A Natural History Model of Low Birth Rate Issues in Japan since the 1990s

Abstract

This paper tries to combine the natural history model of social problems with Foucauldian discourse analysis. Foucault tried to outline connections between knowledge and power, and this paper applied his method to qualitative content analysis of discourse on low birth rates in Japanese news articles and discussions among the Japan’s national Diet members. This paper focuses on two topics: how some policies to combat low birth rates were adopted, while other were rejected; and why the policies which were adopted tend to favor two-income families. In order to answer these two questions, this paper selects seven important events from 1990 to 2016 in order to understand what kind of power or knowledge operates, and what kind of similarities in the discourse appear repeatedly and regularly. This paper highlights four points. First, claim-makers who regarded declining birth rates as a serious social problem---population experts, politicians, bureaucrats, and feminists---influenced political decisions against low birth rates. The low birth rate issues can be considered a government-manufactured social problem. Second, the policies against low birth rates have emphasized that difficulty in balancing work and childrearing decreases the fertility rates. Therefore, gender-equality and work-life balance have been dominant within the discourses on low birth rates, and the more fundamental problem of why young people are postponing marriage have been ignored. Third, both bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance balancing national revenue and expenditure and feminist activists emphasizing gender-equality and work-life balance often reject a child allowance which provides equal benefit to each child regardless of the parents’ lifestyle. Fourth, merely welfare policies that are adaptive to the ideologies of gender-equality and work-life balance have been implemented. Bureaucrats, lawmakers, and feminist activists gained ownership of a social problem. Similarly, the gender-equality ideology has only catered to heterosexual males and females who form a family, work outside, and raise children equally. Therefore, single persons with no family or singleincome families have been neglected. This should be described as the exertion of governmental power.