‘All rich countries will contend’ with declining birth rates, according to Bloomberg report
by Ashley Sadler, LifeSite:
The long-observed population slump in Japan is an ‘early signal of the same problems that are coming for everywhere else,’ a Bloomberg writer suggested.
Warnings of population decline have entered mainstream commentary in recent months and years. Tesla founder Elon Musk has consistently warned that declining birth rates present “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”
Last week, a column published by Bloomberg also picked up the thread, explaining that the long-observed population slump in Japan is an ”early signal of the same problems that are coming for everywhere else.”
“A declining population and plummeting fertility rate isn’t a unique Japanese phenomenon,” wrote Bloomberg News senior editor Gearoid Reidy, who covers news about Japan and previously held the role of Tokyo deputy bureau chief.
“All rich countries will contend with this crisis,” he said.
[…] Despite having maintained a stable birth rate throughout prior decades, for example, the U.S. birth rate has fallen a staggering 20% since 2007. Other countries reporting birth rates well below the rate of replacement include China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
While Reidy said it’s difficult to pin down the factors directly contributing to low birth rates in Japan and other countries, he suggested reasons could include a reported decrease in sexual involvement among young people, along with an uptick in women working outside the home, “enabling women to delay marriage or not marry at all, according to one report.”
“Perhaps the one thing that unites countries with low TFR is that they tend to be wealthy, even if wealthy countries don’t necessarily have below-replacement levels,” he suggested.
Read also: What’s Behind the Worldwide Drop in Birth Rates, Nine Months After the Vaccination Rollouts to Younger People? by Nick Bowler, Daily Sceptic