Japan is nowhere near the most densely populated country on earth. It's the 40th. Less dense than Belgium, Israel, India, Singapore, and South Korea, just to name a few. Calling Japan cramped for space is a stretch.

Japan is also not having any kind of managed population decline, unless they choose counterbalance old people dying with immigration. But so far it doesn't look like Japan is eager to embrace immigration. And that will result in a country with many old people and few working-age people. Hard to thrive with such an unbalanced population. That's why the article calls it a crisis.

>Japan is nowhere near the most densely populated country on earth. It's the 40th. Less dense than Belgium, Israel, India, Singapore, and South Korea, just to name a few. Calling Japan cramped for space is a stretch.

But relatively little of Japan is actually livable: if you look at Honshu, most of the population is in plains on the coast, and most of the inland area mountainous and hardly inhabited.

For example, about a third of the population of Japan lives on the Kanto plain which represents just 4.5% of the land area.

Japan is also 73% mountains, so the populated areas are much denser than a simple population divided by area calculation would give.

> Japan is nowhere near the most densely populated country on earth. It's the 40th. Less dense than Belgium, Israel, India, Singapore, and South Korea, just to name a few. Calling Japan cramped for space is a stretch.

This is good rhetoric but poor logic. The mere existence of denser-populated places has no bearing on whether a particular place is too densely populated, any more than the mere existence of more polluted places has any bearing on whether a particular place is too polluted.

> Japan is also not having any kind of managed population decline, unless they choose counterbalance old people dying with immigration.

The idea that mass immigration is the only way to manage population decline is absurd and unserious.

I've only heard this through word of mouth, but I heard a theory that one of the biggest reasons for the decline is because the work culture doesn't leave much time for life outside of work, diminishing the possibility of starting new families.

> California has a population under 40M (39.2M) and doesn't exactly feel sparsely populated.

Get out of the cities. California is _big_.

Physical space has little to do with economic output.

Problem is, is it something that can be stabilized / reversed? Or will it be somehing that can spiraling into a continuous decline and dangerous?

I read somewhere that a rather high ratio of fertile-age women there don't want children. Smartphone and abundance of cheap entertainment plus tight schedule and budget of modern world (and more other reasons) makes them prefer childless lifestyle.

When you can easily get a seat on the rush hour subway people's attitudes may start changing.

Really, if _you_ want _other people_ to have children, you have to negotiate with and offer them something. That seems to be missing from so much of this demographic discourse.

Is that missing? Lots of countries have all sorts of incentives. And of course it’s strictly not true that direct incentives have been required throughout history, so it’s worth asking why they’d be required now and whether those factors can/should be changed directly.

There's an argument that I think is basically correct that governments are largely free-riding on people's inherent desire for children. This is to say that the value to a government of an additional child is substantially above the incentive they offer the parents of that child.

And I think this is because we sort of have this assumption that society having more kids is a thing we don't have to incentivize, and so we haven't really thought about what is the actual cost/value of that incentivization.

I'd point to the biggest change being the destruction of extended family living in developed countries, and consequently shifting child care costs directly onto working age parents.

Historically, countries got it both ways:

- Working age parents contributed the bulk of their time to the economy (historically: male, more recently: both)

- Older family members, especially grandparents, contributed free child care

Now, geographic mobility and preference have decreased the rate at which grandparents are co-located and available. And, critically, having children later in life has decreased the number of years grandparents are able to help.

If governments provided a net-zero cost, high-quality option for childcare, I feel like it'd substantially change potential family decisions.

But that's one of the substantially-more-expensive-than-current-benefits options you're talking about.

Yeah. When my son was born I realized the geographic separation of the extended family in space is clearly unnatural. I don’t mean that in a moralizing way, just that it’s like walking on your hands rather than on your feet. Doable! You could get used to it! But it’s a hell of a lot harder than the alternative.

Throughout history childless people faced high risk of destitution in old age. That’s no longer true in most developed countries, and I don’t think anybody would want that to be changed.

> and I don’t think anybody would want that to be changed.

There are only 4 choices for developed countries:

1. be destitute in the old age - no one likes it

2. have children and prepare the next generation - barely happening

3. mass immigration - that changes culture and your native population may not like it. See: Italy (Meloni), France (Le Pen), UK (Brexit & immigrants), Sweden...

