions for their workers. This allows them to adjust the work force based on the current economic climate. Most Japanese people would like to have permanent positions, so these contract positions go unfilled for the most part.
There are also positions available for skilled workers who may not have gone to university. A good example are care workers for the elderly. In fact, there are many government programs to bring in workers from outside of the country. Like many "1st world" countries, care workers are underpaid here and since it is a very difficult job, most Japanese people would rather not do it.
So, basically, it is comparatively easy to come to Japan and get a job. In fact, many, many people do come to Japan. They just don't stay. Why?
It is hard to explain without being misunderstood, but I will try. If you are not Japanese, living in Japan is hard. This is not to say that Japanese people are hard on foreigners -- quite the opposite! Japanese people usually go out of their way to be extremely friendly and make exceptions for people who do not know the details about Japanese culture. In fact, it is this which forms most of the problem.
I usually explain Japan as an "inside - outside culture". By this I mean that in Japan people naturally form groups. For example, you have your family. You know the people who are inside your family and who are outside. Japanese people treat people on the inside of a group completely differently than the people on the outside of the group. This is integral to Japanese culture.
Now, you might imagine that this creates discrimination since you would have a group of Japanese people and a group of non-Japanese people, and to some extent this occurs. However, it works quite differently than more foreigners expect. If you are on the inside of a group you have a huge number of rules that you must follow (many of them seemingly arbitrary). You will be scolded if you breach one of these rules. At the extreme, you might even be excluded from the group if you show that you can't follow the rules. I have heard a saying, "If a nail sticks out, hammer it in. If it still sticks out, hammer it in again. If it still sticks out, throw it away". This is a pretty accurate description of what it is like on the inside of a Japanese group.
Outside the group, people are extremely polite and friendly. People will almost always go out of their way to help people outside their group. People are always smiling and say nice things. For people outside the group, you can pretty much always break the rules and get away with it. You don't even need to keep track of the rules at all because you are an outsider. The people on the inside will say, "Oh. They are an outsider. They don't know the rules. Let's forgive them".
Most foreigners, when they first come to Japan, experience being on the outside. It is very, very nice. People are so friendly and welcoming and helpful. Eventually you realize that only some of the people actually want to be nice and friendly. The rest of them are following the arbitrary rule of being friendly to outsiders.
This puts the foreigner, who is not used to Japanese culture, in a very awkward position. They aren't used to being treated so distantly. At first you think you are making lots of friends, but eventually you realize that quite a few of your "friends" are simply tolerating you out of a sense of duty. Many of the smiles are just masks and the kind words are simply repeated mindlessly without any particular intention.
At this point, many foreigners would like to get "inside" and in my experience, it is not difficult at all to get inside a group. Most groups are honestly flattered (and often surprised) that you might want to join them. But then you have to learn all the rules -- and follow them. Foreigners in Japan quickly get used to what has been called the "Gaigin Superpower" -- the ability to do whatever you want because nobody expects a foreigner to know the rules. When you start to get inside a group, though, you must always follow the rules. Any infraction -- whether you knew about the rule before hand or not -- reflects badly on the whole group.
Honestly, I know of only a few foreigners who can deal with it. Especially expats from the US or the UK often find that Japanese culture is at odds with their own moral values. They sometimes try to convince other Japanese people to change their ways and to adopt what they believe is a superior way of living. I have found that those kinds of people tend to get crushed by the sheer momentum of Japanese culture.
I suppose you could say that the above is "quite conservative and a bit `introvert`", but it is quite a bit more complicated than that. Of course my views are coloured by my experiences, but I have met many foreigners working here (both professionals and non-professionals). The people who are successful here all have pretty much the same profile: Are fluent in Japanese, are willing and able to follow arbitrary rules and be polite, try not to change Japanese ways of doing things, are willing to be "inside" several groups with all the downsides that entails.
In my experiences, the vast majority of people in the world are not willing to do those things. This is why they don't stay.
I hope you've found the above interesting. I love living in Japan. For whatever reason I find that I am actually more free here than anywhere else in the world. I am aware, however, that it is the rare foreigner that feels the way I do. I do not think that this is a bad thing, but it definitely hampers immigration.
As for improving career choices for women, I feel that this will happen as a matter of necessity in Japan. Again, it is a strange thing about Japan that most foreigners don't understand. In most parts of the world you fight to establish new ideas. These ideas spread slowly until most of the people have adopted them. In Japan it is completely different. Nothing ever changes in Japan. Everybody does things the way they have always done them. Nobody complains and everybody carries on in the same way. Then one day, somebody makes a decision that something will be done a different way. From that day forward, everybody does it that way. Everybody follows the rules. Nobody complains.
Note: Of course they complain! They just complain to their in-group ;-). Pro tip: If you want to know who your real friends are in Japan, they are the ones complaining to you.
As an example, when I first came to Japan, people used to smoke on the street while going places. Or they used to smoke while waiting for the train. One day these signs came up that said "A cigarette butt is eye level for a child. Let's stop walking and smoking." Now I barely see anyone walking around with a lit cigarette. It is now forbidden to smoke on the train platform and I can't recall ever seeing anyone break the rule.
Someday it will happen. The government will tell industry, "You must keep women working even when they have children because we need more workers". It will just happen -- no debate, no struggle, no (public) complaints.
I'm skeptical of the Hans Rosling talk that many people will bring up. For one, there is no indication that the poorer countries with higher birthrates will be educated in time. Secondly, just because we can calculate the world can support more people doesn't mean that's a good thing to have. We're already losing our flora and fauna at an alarming rate. This is going to get worse with a higher population.
