Corporate culture still prizes long hours and face-time over productivity, making it nearly impossible for both parents to share the load. Stagnant wages, insecure contracts, and rising living expenses mean many in their twenties and thirties simply cannot take the economic risk of having children. Marriage, still a near-universal prerequisite for parenthood in Japan, is happening later, if at all. The result is fewer families and fewer children, a pattern repeated year after year.
Japan is not alone. In January, Beijing confirmed that China’s population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024, deepening fears about the world’s second-largest economy. Around 300 million workers are set to retire over the next decade, and UN projections suggest that nearly half of China’s population will be over 60 by 2080. The country is already offering incentives to encourage births. But, as in Japan, these face the headwinds of high living costs, intense work cultures, and changing social attitudes towards marriage and family.
South Korea’s situation is even starker. It has the lowest fertility rate in the world, just 0.7 births per woman in 2024, a level so low demographers warn its population could halve within the century. As in Japan, sky-high housing prices, punishing work schedules, and entrenched gender inequality are driving young people away from marriage and parenthood altogether.
Other wealthy economies are also struggling to reverse demographic decline. Italy and Spain have some of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, and Singapore and Taiwan are seeing birth rates collapse despite aggressive cash incentives and housing subsidies. What unites these countries is the failure of policy to address the real deterrents: the economic insecurity, unaffordable housing, a lack of work-life balance, and outdated gender norms.
The consequences for Japan are enormous. A shrinking workforce threatens economic vitality, taxes pension systems, and leaves fewer young taxpayers to support a ballooning elderly population projected to reach 40% by 2070. The demographic freefall also has national security implications, raising questions about the country’s ability to sustain its defence posture in an increasingly tense region.
Unlike countries that rely on immigration to offset aging populations, Japan has remained largely closed. Despite recent reforms to attract foreign workers, political and cultural resistance remains strong, leaving birth rates as the central pressure point.
Japan’s population decline is not an inevitable quirk of history. It is the predictable outcome of decades of political reluctance to confront how the country works, lives, and raises its children. What’s emerging instead is a quiet generational redefinition of success, shifting away from marriage and parenthood as social obligations and toward individual survival and personal agency. The question is whether Japan’s political institutions are willing to catch up
