The South Korean government has spent more than 200 billion US dollars in the past 16 years to increase the population; the Japanese government will use "double the budget" in the future to implement "unprecedented countermeasures against a declining birthrate." The new population statistics of Japan and South Korea released last year in February have brought the problem of "low birthrate" to the forefront.
Vital statistics released by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare at the end of February show that the number of newborns in Japan in 2023 will be 758,600, a 5.1% decrease from 2022; at the same time, data from the same period released by Statistics Korea show that last year, the number of newborns in South Korea in 2023 was only 229,970. The above data are the lowest values ever recorded by the statistical agencies of the two countries.
Korean scholar Kim Yunjun (transliteration) told China Business News that both the decline in the number of births and the number of newlyweds reflects the changes in the concept of fertility among modern Japanese and Korean people, and also exposes the intertwined impact of multiple social problems such as high childcare costs, fierce career competition, and social aging. "Especially, the decrease in the number of newlyweds further reveals the changes in the attitudes of young people towards marriage and family in current Japanese and Korean societies, as well as the profound changes in social structure, economic development models, and cultural values."
Regarding the total number of newborns last year, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare stated that the number of newborns in Japan has decreased for eight consecutive years. The newborn data released this time also includes the number of foreign newborns born in Japan. Therefore, the number of newborns in Japan alone last year was approximately 700,000.
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said the number of births in Japan is declining faster than expected. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Masaashi said after the release of the above data: "The decline in Japan's birth rate is very critical. By 2030, in the next six years or so, the number of young people will decrease rapidly, and now will be the last chance to reverse this trend."
Data released during the same period also showed that the number of deaths in Japan last year was as high as 1.5905 million, which was more than twice the number of births (758,600). This phenomenon of "deaths catching up with births" directly led to Japan's population decreasing by 831,900 people last year, a record-high decline.
At the same time, the number of marriages in Japan in 2023 totaled 489,300, which was the first time since World War II that it fell below 500,000, a record low. The results of a four-year survey released by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Rohto on March 2 showed that the proportion of Japanese young people who do not want to have children in the future has reached a record high of 55.2%.
Faced with the above-mentioned grim reality, Tesla CEO Musk also warned again on social media: "If the situation does not change, Japan will disappear one day."
In South Korea, the total fertility rate has been accompanied by a decline in the number of newborns. The so-called total fertility rate refers to the number of children of appropriate age that women give birth to in their lifetime. Data released by Statistics Korea during the same period show that South Korea's total fertility rate continued to decline last year, reaching 0.72. In 2022, it will be 0.78.
According to the definition of the United Nations, usually without immigration, the total fertility rate must reach at least 2.1 to maintain the level of generation replacement. According to the South Korean government's predictions, this year's relevant data are not optimistic either, and the number of newborns and the total fertility rate will continue to decline. Statistics Korea estimated last year that the total fertility rate in 2024 may be 0.68.
The "Demographic Situation Outlook" compiled by the Statistics Korea and updated every two years shows that South Korea's population reached a peak of approximately 51.84 million in 2020. Since then, the population has begun to experience negative growth, that is, the number of deaths exceeds the number of births every year. The Outlook previously predicted that the number of newborns in South Korea would drop to about 220,000 by 2025 and further drop to about 160,000 in 2072. But now combined with the latest data, the number of newborns in South Korea is declining faster than the government expected.
Faced with the long-troubled "low birthrate" problem, successive governments in Japan and South Korea have been actively responding in recent years, such as increasing budget investment, increasing maternity subsidies and housing support, and ensuring parental leave, to encourage childbirth and alleviate the impact of low birthrate on economic development.
South Korea's central bank, the Bank of Korea, warned last year that if South Korea cannot take effective measures to boost the sluggish birth rate, South Korea's economy will fall into negative growth in 2050. The same is true for Japan. The labor shortage problem caused by the "old age and low birthrate" has become one of the key factors plaguing Japan's economic development and industrial recovery.
Last year, Japan's then Chief Cabinet Secretary Matsuno Hiroshi stressed in his response that Japan's low birthrate has become a "crisis" and the Japanese government will take multiple measures to encourage marriage and childbirth. He has said many times before that the decline in birth rates "may shake the foundation of Japan's social and economic development," and he promised to make solving this problem a top priority for the current government.
The Japanese government established for the first time in April last year the "Children and Family Agency" specifically to address the issue of "low birthrate". At the same time, as one of the new response measures, the Japanese government has officially announced that it will increase the newborn baby subsidy in 2023 from the current 420,000 yen to 470,000 yen (approximately RMB 23,000). Of course, due to the different charging standards of medical institutions across Japan, this subsidy level is slightly higher than the national average of about 450,000 yen.
In South Korea, successive governments have also adopted a "dual-track" policy of promoting fertility on the one hand and actively adjusting the economy on the other to adapt to the declining birthrate and increasingly aging population structure. The current Yin Xiyue government also hopes to increase housing supply through property market control policies to relieve the pressure on young people in order to improve the quality of life.
Park Yeung-hoo, former Minister of Health and Welfare of South Korea, said that while accepting the reality of low fertility, the government will focus on improving the social structural factors that lead to this problem. At the same time, he believes that alleviating the problem of low fertility and low birthrate requires enterprises, local governments, social groups, etc. to work together to promote fundamental changes and jointly respond to this challenge.
Yin Xiyue even stated in 2022 that in the past 16 years, the South Korean government has spent more than 200 billion US dollars to increase the population. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida promised last year that he would use “double the budget” to implement “unprecedented countermeasures against the declining birthrate.”
As for why the Japanese and Korean governments have invested so little money in alleviating population problems over the years, Jin Yunjun believes that the current policies of the Japanese and Korean governments have mainly ignored the increasing number of young people who are unwilling to make this step. "For married families with children, in the context of the current weak economic recovery, how to balance the relationship between family, work and economy is also a test, especially for women."