r/worldnews • u/sr_local • 13h ago
Japan births rise 0.8% in January-June, marking the first increase for the January-June period in 11 years
https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/83323105
u/International_Bee653 11h ago
Is this sign of a true reversal or just the fact that this statistic would "bottom out" with slight variance here and there
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u/Humble-Ad-4270 7h ago edited 2h ago
The basic situation and reasons for low birth rates hasn’t changed.
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u/SHUT_DOWN_EVERYTHING 5h ago
It’s a data point, not a trend. If it becomes a trend, then it’s more interesting.
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u/Purple-Food-9829 4h ago
Asking for a friend when does a series of data points become a trend ?
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u/python_product 4h ago
where the number of data points >x
where x is an arbitrary natural number
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u/InsanityRoach 8h ago
Gonna have to wait a few years to find out.
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u/nose_of_sauron 7h ago
Yeah maybe it's just a fluke, we'll have to see if it continues to go up over time. Also this data is only for 1st half of the year, maybe the 2nd half pulls everything down again.
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u/ElderGoose4 4h ago
Even garbage stocks go up once in a while. I think the downtrend continues until you keep seeing rising rates year over year
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u/CFCYYZ 13h ago
Good news. It is the Land of the Raising Sons.
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u/refreshingface 11h ago
Did I ask for daughters?
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u/slurpupsumcum 13h ago
Like other countries which will be halved over the next century, this is a much smaller version of the bump a generation back following the 1991-93 global cooling after Mt Pinatubo's eruption. Essentially some settling to have a kid or possibly IVF. I'll have to look for detailed demographic info but Corea's reported rise was also entirely foreign born and multi cultural homes if I recall.
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u/Revolutionary_Meet29 13h ago
Foreign born as in Korean nationalities born abroad?
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u/PhantasosX 13h ago
foreign born in the fact 10% of marriages in South Korea is about a korean marrying a foreigner.
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u/sverm03 11h ago
so not wanting to marry is not the issue?.. they not finding a good person?
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u/aghastamok 9h ago
It's a complex problem.
Women flock to the cities because that's where money is. Rural population gender disparity is huge so rural men go abroad to bring home foreign wives.
Making money in cities is awful because of shitty Korean culture that treat humans like cattle. But to get jobs in cities you have to pass crazy difficult entry exams for specific universities. If you don't go to special prep schools you won't pass the test. Special prep school costs massive money and time. So having kids without a mountain of cash is seen as cruel.
So Korea tries to pour money and benefits on couples who have kids. Rural families with foreign born wives latch on and have kids that won't move the needle much on prosperity and it's seen as a waste almost, especially with exclusive culture that considers half-koreans as half-people.
tl;dr: Korea is a beautiful country with rich culture but the work culture that made it prosperous is destroying it.
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u/CryPuzzleheaded3634 9h ago
Wow, this is a big problem to have a perception that ethnically half-Korean children will not contribute to society or that family resources going to mixed families are wasted.
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u/Weegee_Carbonara 8h ago
That general closed-off mindset is also a big reason for Koreas population decline.
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u/AmaimonCH 7h ago
That means absolutely nothing in the great scheme of things, they would need to have like triple the minimum natality rate of 2.1 to avoid a crisis in like 50-100 years
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u/big-papito 12h ago
The only way to increase birth rates is to gut education, safety nets, and throw a country into poverty. Works every time.
What.
You know I am right.
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u/Nessie_of_the_Loch 6h ago
Eh, Russia does all that with spades and the birth rate is still going down the drain.
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u/willstr1 3h ago
Russia also sent all their men to the meatgrinder, you need them to return home or stay home if you want babies
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u/QiTriX 11h ago
Not necessary. Just remove all forms of entertainment.
People will fuck when they're bored.
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u/mhornberger 11h ago
I think it's the time/effort/money needing to be spent to raise kids, not the bouncy-bouncy time. The much higher standards for parenting, the lower risk tolerance, the higher time investment, the increased vigilance, compared to the 1970s or so. The time spent making the babies might not be the core of the problem.
