Research On Tendency And Influence Of Declining Birth Rate Of Japanese Population

Now, the declining birth rate is a common problem that some developed countries have to face, and Japan is not exceptional. Since 1970s, Japan has experienced a demographic transition from high birth and death rate to low birth and death rate. After reaching the highest TFR 2.14 in 1973, the birth rate in Japan began to fall. In 2005, TFR was 1.26 and broke the lowest record. At the same time, the population in 2005 decreased 20,000 compared with previous year, and it was the first time that the population of birth became less than population of death, since Japanese began to carry out dynamic population statistics in 1899. From 2005, Japan began to face the situation that population kept decreasing. Since 1974, Japanese TFR has been lowering than the replacement level of population. In 2006, it rebounded a little and reached 1.32; nevertheless, it is very hard to raise TFR to the past level.Japanese population will keep decreasing at a rate of one million people yearly, and the projected population will be less than 90 million after 50 years. The data that I used in this thesis mainly comes from"projected Japanese population in the future"that was evaluated by Japanese Social Security and Population Academe. Basing on the population in 2002, the Ministry of Health,Labor and Welfare estimated the work force will decrease to 45 million in 2050 compared to current 66 million if the population continues to decrease at the current speed.If the birth rate keeps going down, Japanese population will be less than 100 million in the middle of 21 century and it maybe less than half of current population size in 2100. Beside that, the aging of population will grow worse and worse. Japan will face the extreme situation that one out of every three people will be a senior over 65 years before long.The radical population decreasing not only results in the problems of economic development and social security but also the survival issues of a nation. Facing such crisis, it is essential for us to investigate the reason why birth rate declines and do some research on the policies of Japanese government and get a clear idea about the tendency and influence of declining birth rate.This thesis includes five parts. The first part discusses the background and significance of researching on the declining birth rate and defines some basic conceptions and explains the sources of data. The second part analyzes the current situation of falling population of children and its social reason and trend. In the third part, you will get a idea about how the declining birthrate influences the economic and social development. The analysis and research on the policies against population declines are included in the fourth part. Finally, the last part analyses Japanese policies compared to other countries. In the conclusive part, we can review the tendency of birthrate.By analyzing and researching the tendency of declining birthrate in Japan, we can find the following fact that declining birth rate results from social and economic development and it has far-reaching consequences on social and economic development in the future.In Japan, the continuous economic development, the changes of people's mindset and living environment make women incline to get married and give birth later than the past. So birth rate will keep going down and the declining birth rate will lead to more burdens on social security system and the changes of consumptive demanding structure.In order to balance the population, developed and developing countries have adopted different policies to stop birth rate declining. Learning from other countries'experiences is helpful for Japanese government to improve the effect of policies. On one hand, we need to try to raise the birth rate; on the other hand, we should exploit potential labor force actively and make use of current human resources. These two methods will help to mitigate the conflicts that come from the declining birth rate and keep social and economic development smooth and sustainable.The declining tendency of Japanese birth rate will be mitigated in the next 20-30 years along with the supplement and enhancement of policies, but the situation will still exist. Therefore, Japanese government should take into account a series of policies to address declining birth rate, such as improving the effect of policies, raising the birth rate, perfecting social security system, enhancing productivity by technological innovation. Just as we discuss in this thesis, the success or failure of Japanese policies lessening decline of birth rate will determine Japanese future development.