Now, the number of children in Japan is at its lowest since 1950 figures released by Internal Affairs Ministry says, there are just over 14.6 million children in the country, under the age of 14, Japan's falling birth rate and high life expectancy replacing huge pressures on public spending and resulting in labor, shortages.
A global population correspondent Stephanie Haggerty has been looking into the story. This is part of a global trend that we're seeing in all advanced economies and a lot of developing economies, and it's dating back to after the war is more, women entered the workforce, they decide to delay having children, and they have fewer children as a result because the window of opportunity for having children is shorter. But what we're seeing in Japan is that this is accelerated. I mean, the Japanese government didn't expect to be seeing these numbers until about 2028. So it's accelerating quite rapidly. And that's for various reasons. What happens globally is when we have shocks, especially Financial shocks, that leads people to take a step back and decide maybe it's not the time to have a child now. And we saw that in the 2008 crash so in the late 90s and in Asia and we saw a during the pandemic.
So these patterns are definitely accelerating and what tends to happen. What happened after 2008 is people don't, they don't go backward, you know, once your Society decides to have fewer children, they don't tend to then go back to having more later.
I mean, over the years, I sort of can't forget images. I'd seen children sitting at their mothers, under the desk, in the workplace, in Japan because of things like childcare the whole structure and system of the workplace. Is it necessarily tailored for a woman to be able to have those support networks?
I think there are two dynamics that are playing out, not just in Japan, but in their neighbors, China and South Korea where you've got these very advanced economies with a lot of women in work. Japan's got one of the highest Ratios of women in the workplace higher than the US, for example. But it's also got really profound gender and balances in domestic work. So the amount of time on average, the Japanese man, a father spends doing work at home is 41 minutes a day compared to the US, which is two and a half hours a day. So this profound gender imbalance seems to be leading a lot of Japanese women to say, I don't want that life. I don't want to have to do everything at home, and I don't want to have to work very hard. And then you've also got this notoriously work culture where people are expected to Really put in the hours and that's just not compatible with Family Life.
But our correspondent Stephanie Hegarty reported there. Well, that's it for me. And the team here on the impact you can catch me on Twitter. I'm at BBC, yell to her. Kim, goodbye for now.
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