4. count on technology (AI, Robots) to take care of elders - it just seems dystopian if the youngest person in one's town is 17yo. Kind of like "Children of Men".

Mass immigration is becoming a zero-sum game. Japan's immigrants mostly come from China and Vietnam -- both of which countries have sub-replacement fertility themselves. Quite catastrophically so in China's case.

Now in mid-2023, the only countries with above replacement fertility are not "modern" societies in any sense of the word. e.g., even Bangladesh is now sub-replacement. Mass immigration from places with still-above-replacement fertility into countries like Japan and the UK is a recipe for disaster.

So #2 isn't happening, and #3 should be disfavored on ethical grounds. (Robbing Peter to pay Paul is at best ethically neutral; importing a natural underclass is to everybody's detriment and can only result in upheaval.)

#4 is the best option on the table.

Of course, there are additional ways by which the decline might be managed. Obviously pension and retirement schemes will need to be recalibrated, and older folks should be encouraged to move from the decaying periphery into large regional hubs where they can take advantage of support and medical services.

Historically, for most of the population in the majority of situations, children were an inexpensive asset, but things have changed. Raising children nowadays is outrageously expensive, and even owning a house that's an item of basic financial security for a family is already out of reach for a lot of people.

So the direct incentives that you claim that have never existed were there all the time, having a family with kids were the natural and expected thing to do. It used to go good and easy, but now all the economic incetives go against it.

I don't like to keep bringing back the old and tired trope of how the boomer discourse and worldview are completely out of touch with the reality, but when it comes to the debate about demographics it's completely impossible not to.

I am quite certain that there's no easy way for governments to raise TFR. Hungary and S.Korea have tried, with relatively generous grants and incentives for parents, but the results are at best equivocal in Hungary's case and null in S.Korea's. What they're doing clearly isn't working.

So there are two options left on the table, which are bad but not utterly unreasonable:

1. Huge cash payouts for parents of children coupled with extremely generous incentives, both far beyond anything offered today. e.g., a $100k to $200k grant per child upon birth, with all hospital fees associated with childbirth covered by the state, free access to government childcare, and extremely generous tax credits for parents.

This might result in the wrong "sort of people" giving birth to many children... but at this point it's the one thing that hasn't been tried, it would resolve the concerns you mention in your post in a totally general sense, and it could also be a way to raise underclasses from poverty.

2. Manage the decline by investing in industries that can support an aging population, in programs that aim to pull people from decaying small towns into regional hubs, and by renormalizing retirement and pension schemes.

If there's a third way that isn't crazy -- which is to say bad _and_ unreasonable -- I'd like to hear it. (Examples of crazy ideas might include buying newborns from parents and raising them in government institutions, breeding children in artificial wombs, totally unfettered mass-immigration schemes, etc.)

3. Get rid of the aspects of capitalism which make it too difficult to have kids.

It isn't crazy. The system we have now is crazy. The fact that we're mentioning artificial wombs instead of destroying capitalism is worrying.

But what are those aspects, exactly? And would getting rid of them not result in a system that's alien to modern sensibilities in developed countries?

To a certain extent, it seems to me that very generous benefits for parents -- _or_ a total restructuring of retirement and pension plans, with the reinvestment of some of the gains in pro-natal policies -- is "getting rid of the aspects of capitalism which make it too difficult to have kids." Or at least side-stepping those aspects. And these policies should be not impossible to implement. "Destroying capitalism" on the other hand...

> But what are those aspects, exactly?

If I was to encapsulate it in one word: pressure. Or insecurity. Pressure to work, pressure to make "sound" financial decisions, of which committing to a dependent is not "sound".

I'd say it's closely related: Force, the threat of force.

There should be options available to do nothing. We have private companies extracting "stuff" from the ground and privatizing the resulting profits. This is crazy. We throw out something like 1/2 of all food, which on average comes from hundreds of miles away so that food costs money, which if you don't have you starve.

We subsidize farms, the military, all kinds of things - but we privatize the profits.

There should be no threat of homelessness or starvation in our system. You want more than baseline, you have to work and compete. But we spend all this money to prop up this shitty system, I do not understand it.

