Japan's Coming Population Growth

I sometimes play a very simple game with friends who travel frequently throughout the world. The game involves asking them which cities they have visited over their adult lives and try to tick off those against my very modest list of cities visited in international travel. I invariably find that in spite of its being the world's second largest economy, a very small number of people known to me have visited any city in Japan. My index of isolation is far from perfect because the people I encounter tend to have travelled mostly within Europe, South Asia and North America.

However, even my very unsophisticated algorithm of the correlations between the travel destinations of my acquaintances got me thinking when I read this today. Daniel Gross argues there that in spite of a growing demographic crisis in the form of a shrinking population from low fertility rates, Japan seems to be reluctant to allow for immigrants. Indeed, the issue of the population problem is discussed broadly but the real options of a flexible immigration policy or raising the fertility rates go unresolved.

I am suspicious of most linear forecasts suggesting that the world's population growth rates threaten human survival. Most of these claims tend to be based on a preacher's approach towards controlling populations in Africa, Latin America and places in south Asia where populations are undeniably poor. To my mind, Japan seems to be facing some danger but it ought not to be overstated because fertility rates could kick off with the right incentives and immigration policy could also be adjusted to ensure that the appropriate choices are made by individuals. On this instance though, one must see that the obsession with cultural purity in a scientifically advanced society is part of the problem. Still, its no problem if a society wishes to have robots help it maintain industries and work going. My bet though is that in the next decade or two, Japanese immigration policy will be gradually eased to allow for immigration from the region and among those who departed earlier. Sometime in the future, something will have to give and I suspect the domestic politics will not keep the options bottled up for too long.