The Political Economy of Japan's Low Fertility

Abstract

�� ��� The industrial world is ageing radically. Population ageing has been particularly dramatic in post-industrial East Asian economies in terms of its pace and path. Having reached the replacement level of the total fertility rate (TFR) in the mid-1970s, Japan has been an ‘aged’ society since 1996 with more than 14 percent of the population aged over 65. In 2004, the TFR of Japan reached 1.29, the lowest in its history. Indeed, over the past decade sub-replacement fertility has become the norm across East Asia. Besides Japan, the former NIEs (Newly Industrialized Economies) such as South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong have also fallen into the ‘lowest-low fertility’ group (Kohler, Ortega, Billari 2001), where the average number of children born to a reproductive woman is less than 1.3. However, decreasing childbearing rates is not the sole reason for the sustained fertility decline and the radical ageing process that seems to be plaguing the post-industrial societies of Asia. The principal issue is the radical transformation in women’s decision-making on family formation and childbearing that has come about in the highly industrialized, yet conservative, Confucian societies such as Japan. Of all industrial nations, Japan’s ageing proves to be the most tricky to rationalize. As a consequence of having achieved core market economy status, displaying a low profile in terms of women’s employment status, gender equality and equity in major industrial nations of East Asia have evolved as the central and contentious issues of development and welfare politics of the economies. Rosenbluth’s edited volume on Japan’s low fertility ambitiously attempts to identify such complexities both from women’s perspectives, and, political and economical viewpoints.