Shigeki Matsuda - Low Fertility in Advanced Asian Economies: Focusing on Families, Education, and Labor Markets

The world population is expected to expand by 39.4% to 9.6 billion in 2060 (UN World Population Prospects, revised 2010). Meanwhile, Japan is expected to see its population contract by nearly one third to 86.7 million, and its proportion of the elderly (65 years of age and over) will account for no less than 39.9% (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, Population Projections for Japan 2012). Japan has entered the post-demographic transitional phase and will be the fastest-shrinking country in the world, followed by former Eastern bloc nations, leading other Asian countries that are experiencing drastic changes.

A declining population that is rapidly aging impacts a countrys economic growth, labor market, pensions, taxation, health care, and housing. The social structure and geographical distribution in the country will drastically change, and short-term as well as long-term solutions for economic and social consequences of this trend will be required.

This series aims to draw attention to Japans entering the post-demographic transition phase and to present cutting-edge research in Japanese population studies. It will include compact monographs under the editorial supervision of the Population Association of Japan (PAJ).

The PAJ was established in 1948 and organizes researchers with a wide range of interests in population studies of Japan. The major fields are (1) population structure and aging; (2) migration, urbanization, and distribution; (3) fertility; (4) mortality and morbidity; (5) nuptiality, family, and households; (6) labor force and unemployment; (7) population projection and population policy (including family planning); and (8) historical demography. Since 1978, the PAJ has been publishing the academic journalJinkogaku Kenkyu(The Journal of Population Studies), in which most of the articles are written in Japanese.

Thus, the scope of this series spans the entire field of population issues in Japan, impacts on socioeconomic change, and implications for policy measures. It includes population aging, fertility and family formation, household structures, population health, mortality, human geography and regional population, and comparative studies with other countries.

This series will be of great interest to a wide range of researchers in other countries confronting a post-demographic transition stage, demographers, population geographers, sociologists, economists, political scientists, health researchers, and practitioners across a broad spectrum of social sciences.

Series Editors

Shinji Anzo, Tokyo, Japan

Hisakazu Kato, Tokyo, Japan

Noriko Tsuya, Tokyo, Japan

Toru Suzuki, Tokyo, Japan

Kohei Wada, Tokyo, Japan

Hisashi Inaba, Tokyo, Japan

Minato Nakazawa, Kobe, Japan

Jim Raymo, Madison, USA

Ryuichi Kaneko, Tokyo, Japan

Satomi Kurosu, Chiba, Japan

Reiko Hayashi, Tokyo, Japan

Hiroshi Kojima, Tokyo, Japan

Takashi Inoue, Tokyo, Japan

More information about this subseries at http://www.springer.com/series/13101

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Low fertility is a widely observed phenomenon in developed countries, and the fertility in developed East and Southeast Asian countries is one of the lowest in the world (Jones et al. 2009). For example, in Japan, the total fertility rate (TFR) fell from 2.13 in 1970 to its lowest level of 1.26 in 2005. Currently, it is about 1.42 (2018), which is well below replacement level of 2.07. In some of the regions countries, such as South Korea and Singapore, the TFR rapidly and sharply dropped, and the rates are lower than that of Japan. The low fertility of these Asian countries is lower than in European countries that now are experiencing or have experienced it. Asian countries also are facing rapid declines in marriage rates, but marriage is not being replaced by cohabitation or single-parent families, neither of which is widespread in Asia. Thus, unlike Europe, declining marriage rates directly decrease fertility rates.

Asian countries economic development over the past few decades has been remarkable. However, the sustainability of those advancements is being threatened by low fertility because it will create shrinking society (Hara 2015) and negatively influence national economic growth, social welfare, and so on. In Japan, where low fertility first emerged among Asian countries, the long-term population decline is starting to negatively affect society and the national economy. A sense of crisis that Japanese societies will disappear is spreading in the country. As a countermeasure, Japans Diet passed a law on free early childhood education this year, which was premised on the sense of a crisis caused by low fertility.

Studies focused on revealing the causes or mechanisms of low fertility in Asian countries are important for understanding its characteristics and historical background. In Europe, where this phenomenon first emerged in the world, low fertility has been interpreted in the context of the second demographic transition (van de Kaa 1987), but that perspective is not a good fit for Asian low fertility. Therefore, this study identified distinctive factors causing the low fertility particular to Asia. The study has important policy implications because the affected Asian countries have responded to low fertility by implementing various countermeasures to encourage childbearing and restore their birthrates. Success has not yet been achieved, and the pace of change in the birthrates is disappointingly slow. For governments to effectively influence childbearing and marital behaviors with effective countermeasures, they must clearly understand the problem, its causes, and the factors that influence it.