Tag: population

Government Difficulties in Raising Birthrates  

This blog has discussed the current low birth rates most countries are experiencing and their efforts to increase those rates to combat declining and aging population.[1]

Now the New York Times discusses the failure of various policies adopted around the world to attempt to increase birth rates.[2]

Japan has been the first to recognize this ‘problem.’ “Starting in the 1990s, Japan began rolling out policies and pronouncements designed to spur people to have more babies. The government required employers to offer child care leave of up to a year, opened more subsidized day care slots, exhorted men to do housework and take paternity leave, and called on companies to shorten work hours. In 1992, the government started paying direct cash allowances for having even one child (earlier, they had started with the third child), and bimonthly payments for all children were later introduced.”

“None of this has worked. Last year, Japan’s fertility rate stood at 1.2. In Tokyo, the rate is now less than one. The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since the government started collecting statistics in 1899.”

The United Nations Population Fund in a 2019 report found that “half of the world’s population lives in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below the ‘replacement rate’ of 2.1 births per woman.”

“Lower birthrates [in some respects] signify progress: Declining infant mortality rates reduced the need to have many children. As economies transitioned away from predominantly agricultural or family-owned businesses that required offspring to run, people focused on leisure and other aspirations. Women could now pursue career goals and personal fulfillment beyond raising children. Undergirding it all was the rise of birth control, which meant women could determine whether and when they got pregnant.”

“In Japan, policymakers are trying a new gambit: promoting weddings. Last year, fewer than 500,000 couples got married in Japan, the lowest number since 1933, despite polls showing that most single men and women would like to do so. One obstacle is that many young adults live with their parents. Yet it’s “hard to imagine that this pro-wedding push will succeed in boosting the birthrate any more than Japan’s last three decades of initiatives have. In the end, it seems that governments can only do so much.”

Now many, if not most, countries are experiencing these problems: “working-age populations outnumbered by the elderly; towns emptying out; important jobs unfilled; business innovation faltering. Immigration could be a straightforward antidote, but in many of the countries with declining birthrates, accepting large numbers of immigrants has become politically toxic.”

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[1] The Significance of the U.S. Low Birth Rate, dwkcommentaries.com (Oct. 7, 2024) (footnote 1 cites most of these blog posts).

[2]  Rich, Can the Government Get People To Have More Babies, N.Y. Times (Oct. 13, 2024) .

 

 

More Details on U.S. and Other Countries’ Worker Shortages

This blog already has discussed the current declining and aging populations of many countries, and their impact on employment in those countries. [1]

Here are some additional articles on these subjects.

Wall Street Journal Analysis [2]

“Employers in healthcare, education, leisure and hospitality and other services such as dry cleaning and automotive repair . . . [accounted] for 63% of all [recent U.S,] private-sector job gains. .. . In January alone, restaurants and bars added a seasonally adjusted 99,000 jobs. The healthcare industry grew by 58,000, and retailers added 30,000 jobs.”

This result is helped by “more workers . . .searching for jobs: bigger paychecks and benefits, diminishing fear of getting sick, and financial worries amid high inflation.” Also “more women are flowing back into the labor force, which could help service-sector employers fill positions that traditionally have been held by women.”

Increased U.S. Immigration [3]

Last year U.S. net immigration increased by about a million people, and the “foreign-born work force grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born work force.” This “helped power the job recoveries in leisure and hospitality and in construction, where immigrants make up a higher share of employment, and where there were bigger increases in wages and job vacancies.”

This employment result happened despite the inadequate staffing of the U.S. immigration agencies, resulting in huge delays in acting on asylum applications as well as those for green cards and work permits. “One of the few industries with unlimited immigrant visas is agriculture, where the number of guest worker visas “has risen by double-digit percentages over each of the last few years, reaching 371,000 in 2022.”

