HONOLULU (May 24) -- Despite more than a decade of government efforts, Japan has not been able to reverse its 'baby bust,' said an East-West Center population expert. It's a problem with potentially alarming consequences and creates a huge strain on Japan's social security system as the percentage of elderly continues to grow, the result of fewer births and longer life spans.
"How Japan responds to these challenges could have a profound influence on health care, elderly care and economic growth in the decades ahead," said Robert Retherford, Senior Fellow and coordinator of Population and Health Studies at the Center.
Since the early 1990s, Japanese policymakers have been trying to coax people into marrying earlier and raising bigger families, but without success. The country's fertility has fallen from a post-World War II high of 4.54 births per woman in 1947 to 1.29 in 2003. "Japan's population will start to decline next year, and that will cause more problems," Retherford noted. The present pattern of age-specific birth rates, if unchanged in the future, will eventually cause Japan's population to decline at a constant rate of 38% every 30 years.
The Japanese government has not been able to reverse the fall of fertility despite 14 years of effort, he said. A variety of factors have contributed to the 'baby bust,' most notably the increase in the number of Japanese marrying later or not at all. In 2000, the average age at marriage was 30.8 years for men and 28.5 years for women -- among the highest in the world. Moreover, the age-specific first marriage rates observed in the year 2000 imply that 25% of men and 19% of women will still be single when they reach age 50. This is a far cry from the "universal marriage society" of only 40 years ago when almost everyone married.
Retherford said that these changes have occurred partly because of huge educational and employment gains by women. Ninety-nine percent of the women in Japan now work before marriage, almost all of them for pay outside the home. Women are reluctant to leave the work force to have children and give up the income they've gained in the workplace. There has also been a big decline in the percentage of marriages that are arranged and in the percentage of young couples living with parents. Add to that the cost of childcare and education for their children.
It is useful to consider Japan's population dilemma in a global context, because approximately 30 countries -- including South Korea, China and most European nations -- have fertility rates below 1.5 births per woman. (The U.S. rate is about 2.1, buoyed by immigrant birth rates and a level of unwanted fertility that is high relative to that in other industrial countries.)
"It's the nature of modern society," Retherford said. "There are broad similarities across all modern societies, and these similarities are the basic forces at work here."
Very few countries with a fertility rate below 1.5 births have been able to reverse this trend and raise fertility back up as high as 1.5, and none has managed to raise it back to anywhere near the replacement level of 2.1, he said. Japan's pro-fertility approach has relied on providing subsidies for childbearing and encouraging employers to create policies conducive to raising families. Government-subsidized services -- which have included childcare leave, expansion of daycare centers and after-school programs -- are very costly.
"The danger in placing much of the burden on employers, as the government has tended to do, is that employers may avoid hiring women because it becomes very costly for them," he said. "Also firms may become less efficient and less competitive in the global economy, and that's counterproductive."
The dilemma for the government, Retherford said, is how to restructure the economy to make it more efficient and competitive in the global marketplace while restructuring society to be more marriage friendly and child friendly, without jeopardizing women's hard-won gains in education and employment. "It won't be easy and it won't be cheap," he said. "And it's not just Japan. A lot more countries are in the same boat."
Robert Retherford can be reached at (808)944-7403 or retherfr@eastwestcenter.org .
Based on a paper by Robert Retherford and Naohiro Ogawa, "Japan's Baby Bust: Causes, Implications, and Policy Responses," East-West Center Working Papers, Population Series No. 118. Downloadable at http://www.eastwestcenter.org/res-rp-quicksearchresults.asp?step=2&series=14&subseries=60.