Japan's Declining Population...

[FSTargetDrone]

...and growing reliance on robots. From The Washington Post:

Demographic Crisis, Robotic Cure?
Rejecting Immigration, Japan Turns to Technology as Workforce Shrinks

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 7, 2008; A12

TOKYO -- With a surfeit of the old and a shortage of the young, Japan is on course for a population collapse unlike any in human history.

What ails this prosperous nation could be treated with babies and immigrants. Yet many young women here do not want children, and the Japanese will not tolerate a lot of immigrants. So government and industry are marching into the depopulated future with the help of robots -- some with wheels, some with legs, some that you can wear like an overcoat with muscles.

A small army of these machines, which has attracted huge and appreciative crowds, is on display this winter at the Great Robot Exhibition in Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science.

The Japanese are delighted by robots that look human. Honda's ASIMO can dance and serve tea. Toyota has a humanoid robot that plays "Pomp and Circumstance" on the violin -- rather robotically.

But engineers say it's the "service robots," which can't dance a lick and don't look remotely human, that can bail out Japan, which has the world's largest proportion of residents over 65 and smallest proportion of children under 15. One such gizmo, on display at the show, can spoon-feed the elderly. Others are being designed to hoist them onto a toilet and phone a nurse when they won't take their pills.

Toyota, the world's largest car company, announced last month that service robots would soon become one of its core businesses. The government heavily subsidizes development of these machines. Other cheerleaders for robots include universities and much of the news media.

Not everyone, though, is cheering. There are critics who describe the robot cure for an aging society as little more than high-tech quackery. They say that robots are a politically expedient palliative that allows politicians and corporate leaders to avoid wrenchingly difficult social issues, such as Japan's deep-seated aversion to immigration, its chronic shortage of affordable day care and Japanese women's increasing rejection of motherhood.

"Robots can be useful, but they cannot come close to overcoming the problem of population decline," said Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau and now director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a research group in Tokyo.

"The government would do much better spending its money to recruit, educate and nurture immigrants," he said.

The scale of the coming demographic disaster, assuming present trends continue, is without precedent, according to Sakanaka and many other analysts.

Population shrinkage began here three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone. That would leave Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, with about 42 million people.

The workforce would shrink even faster, thanks to the dearth of children under 15, whose numbers have been falling for 26 consecutive years and now reflect a record-low 13.6 percent of the population.

Within 20 years, the workforce will fall by 10 percent, according to Goldman Sachs, the investment firm. It estimates that within 30 years, Japan will have just two workers for each retiree; within 50 years, two retirees for every three workers. Pension and health care systems will be at risk of collapse.

Robots can help make all this more affordable and less disruptive, said Masakatsu G. Fujie, a professor of mechanical engineering at Waseda University in Tokyo.

In a recent lecture to foreign journalists, he said service robots could help reduce government spending on health care, take over many dreary service jobs and prop up Japan's "societal vitality."

Still, if Japan is to have any chance of holding on to its status as a major economic power, it needs human beings by the millions, and it needs to start importing them soon, according to Sakanaka. He argues that Japan has no rational alternative but to open its doors to at least 10 million new immigrants over the next five decades.

This is a tall order. Among highly developed countries, Japan has always ranked near the bottom in the percentage of foreign-born residents. In the United States, about 12 percent are foreign-born; in Japan, just 1.6 percent.

Highly restrictive and aggressively enforced immigration laws have broad support from the Japanese public, which blames immigrants for crime, impolite behavior and untidiness. Sakanaka's immigration proposal, at least for the time being, has no serious backing among major political leaders.

But the country ranks first in robot use. Forty percent of the world's robots are at work here, mostly in industrial jobs.

The government prefers spending money on robot development rather than on immigrants, Sakanaka said, because robots do not have a political downside. "Politicians avoid the immigration issue because it doesn't lead to a vote," he said. "They should be thinking about Japan's future, but they are not."

Kathy Matsui, Japan strategist for Goldman Sachs, says robot promotion is a crowd-pleasing way for government and business to dance away from the core causes of Japan's low birthrate.

"Robots are simply not going to be able to do anything to deal with the problems of work and family," Matsui said. "Robots cannot raise kids."

And for all their potential, tending to an aging society with robots will not be easy. Designers say the machines -- mostly still in development and years away from entering the market -- must work safely, be affordable and make a profit for manufacturers. Industrial robots overcame many of these hurdles in the 1980s, and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry expects it to happen again with robots in the home.

"The ignition may be the dramatic decrease in the labor force," said Hideto Akiba, director of the ministry's industrial machine division.

A principal reason for the low birthrate in Japan is the increasing refusal of young women to marry. Government figures show that the percentage of women 25 to 29 who stay single has more than doubled since 1980, to 54 percent from 24 percent.

If Japanese women do marry and have children, they drop out of the workforce at far higher rates than women in other wealthy countries. The primary reason is because they cannot find affordable day care, according to Matsui and many others.

Matsui said affordable child care and relaxed immigration rules that allowed working mothers to hire foreign-born nannies would almost certainly keep more women in the workforce -- and could help raise the birthrate.