Difficulties in Raising Birth Rates [4]

Echoing the pessimism of Ross Douthat of the New York Times caused, in part, by China’s recent declining birth rate and population, other Time’s authors say, “History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one. . . . That’s because the playbook for boosting national birthrates is a rather thin one. Most initiatives that encourage families to have more children are expensive, and the results are often limited. Options include cash incentives for having babies, generous parental leave policies and free or subsidized child care.”

This more recent Times article claims, “many young Chinese are not interested in having large families. Vastly more young Chinese people are enrolling in higher education, marrying later and having children later. Raised in single-child households, some have come to see small families as normal. But the bigger impediment to having a second or third child is financial, [and] many parents cite the high cost of housing and education as the main obstacle to having more children.”

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[1]  See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Defining Challenge of the 21st Century (Jan. 28, 2023); Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21st Century (Jan. 30, 2023); Comment: Developments in Africa and Italy Accentuate Douthat’s Concerns (Jan. 31, 2023); Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement (Feb. 3, 2023);Comment: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Economists Surprised by January’s  New Jobs Data (Feb. 4, 2023); Sub-Saharan Africa Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Extremism, Says UN,  (Feb. 8, 2023); Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in U.S. Tight Labor Market, (Feb. 8, 2023).

[2]  Cambon & Smith, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, W.S.J. (Feb. 9, 2023).

[3] DePills, Immigration Rebound Eases Shortage of Workers, Up to a Point, N.Y. Times (Feb. 6, 2023).

[4] Jacobs & Paris, Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden, N.Y. Times (Feb. 9, 2023).

 

 

Continued Demographic Squeeze on Japan  

For 2019 Japan’s population declined by 512,000, the latest sign of the country’s increasing demographic challenges due to declining births (less than 900,000 in 2019, the lowest figure since 1874) and increasing deaths (1.4 million in 2019, the highest since the end of World War II).[1]

Fewer births mean there will be fewer young people entering the workforce to replace retiring workers and support them as they age. This “poses a serious threat to Japan’s economic vitality and the security of its social safety net.”

Moreover, there is no anticipated end to Japan’s declining population. Its “government estimates that the population could shrink by around 16 million people — or nearly 13 percent — over the next 25 years.”

To try to meet this challenge the Japanese government has attempted to increase the fertility rate “by increasing incentives for parents to have more children and reducing obstacles that might discourage those who want to.” But so far that has not been successful for at least the following reasons:

  • First, “marriage is on the decline. The number of marriages dropped by 3,000 year-on-year to 583,000 [in 2019], part of a steep decline over the last decade.”
  • Second, “more people in Japan are putting off childbirth — or not having children at all — either to take advantage of economic opportunities or because they worry that economic opportunities do not exist and feel that they cannot afford children.”
  • Third, parents with younger children face difficult challenges. “Demand for day care in the country far outstrips supply, making it difficult for working women to juggle careers and children. And working men who want to take advantage of the country’s generous paternity leave can find themselves stigmatized by an entrenched cultural belief that a man’s place is in the office, not in the home.”

As noted in another post, Japan is attempting to increase the number of immigrants, contrary to long-standing Japanese norms against immigration. It also is promoting the use of robots to supplement its shrinking workforce.[2]

Other countries are facing similar problems. South Korea has an even lower birth rate than Japan. And China and the U.S. also have declining birth rates.[3]

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[1] Dooley, Japan Shrinks by 500,000 People as Births Fall to Lowest Number Since 1874 (Dec. 24, 2019)  See also Japan Shows Why U.S. Needs More Immigrants, dwkcommentaries.com (Sept. 1, 2019).

[2] Japan Implements New Law Allowing Increased Immigration, dwkcommentaries.com Sept. 15, 2019).

[3] Impact of Declining, Aging Rural Populations, dwkcommentaries.com (May 22, 2019); Other Factors Favoring More U.S. Immigration, dwkcommentaries.com  (May 17, 2018); The Importance of a Growing U.S. Population, dwkcommentaries.com (Mar. 27,  2017).