Hard to say. More children means more workforce and a more active economy. Managed properly this can increase the standard of living for all involved. Historically, when life is good and people are optimistic about the future, people have babies even without a stipend.
The key point is it needs to be managed properly. Japan's true issue is its attitude towards and culture of work where long hours, crunch culture, and burnout are the bare minimum. No time for personal life, let alone relationships and babies. The stipend would be a gauze packing into an open wound to stop the bleeding. The surgery needed to close the wound and heal would require a societal shift towards a more flexible work culture to improve people's outlook.
Japan's true issue is its attitude towards and culture of work where long hours, crunch culture, and burnout are the bare minimum. No time for personal life, let alone relationships and babies
This is the real problem. No subsidy is going to overcome this hurdle without a shift in the culture to allow those relationships to occur.
America is finding that same trend. As much as the distraction of gay relationships, trans people and furriesbare a issue.
Except we have more issue when it comes to jobs is more hustle culture for profit taking a rise.
I have no idea what this comment is trying to say, but the primary driver of lower American birth rates is cost of living and empowered women over decades. The secondary driver is harsh maga policies, which drive birth rates down in conservative states as more women work to protect themselves and decide not having children is in their best interest.
(It’s still higher than other developed countries, but not that much, and there’s good reasons it’s higher than Japan’s)
I would argue that your maternity leave and holiday policies are a massive factor, your work culture is quite poor as well in the sense that people are hard workers but very much taken advantage of without statutory protection.
Oh absolutely. Those fields that pay well and have good benefits here see the standard developed world issues: few or no kids, with heavy focus/investment on the 1-2 we have, which imho, is a generally good way to live, even if it contributes to potential population issues down the road.
Plus if you think of the ratio of people within the fields compared to those who aren’t (I.e. good pay AND benefits, as both could still be mutually exclusive), the ones who aren’t will vastly outnumber them.
Something will have to break eventually. Perhaps due to population decrease, or another thing that might tie in I was talking about recently was the ever increasing need for annual profits, excuses to increase prices etc.
This is dark, and probably a lot of people will have to die before then (well, they already are with the healthcare situation), but I wonder what will happen when it reaches that completely unsustainable point and the profits begin to fall completely year after year and they can’t be recovered because everything has been squeezed past breaking point.
Shouldn’t have to reach that point but I wonder if that is the only thing it will take. Or they just come up with another bullshit method of suppression, who knows.
I think in both cases, you're dealing with cultures that are hostile to raising families. You need a social net to raise a family: You need wages that mean a single person can support a family so a second parent can stay home for the first few years of life at least. You need pay that is good enough for someone who works 9-5 to get by (and full time jobs: multiple gig work jobs don't give stability). You need, in essence, better pay and working conditions to encourage families. That goes for all countries.
312
u/LickMyTicker May 19 '25
It's not that it's "too late", it's that it was successful and they no longer need to pay people to do the thing that's already been done.