Asked why government and industry here are so taken with robots, Matsui said: "They are a nice excuse not to address the issue of immigration. They do not cause crime. They are not foreign people. And the Japanese are good at making robots."

At Toyota, robot-builders say it is not their job to answer big-picture questions.

They focus, instead, on how to make machines that help elderly people live comfortably and are safe, affordable and profitable.

In the next 10 to 20 years, Toyota contends, the most useful of these robots will be smart, highly mobile, wheelchair-like devices that bear little resemblance to robots in the movies.

"We are not focused on making robots that look like people," said Masashi Yamashta, general manager of Toyota's Partner Robot development division. "We aim to take the elderly outside with these machines."

The two-wheel "mobility robot" that Toyota introduced in Tokyo last month can carry a person over uneven ground or can act as a porter, following its owner with groceries or some other load. If the machines work well and are affordable, it is "realistic" that a partner robot will someday be in every home in Japan, Yamashta said.

"Are you going to let strangers into your home?" he asked. "Or do you have robots?"

In Japan, the preference seems to be for machines.

A search showed no one else has posted this, so apologies if this has been posted before. Anyway, I think this is a rather interesting sociological situation and I'm not sure if a technological-only solution will be viable. Those projected population declines are rather severe.

[Superman]

It's sort of like the situation here in the US among the more educated classes of people.

[hongi]

Japan seriously needs to overcome its xenophobia. Robotics may help out with the elderly, but that's about it. It's not going to solve the demographic problem. And unless you start on a massive campaign to raise birth rates, immigration is the only way to go.

Most East Asian countries are highly monocultural and monoethnic. I'd like to see that changed.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I sure hope they can fuck those robots and get babies out of them, because otherwise, this is a dumb idea.

Wait, what the hell am I saying? We DON'T need more humans. Duh, this is a great idea.

[Elaro]

I sure hope they can fuck those robots and get babies out of them, because otherwise, this is a dumb idea.

Wait, what the hell am I saying? We DON'T need more humans. Duh, this is a great idea.

That's what I'm thinking. Wait. We do need "more" humans: we just don't need more poor ones. Send those robots to Africa!

[Shroom Man 777]

Send those robots to Africa...To Kill! *cue musical number about genocidal robots tap dancing and genociding in Africa*

Though you really got to wonder, what's up with Japan's society?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Send those robots to Africa...To Kill! *cue musical number about genocidal robots tap dancing and genociding in Africa*

Though you really got to wonder, what's up with Japan's society?

Simple, it's expensive to have kids in Japan. The only solution to that is immigrants, which is what some countries, like Singapore have done.

[LadyTevar]

Wasn't there an Anime about an elderly-care machine that someone hacked and it ran amok?

[SylasGaunt]

Wasn't there an Anime about an elderly-care machine that someone hacked and it ran amok?

I remember wasn't it something like Roujin Z or something like that? Then of course there's the issue coming up in GITS: SSS

[LadyTevar]

Wasn't there an Anime about an elderly-care machine that someone hacked and it ran amok?

I remember wasn't it something like Roujin Z or something like that? Then of course there's the issue coming up in GITS: SSS

Yeah... don't fuck with the old folks plugged into their life-support. They steal children to have 'heirs'.

[FedRebel]

Population shrinkage began here three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone. That would leave Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, with about 42 million people.

I wonder if that WW2 deal about not conquering Axis possessions is still applicable. If the projections hold, in a little over a century our troops based in Japan are going to be the only people left

[Alan Bolte]

It sounds to me like Japan could keep its xenophobia and reduce the rate of population decline by state funding of child care, etc.

[Adrian Laguna]

Wasn't there an Anime about an elderly-care machine that someone hacked and it ran amok?

I remember wasn't it something like Roujin Z or something like that?

Roujin Z was exactly it. It ran amok partly because it was hacked and partly because its development had been used to also develop an autonomous weapon system. The machine became sentient and assumed the personality of the old man's wife, and it decided to take him to the beach. Hilarity ensues. Roujin Z is also awesome because the best hackers in the world are not some snot-nosed teenagers, but rather three old coots in a nursing home.

[hongi]

It sounds to me like Japan could keep its xenophobia and reduce the rate of population decline by state funding of child care, etc.

Family benefits perhaps? Because mothers have to work as well, child-care could help as well as monetary aid for mothers who have to stay at home for the first months.

Maybe they can adopt Australia's 'Have a Baby for the benefit of Australia!' routine.

[KlavoHunter]

What societal pressures are working against Japanese women to drive them away from motherhood as a valid option?

[Lusankya]

What societal pressures are working against Japanese women to drive them away from motherhood as a valid option?

Mysogyny, careers, the fact that it's harder for educated careerwomen to find husbands...

[DPDarkPrimus]

Wasn't there an Anime about an elderly-care machine that someone hacked and it ran amok?

There was manipulation of a senior citizen care service in Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society...

[Korto]

<snip>
Though you really got to wonder, what's up with Japan's society?

Simple, it's expensive to have kids in Japan. The only solution to that is immigrants, which is what some countries, like Singapore have done.

