December 20th, 2012
A looooong reaction to the New York Times piece on Japan’s demographic problems over at the Standard.
I continue to be surprised by the disconnect between liberal demographers and social scientists who study this stuff and the opinions of lay-liberals in the media.
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No, increased participation of women in the Japanese labour force wouldn’t increase fertility. Nor would making their labour market less dysfunctional and nepotistic do the job. But both would be better.
And, yes, France has improved its demographic situation through increased immigration – and ultimately that might be a better fix for Japan (and even more so for other developed countries).
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Iran’s a serviceable example of futility in the rough (let alone perfectionist) micromanagement of population planning, isn’t it? Or its inherent, obvious, & thus overlooked quality of un-manageability. The saga reads like something out of Hayek: a society-busting fertility surge in the 60s and 70s, until their war with Iraq wipes out a male generation (leaving present demos like a funhouse-mirror image of Japan’s), but post-war austerity brings a replacement-only regime–with fervent gov’t spending on tube-tying and vasectomies–until everything takes a U-turn with Ahmadinejad, on a Putin-style mission to dominate the imperial fringes. Apparently this latest plan’s not working also.
I do understand the reluctance to compare “stable” Western states to Iran, but… ball don’t lie
Steve Sailer December 20, 2012 at 8:23 pm
“France has been obsessing about its fertility rate and pursuing pro-natalist policies since 1938.”
Just a note: I believe French policy has been pro-natalist since not long after losing the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The greater population of the newly united Germany was a huge concern for French statesmen throughout the Third Republic.