NYTimes | A shrinking population creates ripples that are felt from the economy to politics.
With
one of the lowest birthrates in the world and little immigration, Japan
has seen this milestone coming for years, if not decades. Yet efforts
by the government to encourage women to have more children have had
little effect, and there is little public support for opening the doors
to mass immigration.
“These
numbers are like losing an entire prefecture,” Shigeru Ishiba, a
cabinet minister in charge of efforts to revitalize Japan’s especially
depopulated rural areas, said at a news conference. A handful of Japan’s
47 prefectures, administrative districts similar to provinces or
states, have populations of less than a million.
Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe responded to the census report by reiterating a
long-term goal of keeping the population from falling below 100 million.
Projections by the government and international bodies like the United
Nations suggest that will be difficult, however. The latest United
Nations estimates suggest that Japan’s population will fall to 83
million by the end of the century, down 40 percent from its peak.
Mr.
Abe’s goal depends on raising the birthrate to 1.8 children per woman,
up from 1.4 now and higher than it has been since the early 1980s. Rates
have, in fact, risen slightly compared with a decade ago. But with
women marrying later — in part, demographers say, to avoid pressure to
give up their careers — a more decisive turnaround looks far off.
Japan
will not necessarily suffer just because it is smaller. Many countries
with fewer people are just as prosperous, and in a country known for
jam-packed rush-hour trains, there may even be benefits. Japan’s
economic output has been stagnant for years, but the picture looks less
dire, economists say, once a shrinking work force is taken into account.