> children were an inexpensive asset ... Raising children nowadays is outrageously expensive,

not only that but earlier, your kids mainly benefited yourself as your social safety net when your grew old. Now, your kids generally benefit the whole society. So the cost of kids has gone up and is privatized, while the benefits are socialized. No wonder people are opting out of having kids.

> And of course it’s strictly not true that direct incentives have been required throughout history

Have people forgotten that effective contraception is basically (with a few exceptions) a 20th century thing? I don't think HN really understands the sexual revolution at all.

The relevance of this claim being that people primarily had children as a byproduct of wanting to have sex, versus a desire to procreate?

Contraception shouldn’t change the number of people who intend to procreate.

> people primarily had children as a byproduct of wanting to have sex

Yes? Again, this is so obvious I'm surprised to write it out.

> Contraception shouldn’t change the number of people who intend to procreate.

And yet it clearly did, largely by giving people the option to not procreate without having to remain forever unmarried and a low-status part of their father's household.

It's also preconditioned on education for women, both in learning the mechanics and choices involved in procreation and giving them some economic options other than that.

None of this is new or surprising; it's been deliberate policy for years! Here's a discussion of the successful reduction in fertility in Bangladesh, for example https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441730.2022.2...

Yes I believe adjustment on population density and benefits will change the birth rate somehow. When babies are starting to be investment than outright expenses will change people's mind. However will it happen when the situation is still good or when it is already in danger.

Too many elderly that need to be supported by too few productive population is a dangerous situation.

A misogynistic culture is probably a bigger issue than smartphones in causing some women to decide against having children.

Thank you! “Why on Earth wouldn’t an educated adult want to be pressured out of her interesting job and back into complete dependence as soon as she has a child? Must be the mobile apps, not that taste of freedom they’ve had…”

A year of (mostly) maternal leave is silver, but a legal framework that normalizes working high-skill jobs part-time for several years is absolute gold to prudent young to middle aged women with aging parents but some desire to still have kids.

Aging parents: delighted to have them still with us, but on a practical level, not much lightening the child-rearing load. All the capacity for nurture, none of the capacity of chasing down a three year old who saw a dump truck drive by.

My small child’s grandparents and dear great-aunts are mid-70s to mid-80s. Two generations of having kids late will do that. My working part-time and flexibly has enabled us to promote my child’s relationships with them and makes it easier for me to help them, which they need a bit more every year.

I didn’t have to make the stark choice I see my friends back in the States making: go back to work before the baby is mobile and full time, or give up any serious job for the next several years and get to start over a decade later.

You go to the countries with the highest birth rate in the world and they are no feminist paradise.

Japan for sure ranks pretty high on women freedom and rights and chances are that the track for these issues has been improving in the country over the years, not declining.

But facts speak otherwise - TFR is very high in traditional conservative societies (see Nigeria).

>They needn't fall for the "population growth at all costs" meme, and I hope they don't.

It's so tiring reading this nonsense rhetoric over and over again.

Population decline resulting from decades of abysmal fertility rates is absolutely a horrible thing. There's no "meme" here to be had.

When people stop working, they stop contributing to society but they don't stop taking from it.

For as long as human society has formed, the solution was either the working population being productive enough for everyone else or the non working dying off soon after the fact.

When fertility rates are in the shitter for a long time, you guarantee that at some point, the working population will be far far lower than what is necessary to support the rest.

A demographic and societal collapse will ensue. Many benefits and safety nets for many people including the working will cease to exist simply because it can no longer be sustained. Once this hits in full force, it will last decades. It's that simple.

And it has nothing absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or communism or whatever -ism you might want to scapegoat. For as long as humans need to work to survive this will be a problem.

The problems Japan is having, South Korea is looking to speedrun. It's so bad that it's too late to forestall a collapse. Even if the country magically started having replenishing birth rates immediately, in at most a few decades, we'll be seeing a collapse that would last at least 20 years. This is the best case scenario. It's straight up apocalyptic.

This is what a population table looks like for a country that had a fertility rate of 6 at year 0 and then an extinction level rate of 1 for decades (SK is actually decidedly worse at 0.78 now).

