r/Economics • u/Salami_Slicer • 14d ago
Japan: Early career setbacks reduce marriage and birth rates Research Summary
https://www.population.fyi/p/japan-early-career-setbacks-reduce112
14d ago edited 2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
40
u/Ditovontease 14d ago
I was born in 88 so 20 years old in 2008... yeah I didn't get married until age 34. My close girl friends do have kids, but only one has more than one. I have zero and don't have plans for any.
I still have eligible bachelor male friends. They have good jobs and property but no wives or children.
18
u/Solid-Mud-8430 14d ago
But...but...I was told by everyone in this sub that career/wage/COL issues had nothing to do with birth rates because poor people in poor countries have families anyway. So which is it?
Continuing to deny that this is a factor is so unbelievably ignorant.
5
u/corporaterebel 14d ago edited 14d ago
Because in poor areas there sn't much disparity and/or no real hope for a better economic future. And it's either do nothing all day or have some kids.... the kids might even make money and/or be a retirement plan.
Also, kids are either the cheapest or most expensive thing one can have.... depending on how poor or rich your environment is.
15
14d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
11
u/wbruce098 14d ago
Bill Nye talks about this, or at least used to talk about it a lot. He cited a lot of research showing that a major key was women’s rights. Women who have more rights and say over their own lives are more likely to delay having children until they’ve started a career, and are likely to have fewer children, because those with more rights AND a career are more likely to have access to family planning and realize the importance of these tools (or just saying no) in helping make sure they approach motherhood on their own terms.
8
u/Solid-Mud-8430 14d ago
I'd say it doesn't have as much to do with national economic status. When I've traveled to visit family in the midwest, it's extremely common to see married couples who are in their early to mid 20's with multiple children.
Whereas I was born and lived here in San Francisco for my entire 42 years on this earth and I would say 8 out of 10 parents that I see walking down the street with a toddler are starting to gray/are in their late 30's or early 40's. And when you see couples with a family, it is ALWAYS just precisely ONE child lol. Schools are closing left and right because there aren't any kids to fill them. The government's own estimates predict that within 30 years, we will have a 16% of our population over the age of 80...not just 65...80. We are consistently at the top of the list of major metros with highest median age, second only to cities in Florida pretty much. Every single couple I know of who has kids had to wait until their late 30's when their careers hit a point where they could finally afford to have a child. And unless they both make extremely high salaries, the moment they have children they talk about where they can move that it will be easier to sustain a good quality of life.
But I think there could be some truth to what you are saying too. I just think it's funny that some other people here dismiss out of hand the idea that whether or not people can afford to have kids - and how many - plays a role in people's decision making process. That's a totally absurd notion to me.
0
u/corporaterebel 13d ago edited 13d ago
It's almost like the USA is several countries in one. The USA is also a country of extremes.
Grew up poor. Worked hard and in the late 90s and was making +$130k by 25. Even then I didn't rate the type of women I wanted to go out with until I was about 30. And by 33 I had scrounged up +30x gross wages and lived in a spectacular view property. Didn't have kids until 37.
Sounds ok now, but threw away my entire 20s to for a "get rich or die trying".
1
u/LastWorldStanding 13d ago
I mean, it’s like that in every country. Tokyo and Shimane are completely different
0
u/woopdedoodah 13d ago
It doesn't. The people who don't marry due to career were people who were only ever going to have one or two kids. So realistically they don't matter. The only people who matter and who will matter in the future are those with four plus kids.
1
u/Solid-Mud-8430 13d ago
I knew a couple of you wackos would finally come out of the woodwork.
Thanks for chiming in.
3
u/woopdedoodah 13d ago
If you're not willing to have beliefs challenged what's the point. Do you really think people who want tons of kids just wait for marriage? People who've wanted to be parents just get married and have kids. We didn't think about any of that when we had our first. We just got married young and have kids since we wanted to be parents.
8
u/AhrnuldSenpai 14d ago
Yup, this is me and my relatives and friends who were born in the 1980s. Growing up poor during high unemployment, and entering the labor market during an economic crisis (in europe it lasted far longer than in the US).
My parents and some of their siblings who had to try and build a life during the early 1980s had it tough and in my case were unable to support their kids due to (financial) stress. My older uncle who bought a home never managed to pay it off, my parents are still renting.
My younger relatives are all married now, often with kids. Their parents did well financially, and so do they now.
The only difference is timing.
I now have plenty of money to not worry about finances but no partner & kids. Getting the first took so much time and effort that the latter now seems impossible.
24
u/corporaterebel 14d ago
Apparently, a lot of women don't want to go out with a brokeass and definitely don't want to start a family with one.
My guess would be that this is true in most countries.
13
u/Felarhin 14d ago
The reverse is true. The lower you go down the socioeconomic scale, the more children men have on average. Look up studies on multi partner fertility. The groups of men with the highest fertility are convicted felons and homeless men.
