In Japan, a third of today's 18-year-olds may not have children - study
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[August 30, 2023]
By Satoshi Sugiyama
TOKYO (Reuters) - About a third of 18-year-old women in Japan may never
have children, a government institute said on Wednesday, in the latest
data spelling an uphill battle to reverse a dwindling population in the
world's third-largest economy.
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS)
estimated in a report that 33.4% of women born in 2005 would be
childless. The most optimistic scenario had that number at 24.6% and the
worst at 42%.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in June promised to tackle the population
crisis with "unprecedented" measures including bigger payouts for
families with three or more children.
A Kyodo News poll published shortly after, however, showed that about
two-thirds of the public were not hopeful the policies would be
effective.
"With the rising cost of living, I don't think people feel they can
afford to or comfortably say they want to have children," 23-year-old
Anna Tanaka told Reuters.
The number of children in Japan has been falling for more than four
decades as the appetite for marriage and parenting has waned and
financial worries have grown, surveys show.
The IPSS determines the expected percentage of childless women by taking
into account factors such as age of marriage in estimating the fertility
rate.
Miho Iwasawa, the IPSS's director of population dynamics research, said
people were getting married later, leading to a decline in births.
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Eita Sato, 15, and Aoi Hoshi, 15, walk
along the corridors of Yumoto Junior High School, where they are the
only two students, a few days before their graduation and the
institution's closing ceremony, in Ten-ei Village, Fukushima
Prefecture, Japan, March 9, 2023. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
In 2020, women got married for the
first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in
1985, government data shows. Marrying in one's late-30s often
results in just one child, if any, Iwasawa said.
That trend could itself be causing a vicious cycle of fewer children
begetting fewer children, said Takuya Hoshino, senior economist at
Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each
child than families have in the past. That drives up the average
cost of raising a child for the broader population, putting some
people off from having children, he said.
Tuition at private universities jumped five-fold between 1975 and
2021, and by 19 times at public universities, data shows.
"The challenge is that no single cause can be identified for the
declining birthrate," Iwasawa said.
Japan's population of 126.15 million in 2020 is projected to fall to
87 million by 2070, IPSS said.
(Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim, Robert
Birsel)
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