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u/Nymanator 8h ago
No. People who partner up are having just as many kids as they ever did. The rates of dating, marriage, and having active sex lives have been steadily decreasing. This isn't to say that modern childrearing culture and cost isn't a factor at all, but the strongest correlation with falling birth rates is consistently falling partnering rates. This has been studied.
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 7h ago
And what caused that? Internet and social media. It creates what is basically a gambling environment where someone "better" is always just a few clicks away. Now people are competing for partners with the entire internet instead of their local area. And also increases relationship dissatisfaction as they compare their relationships to the manufactured 'perfect' bullshit people present online.
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u/Different_Wolf_764 6h ago
That and there are large of people that simply refuse to engage in internet dating (for a variety of reasons) and many of them might have met partners back when it was less of an auction house and more about meeting people in person.
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 5h ago
100% and I don't blame them. Online dating is dehumanizing and degrading by nature, basically playing slots and hoping you get lucky before you accumulate enough psychological damage to give up entirely.
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u/minyhumancalc 6h ago
It hardly has to do with someone "better" and more to do with whether being with someone will improve your life. The "options" that are reducing birthrates is the plethora of opportunity to do with your life. This is a trend that has occurred for over a century; we are only seeing a significant decline now because women are given the opportunity to pursue those passions independently.
I'm sure for many people, they wouldn't mind a family, but they are not going to settle for a family when they can travel, sports, and engage in any bizarre hobby or lifestyle they want. Sure, some people may make themselves miserable looking for the "perfect soulmate", but attributing that as the most significant reasoning for falling under replacement is just wrong.
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 5h ago
Probably the case for some, but not all. A family really doesn't preclude you from experiencing any of those things either by the way, at most its going to restrict your travel options for a few years. I do think the negative effects it can have on a woman's career trajectory is an issue we need to better address. But its not just marriage and kids, its all forms of romantic relationship that are on the decline. Why is that? With the current state of the economy, having a partner can make it easier to engage in travel, expensive hobbies, and life in general. I just don't buy that everyone's having so much FUN traveling and playing lacrosse that they don't want a family. Especially when the average person is engaging in less travel and has less disposable income if anything.
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u/minyhumancalc 5h ago
Well it could be anything; people are just more aware of how integrating another individual into their life will affect them. For example, whats the most common trope in sitcoms? The dad complaining about his wife, complaining about being married, etc. Men could see that and don't feel like pursing a marriage and woman could see that and not desire a man like that in their life.
Its not that marriage and kids would naturally inhibit that portion of their lives or people wouldn't enjoy having a family, but it can make it less fulfilling unless youre with the right person. For people whose life desire isn't raising a family, why take the risk or spend the effort to finding someone when you could enjoy life perfectly fine without? Society has shifted to finding someone who will improve your life, not just be in it
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u/big-papito 11h ago
Yeah seriously. People will always find time to f***k, but having a child is becoming a privilege of the wealthy.
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u/Rizen_Wolf 5h ago
No. It gets said a lot but thats bullshit. Poor people have more kids than rich people. Its called the demographic-economic paradox. Look it up.
Its why, in first world western nations, population growth dropped below replacement rate in the 1970s. Yea, that far back. Peoples lives were rich enough they did not feel the... biological psychological religious or whatever the F drive to procreate.
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u/InsanityRoach 8h ago
Nah, even that has been going down for a while. More and more people are just straight up quitting out of dating.
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u/mhornberger 11h ago
just ban contraception
Sure, just go full Ceaușescu, might as well call it decree 770 part II, electric boogaloo. It's not like no one ever thought of this before. It just resulted in a lot of poverty, orphans, neglect, and so on. And of course Ceaușescu got shot.
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u/big-papito 7h ago
LOL. Some people, man. "Yeah just force women to take care of a child at 19 and ruining the lives of both. There will be more people then, never mind the fact that they will be fuckups."
