Experts in Japan have blamed employment uncertainty created by Covid-19 for growing disinterest in marriage among youth, which they say has exacerbated the record decline in 2023.
The number of marriages in Japan has fallen below the 500,000 mark for the first time since the end of World War II with only 489,281 registrations recorded in 2023, according to Japan’s health ministry’s latest data.
Takumi Fujinami, a senior chief researcher at the Japan Research Institute Ltd., attributed the decline in marriages to the worsening employment environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Feb. 29.
“Young people’s willingness to get married has considerably declined. It is also true that there is this notion that marriage reduces happiness,” Fujinami said.
“The downward trend in the number of births is likely to continue for some time,” Fujinami added while noting that it is difficult for the number of marriages to suddenly rebound due to the changing attitudes of the younger generations.
The number of newborn babies in the country was at 758,631 in 2023 in comparison to 799,728 in 2022, down by 5.4 percent, according to government data.
The figure has remained below the 800,000 mark since 2022.
Reportedly, the drop comes much earlier than the institute’s prediction which said that the births would fall below the 760,000 mark in 2035, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
The number of births has been on a downward trend after hitting a peak in 1973 at around 2.09 million babies. It fell below one million in 2016.
The rapid decline in the number of newborns has been attributed to late marriages and people staying single.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration has called the period leading up to 2030 “the last chance” to reverse the trend, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
According to a future population projection by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, released in April 2023, the number of births is expected to remain flat until 2030.
According to the institute’s survey, the percentage of men who thought that they “should have children after marriage” was reported at 55.5 percent, while that of women was 36.6 percent. Both figures decreased by 20 to 30 points, the Asahi Shimbun reported
Nobuko Nagase, a professor of labor economics at Ochanomizu University, said that she has heard her students expressing disinterest in childbirth and child-rearing.
Nagase said that her students felt “having children means losing income and free time for myself” and “in the end, only women have to take responsibility for child-rearing.”
She pointed out that various responsibilities are unevenly placed on women which also contributes to the disinterest among them towards marriage and childbirth.
“It is essential for the future of Japan, with its aging population, to build a society in which the younger generations find child rearing attractive,” Nagase added.
Reportedly, the government has initiated countermeasures such as raising the financial benefits from the equivalent of 80 percent of the take-home pay to the equivalent of 100 percent if both parents take 14 or more days of leave.
The government has also introduced measures such as increasing the child allowance to 30,000 yen (US$200) per month for the third child and thereafter, and free college tuition for households with three or more children.
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