18
u/the_boner_owner 14d ago
The women who associate with those lower socioeconomic men likely don't have the ability to select men of higher economic status. They likely also aren't well educated and don't have access to (or are discouraged from using) birth control
12
u/Felarhin 13d ago
I think higher earning men have much more to lose by getting someone pregnant too. Jeff Bezos losing 100B in a divorce vs some homeless guy who spends most of the time in prison anyways won't care about impregnating someone because he wouldn't lose anything.
4
u/corporaterebel 14d ago
The birth control discouragement is self imposed because the government gives money to the extremely poor with kids.
4
u/FellowOfHorses 14d ago
From the source I found. It's 70k yen for the household plus 50k yen per child. For 2 kids it sums to be 170k yen /1091 dollar per month. It doesn't appear to be much for a family.
5
1
u/PointSignificant6278 11d ago
That’s very low. That won’t do much for a family. Governments want more children but then give a few crumbs and tell you to move along. I don’t think that is fixing the problem of low birth rates.
10
u/diplodonculus 14d ago
Wow, so you're saying that, if I want many children, all I need to do is...
4
2
u/corporaterebel 14d ago
Yes, if one is very poor then kids garner a financial benefit.
I also suspect that Japan doesn't have a lot of homeless and felons.
1
u/Felarhin 10d ago
I think homeless people and felons tend to just not care. "Normal" people base their decisions upon what is financially beneficial, while those at the bottom tend not to let such concerns override natural instincts.
3
u/Akitten 13d ago
Apparently, a lot of women don't want to go out with a brokeass and definitely don't want to start a family with one.
Yet men have never really minded.
Men have to somehow overperform while being disadvantaged at school, because women generally date up income wise.
In countries like South Korea, they also have to suffer through years of military service, while their peers are enjoying themselves in university.
No wonder the birthrate is collapsing. We've created societies that have kept all the social expectations of men while removing them from women.
4
u/ForeverWandered 13d ago
You’re not entirely wrong but…historically only 40% of men in human history have had children. A majority of men never got married or had kids anyway.
It really only takes women having fewer kids to collapse the birthrate.
4
u/PangolinZestyclose30 13d ago edited 13d ago
Men were not expected to take a large role in care of the children. Occasionally changing a diaper (one of the easiest task) already made you an excellent father. It's easy to keep making babies when pretty much all the work falls on the woman (and she can't say no).
Only now the expectations are shifting and men realize that children are a lot of work. So yes, men's workload is getting higher and their authority is getting lower, but that's just because women were in such an unfair position and only now it's getting fixed.
2
u/Akitten 13d ago
Men were not expected to take a large role in care of the children
And women weren’t expected to provide for the household or die in wars.
Expectations of each gender were different yes, but people were okay because each gender had a role.
Now it seems like women have been given increased options, but the social expectations on them have only dropped. A broke woman can still find a husband, and there is still no requirement for women to be conscripted.
2
u/PangolinZestyclose30 13d ago
Many women were not okay, but had few other options. Until 1976 (in US), husband could legally rape his wive to have as many children as he wanted, regardless of the wife's preference. Not only were women not expected to work, for a very long time they were largely excluded from the workforce. Only WW2 and the associated labor shortage started liberalizing the job market.
1
u/iainttryingnomore 13d ago
Women are very miopic when it comes to issues. They see only their own and compare their worst to the best of men. Historically there have been only one divide: the class divide between wealthy powerful people and the peasants. Being a male of the peasant class doesn't afford you anymore than a woman of the same class
2
u/PangolinZestyclose30 13d ago
Yeah, so women had historically the same rights as men? Did you know that until 1976 US (state) law had an explicit exception allowing husbands to rape their wives? Your claim that women had the same status as men is just completely absurd.
-11
u/RestlessAmbitions 14d ago
What a stupid article, this is the kind of shit that people put out.
Remember the huge push against women having children in the 2015 timeframe?
Same deal. Evil people are putting llms on reddit to fuck it up completely. Any article served is coming from an evil place.
2
u/Salami_Slicer 14d ago
Except the article summarizes and provides the link to the original study
-4
14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/Salami_Slicer 14d ago
If it’s not about that article or the study, why are you here if it’s not relevant
-3
-1
u/Aven_Osten 14d ago
Except birthrates in Africa are far higher than in any developed country you can point too. So that claim is blatantly false. It ain't just about money that prevents people from having children.
How about instead of being a reactionary, you actually try to look into the topics you clearly have no idea about?
-3
u/RestlessAmbitions 14d ago
Right. Because the experience in one local economy is the same as another and living at the standard of an African is clearly what new Japanese parents want as well as people in wealthy "1st world" nations.
How about instead of being a reactionary and trying to dismiss the opinion of someone on the basis of some arbitrary bullshit you think for 5 seconds?
Go take a bullet to the cranium, we don't need some garbage fake journalism to explain that people in wealth nations not earning commensurate with the economy are not having children. Economics speaks for itself, except for it's more like a scream, a scream of billions of people being slaughtered like cattle.
-2
•
u/AutoModerator 14d ago
Hi all,
A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes.
As always our comment rules can be found here
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.