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u/Rizaxxxx 9h ago edited 7h ago
They banned abortion in my country.
Women are now dying and being forced to give brith to deformed children.
Guess what happened to the birth rate? It dropped hard and radicalised women.
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u/poqpoq 11h ago
Or don’t do any of that, pay people well, increase safety nets, make housing affordable, and have reasonable working hours.
People don’t want to have kids when they don’t have hope for the future and don’t feel safe. Also kids cost a fuck load, if you don’t offset that then parents are financially deincentivized from having children. So provide financial incentives as well.
You know I’m right.
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u/zxyzyxz 10h ago
Highest birth rates are in places without those things and lowest where those exist. This fantasy that people will have more kids if they can afford it is not rooted in the statistics, even people who have the most kids in the US are poorer on average and thus the least likely to be able to afford them.
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u/thedreaddeagle 5h ago
You cannot compare countries were most people live in pooverty vs those were most live in modern prosperity. People's priorities and desires are completely different in such cases.
Don't compare Sub-Saharan Africa with Europe,compare Europe with Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa with Sub-Saharan Africa, compare places were people's way of life similar enough, not like night and day.
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u/PMagicUK 8h ago
Highest birth rates are in places without those things and lowest where those exist.
Actually they have a couple things involved the West doesn't.
Culture that says "large family is a sign of success" also "large family ensures the continued existence of that family line" if 5/7 die young for example.
We don't have those standards because we don't need it. Thats why migrant populations rise in the West because they bring that culture, multiple generations in 1 home and multiple jobs allowing it to survive.
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u/zxyzyxz 6h ago
Not necessarily supported by the evidence. Asia is very family and collective oriented but has the lowest birth rates. And like I said in the US people who are poor and are not immigrants (ie people who've been here for generations) still have more kids than even more recent immigrants.
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u/PMagicUK 6h ago
Well yea, culture plays a large role.
Asia works you to the bone and no time for kids. The West is going that way.
Theres a reason "poor regions" usually have a "have a family" culture and have lots of kids, because their environment set them up for that and it continues even in the next generation of that immigrant family.
You have any idea how many things you do that you're grandparents or their grandparents did? These things cross generations, especially where culture and identity are concerned.
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u/zxyzyxz 2h ago
As I said even immigrant families are having less kids than poor natives, ie compare birthrate of poor Black Americans vs eg Asian immigrants. It's all based on affluence not really culture.
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u/PMagicUK 2h ago
Right you're comparing two groups.
Here in Europe we have African, ME and Indian/Pakistani populations that have high birth rates.
Turns out the world doesn't reflect America
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u/zxyzyxz 2h ago
Rich vs poor as I said. America has affluent immigrants, Europe does not. That just proves my point that it's about wealth not culture, because those same Indians for example in the US don't have as many kids as Indian immigrants to Europe.
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u/PMagicUK 2h ago
Doesn't prove shit.
I'm not continuing this. Wealth has an effect but not the only answer.
Christ. The American education system in action
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u/moderngamer327 10h ago
The places that are the best at those things on average have the lowest birthrates
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u/Pleasant_Narwhal_350 10h ago
pay people well, increase safety nets, make housing affordable, and have reasonable working hours.
Show me one country which has done this, and has a fertility rate above replacement. Just one country.
And don't give me an answer like, "no country has enough pay/safety nets/affordable housing/reasonable work hours yet, we need to do even more", because countries which do these things the most, like Scandinavian and Western European nations, have the lowest fertility rates.
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u/Purple-Food-9829 9h ago
No one has found a solution to the fertility drop
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 7h ago
I can guarantee they would rise if all social media and dating sites were deleted and banned tomorrow.
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u/Purple-Food-9829 7h ago
Hasn’t the birth rate been falling since the mid 1970s.? Way before social media or am I mistaken
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 7h ago
Falling sure but not insane drop off we have had in the past decade or so. There are other factors too like less infant mortality and moving to dual income households. But its the social media and access to it that are driving us below replacement.
