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Only 800,000 babies were born in Japan last year, so that is how many 10 year old people there will be in 10 years, and how many 20 year-old people there will be in 20 years. And only 400,000 of those will be women. Japan has 126M people today.
If Japan can keep births at 800,000 births (wildly optimistic scenario) and life expectancy stay at 85, then it will lead to 45% decrease in population in 85 years.
That is bad, but Korea had 249,000 births, so if they keep it constant then the population will decrease by 60%. And Heilongjiang was at 3.34 per 1000, so they will see the population decrease by 72%.
Japan is definitely too low and it is good that the Japanese PM is concerned, but the problem is much bigger elsewhere.
If Japan can keep births at 800,000 births (wildly optimistic scenario) and life expectancy stay at 85, then it will lead to 45% decrease in population in 85 years............
I'm sure your math is correct, so I am not challenging that.
The Japanese population pyramid shows 12.8M women between the ages of 20 and 39 (3.040M+ 3.125M+ 3.180M+ 3.474M). Those are child bearing years.
So we know that 12.8M women had 800,000 babies. 400,000 girls.
In 40 years there would be around 400,000 women of each age between 20 and 40. 20X400,000 = 8M child bearing women in Japan in 40 years.
Expecting 8M women to do the child-bearing work of 12.8M is going to put a real burden on them.
Actually the population pyramid shows 2.1M women in 0-4 age group and that age group will be the most heavily populated in 35 years. Each succeeding group will shrink, so we would all be surprised if the child bearing group in Japan was anything close to 8M. More like 7.5M women delivering 400,000 total and 200,000 girls, I would guess.
I'm sure your math is correct, so I am not challenging that.
The Japanese population pyramid shows 12.8M women between the ages of 20 and 39 (3.040M+ 3.125M+ 3.180M+ 3.474M). Those are child bearing years.
So we know that 12.8M women had 800,000 babies. 400,000 girls.
In 40 years there would be around 400,000 women of each age between 20 and 40. 20X400,000 = 8M child bearing women in Japan in 40 years.
Expecting 8M women to do the child-bearing work of 12.8M is going to put a real burden on them.
Actually the population pyramid shows 2.1M women in 0-4 age group and that age group will be the most heavily populated in 35 years. Each succeeding group will shrink, so we would all be surprised if the child bearing group in Japan was anything close to 8M. More like 7.5M women delivering 400,000 total and 200,000 girls, I would guess.
Interesting stuff.
For births to stay at 800K, then fertility rates need to gradually increase to 2. If not, then it will keep declining. This is why I said it is a wildly optimistic scenario and most likely the drop will be larger than 45%.
However, this also applies to Korea and Heilongjiang. Korea will almost certainly see a larger drop than 60% and Heilongjiang will almost certainly see a drop larger than 72%, for instance 80%.
If the population is about to drop by 80% in 85 years, then logically the remaining 20% were kids or working in 50 years. Not all of the 20% are working age or capable of working and some will leave the province so the actual amount that will do productive work, is probably more like 10%. However, in 50 years time the population have probably not dropped by more than 50%, so the result is 1 worker for every 4 non-worker.
In that environment, there will be no revenue from land sales or property taxes and high income taxes will scare the remaining workers away. So it can't pay its bills and will have to be bailed out by the central government. But most provinces in China are in similar situation, so no one can afford to bail out the worst affected provinces. In this scenario, I think the central government will just print the money and inflation will go out of control.
And what does Heilongjiang and other places in China do to fix this, almost nothing. They just look at the current population and argue that China's population is large so it doesn't matter if it declines a bit.
For births to stay at 800K, then fertility rates need to gradually increase to 2. If not, then it will keep declining. This is why I said it is a wildly optimistic scenario and most likely the drop will be larger than 45%.
However, this also applies to Korea and Heilongjiang. Korea will almost certainly see a larger drop than 60% and Heilongjiang will almost certainly see a drop larger than 72%, for instance 80%.
If the population is about to drop by 80% in 85 years, then logically the remaining 20% were kids or working in 50 years. Not all of the 20% are working age or capable of working and some will leave the province so the actual amount that will do productive work, is probably more like 10%. However, in 50 years time the population have probably not dropped by more than 50%, so the result is 1 worker for every 4 non-worker.
In that environment, there will be no revenue from land sales or property taxes and high income taxes will scare the remaining workers away. So it can't pay its bills and will have to be bailed out by the central government. But most provinces in China are in similar situation, so no one can afford to bail out the worst affected provinces. In this scenario, I think the central government will just print the money and inflation will go out of control.
And what does Heilongjiang and other places in China do to fix this, almost nothing. They just look at the current population and argue that China's population is large so it doesn't matter if it declines a bit.
All of that is why I expect a nearly world wide malaise to set in making the situation even worse and driving the TFR downward.
I am not optimistic. It doesn't sound like you are, either. The human race is entering uncharted territory, although this territory has been explored by mice about 50 years ago in the mouse utopia experiment. Link.
In this experiment, mice went from 8 mice to 2200 and then died down to the last mouse even though they had everything they needed to thrive.
Heilongjiang doesnt need to fix the problem. The Chinese in Heilongjiang are just moving south within Mainland China for better economic opportunities. Most of their ancestors originated from Hebei and Shandong a few generations ago.
The problem of Japan and also South Korea and Taiwan is reated to language barrier and lack of good opportunities for foreigners. Look at Dubai, Singapore and HK. They are still able to attract large number of people to move in.
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