It's not just Japan, it's a general malaise in Western society. I don't know of any white caucasian first world society that isn't suffering from a birthrate under replacement rate (I'm not ruling out that there may be some). The USA does have a birthrate over replacement, but only because of large Hispanic and similar groups.
The financial cost of having children isn't the entire problem. Sweden has the best child benefits I know of, and they still have "negative population growth", although they are better than most of Europe.

Amusingly, while we do indeed have enough humans in the world; if we keep on going the way we are, the caucasian race which conquered the world is going to get supplanted by the poor and downtrodden we conquered. Immigration is merely opening the door and inviting them in.

Well, I find it funny.


P.S - Yes, I know Japan isn't white caucasian, but they are VERY Western

[Spin Echo]

It sounds to me like Japan could keep its xenophobia and reduce the rate of population decline by state funding of child care, etc.

That was my thought. While obviously not a sole factor, countries where there is more equality in the childrearing, paid maternity/paternity leave, and access to child care have higher birthrates than countries that don't. In countries where women pretty much have to stay home and take care of the kids, women are less inclined to have them. (In terms of first world countries where the women actually have a say in this, of course).

So, places like France and Scandinavia with generous support for parents have a nearly sustainable birth rate while Germany and a lot of the Meds who don't have a poor birthrate.

[Broomstick]

One solution I almost never see brought up is finding a way to keep older people healthy and in the work force. In the US there's the meme of retire at 65, but when that began I think the average lifespan was somewhere around 60-65 so really most, if they made it that far, only had a couple years in retirement. People healthy enough to work should be working, and if we can keep people that healthy into their 80's they should remain in the work force, which will solve at least some of the problems. Moving retirement to 70 or 75 - while there are many political and emotional obstacles - makes a lot of sense (the disabled are another matter - but disability can occur at any age, even if it's higher among the old)

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

One solution I almost never see brought up is finding a way to keep older people healthy and in the work force. In the US there's the meme of retire at 65, but when that began I think the average lifespan was somewhere around 60-65 so really most, if they made it that far, only had a couple years in retirement. People healthy enough to work should be working, and if we can keep people that healthy into their 80's they should remain in the work force, which will solve at least some of the problems. Moving retirement to 70 or 75 - while there are many political and emotional obstacles - makes a lot of sense (the disabled are another matter - but disability can occur at any age, even if it's higher among the old)

That only works so long as there are jobs available. Japan has lost quite a lot of its lower level jobs, and companies have tightened their belts a fair bit after many years of poor economic growth and domestic demand.

[Alex Moon]

One solution I almost never see brought up is finding a way to keep older people healthy and in the work force. In the US there's the meme of retire at 65, but when that began I think the average lifespan was somewhere around 60-65 so really most, if they made it that far, only had a couple years in retirement. People healthy enough to work should be working, and if we can keep people that healthy into their 80's they should remain in the work force, which will solve at least some of the problems. Moving retirement to 70 or 75 - while there are many political and emotional obstacles - makes a lot of sense (the disabled are another matter - but disability can occur at any age, even if it's higher among the old)

The problem is that older workers are a huge voting bloc, and they react poorly to any suggestions of raising the retirement age. Many of them have come to see that check at 65 as a right. To be honest, I don't hold too much blame. Many of them were told for decades that they would have Social Security to rely on, and they adjusted their pensions and their work plans around it.

[His Divine Shadow]

It's not just Japan, it's a general malaise in Western society. I don't know of any white caucasian first world society that isn't suffering from a birthrate under replacement rate (I'm not ruling out that there may be some).

Finland has, so far, a birth rate that gives us a slight increase. Our birthrate in 2007 was 10.42 and our deathrate was 9.93

Ofcourse looking at the numbers, you can see the margins between birth an death rate is just getting tighter and tighter.

http://www.indexmundi.com/finland/birth_rate.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/finland/death_rate.html

[Admiral Valdemar]

The problem is that older workers are a huge voting bloc, and they react poorly to any suggestions of raising the retirement age. Many of them have come to see that check at 65 as a right. To be honest, I don't hold too much blame. Many of them were told for decades that they would have Social Security to rely on, and they adjusted their pensions and their work plans around it.

Perhaps they should have done the smart thing and not taken what politicians say at face value and actually crunched some numbers. Even with the low birth rate and death rate in the West, the number of people approaching retirement especially now the baby boomer generation is nearing such a point is going to explode. Pretty soon it will be a meagre working force supporting a massive group of older, healthier, more exuberant elderly people who feel they are entitled to live easy even if their pension schemes are collapsing around them. I've already had talks with my company's pension consultant, and I doubt I'll be retiring at 65 as they expect. More like 85.

People are living too long and not being productive in that time. The idea of retirement is quite new, whereas normally you worked until you died and that was that. Of course, in those days, everyone was essentially a farmer too and we didn't have the useless fat in society that, come a recession or worse, inevitably ends up leading to redundancies as non-essential jobs are axed.

[Master of Ossus]

I sure hope they can fuck those robots and get babies out of them, because otherwise, this is a dumb idea.

Wait, what the hell am I saying? We DON'T need more humans. Duh, this is a great idea.

Oh. My. God. It honestly looks like they're working on it.