I think sometimes people are blinded by TED talks and fail to question them.
Germany and Japan are densely populated. Except for the economic dislocations of population decline, nothing bad will happen to German or Japanese culture or society if their populations have peaked and are declining.
China is also nearing zero population growth. That's when things will really start to change.
On top of that, the consequences of missing population stability projections on the high side are much worse than missing them on the low side.
And more women were needed in the workforce to avoid economic problems. Maybe there is a link between lots of women in the workforce and the low birth rate? Maybe if they stopped micromanaging these problems, they would spontaneously solve themselves? They always did.
It's difficult not to see to the word 'slumped' as an editorial judgement, and I find it quite strange. The world is grotesquely overpopulated and at some point it needs to stop.
Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support the earth's population, which means the earth cannot support all of us without starting to deplete resources. So yes, the planet IS overpopulated.
> Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support
LOL, this kind of "x amount of Earths" to support ourselves always make me laugh, because it assumes energy cannot be produced and that productivity gains do not exist. 30 years ago we were supposed to reach the "Peak petrol" point very soon, yet we found new ways to extract fossil fuels and push back that peak time to a much later time, leaving us time to develop alternative energies as well.
And we are still just literally scratching the Earth's surface. The Earth is a ball and most of its resources are far below the ground.
What is meant by that is that thebcurrent worldnpopulation exceeds Earth's carrying capacity by a factor of 0.2. That means that there are more people than the Earth can sustainably -- note the world sustainably. Once you overshoot the carrying capacity, you're in a situation where even the Earth's renewable resources are being depleted, in a way that may not recover for a very long time.
Resources on earth started depleting as soon as the planet was formed. Was the earth overpopulated before there was any life on it?
Resources are finite. They are finite no matter how many humans there are on the earth. You are referring to consumption which is a large problem, but also a fixable one (edit: to a certain point, of course). It is not overpopulation.
Petty much every documentary I have seen the last 5 years claims humans are increasingly ruining the planet at a non-sustainable rate. I expected this to be common knowledge by now.
If you prefer reading about it, Collapse by Jared Diamond[1] is an exceptional book on the subject, with facts and references for every claim and anecdote.
According to who? I don't see how that makes sense. Many resources are not renewable, so having an extra .2 Earth's worth of them would not make it more sustainable.
>Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support the earth's population
So the earth we are living on is in fact 1.2 earths, which is in fact 1.44 earths, which is in fact 1.728 earths, which is in fact 2.0736 earths, which is in fact at least two earths?
I would not understate the risks of overpopulation. BUT this "1.2 Earths" thing is singularly useless. It could be of no concern in some domains, and much worse in others. "1.2 Earths" says nothing useful.
You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ? The world is already heavily overpopulated. If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.
If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway. The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.
> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?
I have traveled all over the place, so your lousy ad hominem is unnecessary. "Crowded" is not the same as "overpopulated."
> If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.
Ah, so now we've moved from a factual question ("Is the world overpopulated?") to a subjective one ("At what level below the carrying capacity should human population be maintained?") which comes with a number of ethical questions ("Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?" for one).
> If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway.
Undoubtedly. That is not the same thing as overpopulation, by the way, because we humans have been driving other species to extinction throughout our entire history.
> The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.
This is nice and subjective, and also not the same thing as overpopulation. In the future, please try to avoid slinging around buzzwords.
> "Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?"
That's unnecessarily inflammatory. We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage. If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.
There are still ethical questions there, but it's a far cry from rounding up poor people and sterilizing them against their will.
> We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage.
The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.
> If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.
Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.
> The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.
It assumes that some of the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children, which probably is accurate.
Moreover, the efforts to increase condom usage are targeted at reducing AIDS and other STIs. If you want to reduce birth rates you promote birth control pills. Particularly in an area where the legal system puts most of the economic burden of raising children on the mother.
> Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.
I fail to see how offering to pay someone $5,000 to have a vasectomy is less economically coercive than requiring them to pay $10,000+/year in child support for the next two decades if they get a woman pregnant.
> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?
Have you travelled to the US, Europe, Russia or Africa? In most parts of these continents there's nothing but nature for kilometres and kilometres with very low population density. Only large cities concentrate a lot of people, and there's still space for more if we really wanted to.
From "Deforestation and net forest area change, 2010"
* Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year in the last decade compared to 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s.
* The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2010 is estimated at –5.2 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Costa Rica), down from –8.3 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.
I live in China, which is not nearly as populated as Bangladesh or India.
We have to decide if we are to move forward or back. Technology can help us boost population while limiting impact, we can also branch out into new ecological niches (even those off planet) as any successful animal would. Biologically speaking, we should increase in number if we are doing well, to do otherwise isn't very natural (and ya, flora and fauna are out competed all the time, it's part of the system).
It might not be the moral thing to do, but it is definitely the natural thing to do.
It takes a special kind of person to look at all the environmental damage we are currently doing to the world (destruction of rainforests, overfishing, rising sea levels, disappearance of coral reefs, desertification, air pollution, soil erosion), and say "more please!"
Nowhere in my post did I say "more please." To say humans should roll over and intentionally go extinct is not the solution just as much as exhausting all resources. Somehow, we will find how to thrive.
We all need birth rate below the replacement rate as well as an increase in the quality of the citizen (good education, safe environment, stimulating activities).
No - that has probably more to do with guilt after WWII than the low birth rate. A low birth rate (within limits) is obviously a good thing - the world is over populated as it is.
