Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Is There Any Way Out of Japan's Demographic Crisis? Short Answer, No, Not Really...

"Shrinking your way to ruin..."

A rather depressing look at Land of the Rising Sun as its demographic reality creates a long, dark, inescapable, ethnically homogeneous yet pretty irreversibly childless "future". 

"Other problems for Japan include recent trends among its youth that have come to regard sex as superfluous and unnecessary. One report from last year found that 45 percent of Japanese women aged 16-24 are “not interested in … sexual contact,” as are 25 percent of Japanese men. The Japanese government, beginning in the 2000s, has attempted to address the fertility issue more seriously."

I know I'm just a Jewish mother from the suburbs and I'm not very bright, but it does seem to me that it is kind of hard-well, let's say impossible to make babies if nobody is, you know GETTING NEKKID. 

"Public funding is available for in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatment. Still, raising the fertility rate is one of the most challenging policy endeavors possible — for any country."

Thus, Japan is looking to immigration as a "fix".

"Should the government’s plan to add an additional 200,000 immigrants per year succeed, Japanese society will begin to look very different within a decade, raising possible national identity issues. Currently, less than 2 percent of Japan’s population is non-ethnically Japanese."

"Should immigrants comprise a greater percentage of the whole, the idea of Japan will have to change, incorporating its new residents into the fold. That change won’t be easy, but it might be necessary to avert the alternative scenario: a country that shrinks its way into ruin."