Japan population decline getting worse

[bemildred]

Deaths exceeded births in Japan by 31,034 in the first half of the year, raising the possibility the population has started to decline two years earlier than predicted.

Japan's falling birth rate and ageing population have fuelled concerns about future growth in the world's second-largest economy. Experts had previously said the population was likely to start shrinking in 2007.

Preliminary figures released by the Ministry of Health on Tuesday showed that the number of deaths totalled 568,671 in the first half of this year, outpacing the number of births, which stood at 537,637 during the same period.

"This is the first time that we've ever recorded this kind of drop in the population during the first half of the year," a Health Ministry official said.

al Jazeera

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Worse? It's a great idea. The world is overpopulated by at least 4 billion

[RobertSeattle]

2. Agreed

Why is this a bad thing?

[On the Road]

3. That Was My First Thought, Too

but Japan has an even worse demographic problem than the US in terms of active workers supporting retirees. A declining population will only exacerbate it.

[sam sarrha]

4. too expensive to have kids there.. apartments are too small, Overpopulated

they are overpopulated already..

Return to sanity.. when Jehova said "Be Fruitful and Multiply..." i dont think he had this in mind... there is a sane limit to everything..

[whatever4]

5. Bitter, flippant remarks

I want to say, they get what they deserve on their birth rate. Their attitudes toward woman, and woman working, make ours look pretty darn good, though I'm not very thrilled with ours.

The birth rate that really cracks me up is Italy. Oh such a catholic nation and OH such a small birthrate. They had the lowest, last I heard. In Italy, they don't even believe in day care, and very little is available. Women take their babies to work...to work. They really do expect every women to not worry about working, when having and raising children, and all the businesses follow along. As if that's very realistic, and as if that mentality doesn't fairly well lend itself to no economic control for women. So too terribly funny that most women wind up not being very happy with things, and NOT settling down, and NOT having children. Their housing is pretty difficult too.

That's why they need more control over women, conservatives everywhere, to make societies like that work. So stop abortion, stop birth control. Ya huh. Sure, that helps women have babies...when they want them? So silly. My rant is that women want babies so much more often than men do it's not even funny. Except when life is too difficult with having them, or having more than one, sometimes two. Bye bye birth rate.

In Romania, during the (1980's?) at the height of the cold war I think it was, abortion was illegal. Birth control was too. Women were tested monthly for pregnancy. The average woman had ten abortions. The anti abortion factions, at their base, also seek to eliminate birth control. Why? Because in those types of regimes, women don't want children. We don't kill. We refuse to procreate.