Demographic Crisis in Japan against the Background of Attempts to Build Family-friendly Social Policy Tools

Abstract

Albite Japan has been experiencing unfavourable demographic changes for socioeconomic development for at least half a century, it is only in recent years that we have noted measures there aimed at no longer preventing the demographic crisis itself, but at mitigating its effects. All available statistical data confirm the demographic trend observed in the country, characterised on the one hand by an increase in life expectancy (which in itself is inherently a positive trend), and on the other by a low fertility rate (which reflects negatively on both the sustainability of the social fabric and the development of the national economy). In other words, it eventually leads to an extremely rapid ageing process in Japanese society. This rapidness can be judged when we contrast Japan’s natural change rate of -2 in 2007 with an alarming-609 per thousand population in 2021.1 The purpose of the article is therefore, firstly, to identify the sources of the demographic crisis in Japan, and secondly, based on them, to carry out a comparative analysis of the case in question to determine factors which have a decisive influence on the problem and to detect whether their occurrence is characteristic only for the Land of the Cherry Blossoms. All this can be referred here to Japan’s current social policy and constitute answer the question of whether it is, or not, overdue in the context of the titular issue.

Keywords

• demographic crisis
• low fertility rate
• ageing population
• Japan