Population crisis in Japan

In the begining of the twenty first century, Japan has faced the extremely difficult situation, called rapid aging of the population resulting from the decline in the birthrate. In the post war era, Japan had a baby boom in the late 1940s. At that time, one couple had three children on average. However, the birthrate has started to decrease since mid 1950s because of the amendment to Living Protection Law. , The law increased the rate of abortion and helped the diffusion of improved birth control technology. According to total fertility rate (TFR), each country need to keep 2.08 on TFR in order to maintain constantly its population. The TFR of Japan only have 1.29 in 2004. We need to consider solving the serious problem for the low birth rate for our future. This paper analyzes the solution for rapid aging of the population resulting from the decline in the birthrate from my point of view.

First of all, this is one of key reason that a lot of women participate in society. It was clearly differentiated the roles of males from those of females in our parents' age. However, most of females have worked as well as males do now. It causes not only a tendency to marry later in their life but also rising unmmaried female rate. Also, social base in our society for female who wants to come back to work after her childbearing has not established yet. We need to create generous society for women to come back to work whenever they want. For instance, it is important to improve babysitter system and expand day care centers. They would help to let females work without worrying.

Second, educational system largely influences on birth rate. Fro instance, most of children go to preparation schools to enter college, hish schools, even kindergarden, especially in Asia. If we can recieve good education in our school, nobody needs to go to extra school. This phenomenon results from decline in the quality of schools and teachers and academic society judgied by only acedemic level. Parents do not hasitate to spend a lot of money for kid"s educational fee. Hoever, they cannot afford to have second or third babies.