(148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns,

(194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns

(208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns

(187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns

(93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns

(46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns

(23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn

It's like climate change. You go decades with everything looking normal at first glance. By the time, everything doesn't look so normal it's to late to do anything other than save your population from extinction. (Assuming you can even do that. A lot of people seem to miss the fact that not one country that has suffered declining fertility rates has managed to reverse the trend despite trying for decades. Not one)

I have to admit that it's incredibly amusing to me that humanity could go extinct because we basically just didn't feel like bothering to keep the whole thing going. I'm certainly one of those who doesn't really see the point in it.

But I suspect there will always be some fundamentalist religious groups who will find reasons to reproduce no matter the economic or environmental realities of the future Earth.

Happily, it's much more likely we will go extinct far less ... volitionally.

Always like to start the day on a high note ... where's that Addams Family comic book I like to keep handy for that extra kick I need to get the day started off right...

Is it really a "horrible thing"?

You yourself mention climate change. There are increasing fights over WATER among PEOPLE [1], even as "freshwater" resources are being utilized to an extent where it's estimated that 1/3 of freshwater species are endangered or at risk of becoming endangered [2], microplastics everywhere [3], OTHER species being accelerated into extinction at a continuously increasing rate in general, etc.

Also, what happened to the "promise of automation" and "promise of mass production"? I thought we were all supposed to be "chillin' on the French Riviera while machines did so much that none of us had to work more than, say, 10 hours per week?" [4] ... I.e., shouldn't we be able to make do with fewer workers?? The even bigger laugh, there, is how much everyone is freaking out about "AI" now.

Decline in fertility in a more "organic" way, now (due to economics, impact of EDCs for years, etc.) is far better (for US, even, as a species) than "keeping the accelerator mashed to the floor as we barrel towards the cliff" [5] (when it'll be "Soylent Green" time for basically everyone, one way or another).

[1] https://fortune.com/2023/04/15/colorado-river-shrinking-cali...

[2] https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-the-north-american-be...

[3] https://www.academia.edu/download/59765553/Human_Consumption...

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward

[5] https://youtu.be/BGtEp7zFdrc

> Is it really a "horrible thing"?

Undoubtedly so.

> Also, what happened to the "promise of automation" and "promise of mass production"?

Those were not based in reality. Or a more generous way to put it is they were based in 1920's reality but you want a 2020's lifestyle now. eg. do you want to have food, healthcare and housing of 1920's? It will suck, especially if there are not enough young workers.

See this recent article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alo...

California is full of public lands https://4printablemap.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/nationa...

Non-public lands you will see on there are the coastline, the desert, and the Central Valley. If you drive the northern parts of highway 1, you’ll see many parts do seem very empty in between SF and LA. Compared to the development along the US east coast it is night and day. If you drive through the Central Valley, you’ll be enveloped in farmland. And the desert is the desert, nearly uninhabited. All of these places feel very sparsely populated.

California is mostly desert, national forest, and fire country. LA, and SD exist in their current state due to large scale water works that bring water from outside of California.

For an American comparison, the northeastern US is home to 43% more People than California and is only 17% larger. In both California and the US, the population is concentrated on the coasts.

Would it be so surprising that a nation with a large coast, mild weather, and plenty of water would have a large population?

Japan: 377,973 km² [0]

California: 423,970 km² [1]

You are off by roughly 9 times. Not a small mistake.

[0]: https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/index.php

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California

Japan: 145,937 sq.m.

California: 163,696 sq.m.

163,696 - 10% = 147326.4

I said "10 percent" not "10 times." And it does so happen that Japan is roughly 10% smaller than California. (In fact it's closer to 11% smaller, but I rounded it out.)

Oh, my bad. You are right. Somehow when I read your comment I thought you meant 10 times. Not sure why that happened.

> California has a population under 40M (39.2M) and doesn't exactly feel sparsely populated.

California also has some rather terrible housing density issues (exacerbated by pro-land-speculator policies like Prop 13), which is a big part of why it feels crowded despite having a fraction of the population per square mile.

If you don't think California feels empty, it suggests that you haven't seen a lot of California.

> California has a population under 40M (39.2M) and doesn't exactly feel sparsely populated.

Tell me you have never been to California, or never ventured out of SF/LA, without telling me so.

> A managed population decline could be a good thing for Japan, its people, and its environment.

Is the current decline managed? Doesn't look like it. But would be great to see any sources about their government planning this.