Saw a video a year or two ago about a Japanese village where they just had their first birth in over a decade. Half the village was retired and most of the rest was past middle age. And not a single other kid. I think the greatest victims of the birth rate crisis are the kids who are actually getting born. Must suck growing up and there are no neighbor's kid and everyone is old. You think boomers are insufferable now? Imagine when that age range is over half the population. Imagine what politics are gonna be like when the median age is 55. Gonna suck ass.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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That's the consequence of urbanization though. Only old people or those who have no other choice stay in the villages. It happens in many other countries without such extreme populations problems as Japan, so it's not necessarily correlated.
That's absolutely true. But aging society is gonna make communities like this more common. Soon enough most or all communities may be like this, urban and rural alike.
I guess that's the reason why you can still see diskettes and fax machines in use around.
When I was a child I was surrounded by cousins. Evert weekend we Played games, watched godzilla, beaches, tea parties etc. Already see it with my sister (she years younger than me) her whole upbringing was so different. the only kids she interacted with with from the babysitter and school.
This is what happens when power is centered and entrenched in the hands of a few monumentally selfish people.
You want babies? Make life affordable.
Not just affordable, but actually fixing the problems facing humanity, to give people hope for the future their children will have to live in.
To no ones shock. I saw some of the initiatives countires are doing and they are not strong enough. 500$ usd a month is not going to change someone's mind if the issues is affordability with ppl paying triple that for babysitting.
And if the issue is they just dont want kids its even more worthless. Add in a culture where you are a corpo wage slave that cant even enjoy being a parent.
Unblur your porn and see if that helps.
Wait, it's all blurred tentacles?!
Always has been
It’s for the good of your nation.
So much hair.
Well yeah. You gotta raise pay and job security if you want people to get married and have kids. Pretty simple, right?
recently half of their population is in a heated argument because one of their female mayor is taking a maternity leave.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mykzj15xno
im not holding my breath
These things are negatively correlated with birth rates. The most strongly positively correlated are a misogynist, patriarchal culture, lack of access to family planning, and especially poverty.
How about housing security? How about actively improving the lives of citizens, and ensuring their children are better off than they are? Giving them something to hope for rather than corporate dictatorship and ecological collapse?
No developed economy offers any alternative atm. Acting as though fascist dystopia or gilead could be a solution "coz statistics" is legitimately insane; an insanity that is a symptom of the systemic failure.
How about housing security? How about actively improving the lives of citizens, and ensuring their children are better off than they are? Giving them something to hope for rather than corporate dictatorship and ecological collapse?
Sounds great. But there's not much reason to expect those things to lead to high birth rates.
You say that but if I could have a afforded a house kids would have been on the table. I cant even consider children with no available stable grand parents and no way to afford a home and pay for babysitting at same time. Thanks to that, me or my SO have full time home maker and we can't afford that currently. More Money or cheaper housing would solve my problem at least.
I say that because it's true, and the USA has higher birth rates than most countries where your considerations are barely relevant at all. As it happens, the USA also has higher poverty rates, a more misogynist and patriarchal culture, and less access to family planning than these countries.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."
This can’t be true, Africa is one of the most positive on all those features and it’s got a population boom going on, especially poverty, same in India
access to family planning and contraception reduces family size
"Positively correlated" means that if something is increased, something else is also increased.
Birth rates and poverty are positively correlated, meaning that higher birth rates and higher poverty tend to go together.
They had the choice between upholding traditions and culture, or adapt to changing circumstances. They chose culture.
Oh no, not more affordable housing.
I personally blame foreigners for this /s