Japan’s Population

In Evans-Pritchard’s article, “Japan leads world in demographic decline: Birth rates have plunged, affecting every aspect of the economy,” he discusses why Japan’s population can influence the World’s demographics and how population change can affect the economy. First, Japan’s population is decreasing and some experts predict that by the middle of century Japan’s population will decrease from today’s 128 million to 100 million. Japan needs more young people to replace the people who are baby-boomers who will retire. Japan is a highly developed country, so it can be a demonstration to other developed countries such as Italy, Germany, or Spain. Next, he points out the gender problem in Japan. In the past, women didn’t have power, so they just followed the traditional roles that were taking care of family and work. But now they have more chance to show their talent, so they don’t want to come home from work and still need to do all household chores. That means they don’t want to get married early, and of course they don’t have babies. Finally, Japan’s government is trying ways to make more chance to let more people immigrate in Japan because they need more people to cover their decreasing population, which means losing the labor power and also means the economy will be impacted.

This is a big problem when people decrease in a country, especially when the birth rates go down. It means fewer babies are born, but older people are increasing. Decreasing young people cause tax income to decrease; older people increasing causes government to need to spend more money to take care them. I think Japan needs to do something right now to solve this problem. The best ways are increasing birth rates, opening feminism, and releasing more chance to let more immigrants move to Japan.

First, Japan needs to use some ways to make people want to have babies. They should give people more benefits to encourage people to have babies. Increasing birth rates is the most important thing that Japan’s government needs to do now. More babies can bring more hope; labor power will increase, and the economy also will be better, because more labor power can bring more tax income for the government. More tax income can cover the cost of taking care of older people, and also prevent this country’s economic power from going down.

Second, the gender problem in Japan is serious. This is because Japan’s culture always told us the men are the masters or power controllers. But the time is changed; women have become more independent and have their own thinking. They don’t depend on men anymore. In traditional thinking, women need to do all household chores, but not men. So the women don’t want to get married, because they don’t want to come home from work and still need to do household chores, or take care of family. I think the genders should be equal. Men can also share household chores or take care of a baby, and after that I think more women will want to get married. That also means more babies.

Finally, Japan’s government should release more chance to let other countries’ people immigrate to Japan. That also can help the decreasing population problem. If more people can immigrate to Japan, it can increase their labor power. More people can help this country earn more money. Japan’s government should seriously reconsider the rule of immigration.

In conclusion, population is really important for a country. It influences this country’s economy. The decreasing of population equals decreasing of labor force, so this country will become weak. I think this is really not a good thing for this country’s people. People want to have a strong country and have a good place to live. So basically we need a good population structure to support this country, and every person will have a strong country to support their life.

References

Evans-Prichard, A. (2007, June 1). Japan leads world in demographic decline: Birth rates have plunged, affecting every aspect of the economy. Daily Telegraph, London. Populations. Retrieved July 7,2007, from LexisNexis.


EAP2 Section C – WW
Summary Response #1
12/07/2007
Henry