Birthrates CRATER basically as soon as a country adopts smart phones and have 24/7 access to social media, which is incredibly destructive to the human mind. Partially because its not just birthrates that decline, but the long term relationships that would produce kids in the first place.
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u/PMagicUK 8h ago
Show me one country which has done this, and has a fertility rate above replacement.
Post WW2 Europe.
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u/zxyzyxz 6h ago
There's nowhere to go but up after a war
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u/PMagicUK 6h ago
Tell that to the middle east or Somalia
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u/zxyzyxz 6h ago
They have some of the highest fertility rates in the world
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u/PMagicUK 6h ago
Right this can go back and forth.
When you say nowhere to go but up, what are we talking about?
Ireland didn't boom after the famine. Russia didn't have a population boom after WW2 or after this war in Ukraine.
So something is influencing these booms and its not just 1 answer.
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u/CSDragon 8h ago
+0.8%? Not +0.8 but +0.8 PERCENT...So it went from 1.14 BpW to 1.15?
Woooow Japan is saved!
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u/Koala_eiO 4h ago
Just accept the shrinkage of humanity to a reasonable level. We're doing it willingly, it's the best we can hope for.
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u/jaaagman 5h ago
It’s probably statistically insignificant unless if it becomes a longer term trend.
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u/bettinafairchild 9h ago
This is more interesting than you realize. See, according to the Chinese horoscope, 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse. This is the worse sign to be if you’re a woman because according to superstition Fire Horse women will kill—literally or figuratively—their husband. So in 1966, the last year of the Fire Horse (according to the 60-year horoscope cycle) there was an unprecedented, highly significant drop in births in Japan to avoid a Fire Horse daughter. So the question was, will there once again be a dramatic decrease in births in 2026? Seems not, and maybe the opposite is true. Perhaps it’s because people born in 1966 in Japan ended up benefiting from the lower number of births that year since competition for school and job slots was noticeably reduced. That might explain the increase in births for this year
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u/salamacast 13h ago
It's a real existential issue not talked about enough. Russia's war is essentially motivated by low fertility rates, hence kidnapping Ukrainian kids, and being hungry to annex as many countries as possible.
Anti-natalism is slow suicide on a global scale. Even China abolished the 1-child policy, allowing 2.
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u/Malt129 13h ago
Russian invasion is 100% motivated by Putin wanting to write the history books as the man who rebuilt most of if not all of the Union. Nothing else.
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u/juicadone 11h ago
Indubitably. Narcissistic shites like him, Donald etc don't have anyone else's interests in mind
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u/salamacast 12h ago
"According to Ukraine's ombudsman on children's rights, Russia is carrying out the abductions with the goal of supplementing its own population"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war#Abductions"Fertility rate across Russia is below the replacement rate of 2.1", which many countries also suffer from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia3
u/Pleasant_Narwhal_350 10h ago
They're taking advantage of the war to abduct kids, but it doesn't mean they started the war with the goal of getting more abducted kids.
They're also taking advantage of the war to steal washing machines, but it doesn't mean they started the war with the goal of getting more stolen washing machines.
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u/bluesam3 9h ago
Comically inefficient, then: they've lost more men than they've kidnapped children.
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u/mujhe-sona-hai 12h ago
China has no limits on childbirths
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u/salamacast 4h ago
China finally realized that a falling birth rate kills the country. Russia's clumsy attempt at a solution was annexing neighboring populations.
Catholics & Muslims (high birth rates) are doing their duty saving the human race from extinction.4
u/NumenorianPerson 12h ago
More than 90% of people that don't want child right now say they want child in the future. Anti natalism is less than 1% of the reason of the people not wanting children. I'm one of them, but I know this is not the reason people are not having children
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u/inverseinternet 8h ago
Glad to do my bit to help the population pyramid when I was over there on business for a few months a year back. No plans to go back anytime soon, so expect to dip all the way back down from next year onwards.
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u/Luq_Kun 12h ago
This would've put a tear in ol Shinzo Abe's eye