What Are Japanese and Korean Solutions to Population Ageing and Low Fertility?

Population Ageing and low fertility are challenges jointly faced by China, Japan and Korea.

Recently, Reiko Hayashi, Vice Director of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research of Japan and Kim Ik Ki, the former Professor of Sociology at Dongguk University and Director of Institute of Chinese Studies have referred to the Japanese and Korean answers to these questions in W.E. Talk, an interview program of Ecns.cn.

Reiko Hayashi said that at the beginning of the 21^st century, Japan concerned a lot about population ageing and depopulation. ‘Many people say that it is normal to have downward pressure on our economy due to population decline. However, it is this kind of opinion that led the economy into recession. Around 2012 our economy started to rebound, despite our population continuing to decline.’

In her opinion, the development of social economy is not necessarily determined by the number of population. Instead, it lies in whether population policies can tap the personnel potential to the most extent. This is to say, a policy able to give full play to the current population capacity is more important than a simple number of population. Asian countries must adjust themselves to the growing elder population and adapt their policies accordingly. 

Kim Ik Ki introduced that as Korea sees a more and more obvious trend of low fertility and population ageing, and its dependency ratio is increasing each year. The continuously downward trend of working population proportion also brought a significant impact on the Korean economy, which would only be worse in the future.

He pointed out that in the 1960s, Korea established family planning policies, which run too well and caused an extremely low fertility rate in Korea for a long time. Considering this, in the 1990s Korea introduced policies to encourage childbirth, which was yet too late. Since the fertility rate began to fall, it never showed a signal of upturn.

How to address the challenges brought by the low fertility rate? Reiko Hayashi said that in Japan, working hours are quite long, especially for males, leaving them even no time to see their families. Reforms of working style and working ways have been carried out in Japan, which is effective to a certain extent. During the pandemic, more people started to work at home, and the marriage rate in 2021 rebounded.

Despite these efforts, she thinks other supportive means such as maternity leave, paternity leave and financial support such as subsidies are important as well. Equally needed supports also include child care, in particular the construction of kindergartens, among which child care institutions for babies aged 0-3 years old are especially needed.

Kim Ik Ki demonstrated that the Korean government, though following the ‘work-family balance’ policies in Nordic countries such as Finland and Netherlands, failed to provide enough fringe for working females, and not even a practical environment for males to raise the fertility rate. Kim thinks that flexible working hours and paternity leave are imperative to promote fertility, which are also what Korean youths expect the most.

Population Ageing, though being irreversible, can also bring opportunities. The question lies in how to develop ‘silver resources’. Reiko Hayashi thinks that we must put an end to age discrimination, and abandon the thought that the extension of older persons’ life span will cause further social burden. Labour population in the traditional sense are decreasing, yet in a more realistic sense, with an increase in the number of healthy elderly people, labour population reduction is not significant. In her view, what we should do is to promote elderly employment.

Kim Ik Ki stated that Korea is now formulating various plans to create employment opportunities for the elderly. Local government departments are promoting elderly employment through multiple projects and supportive plans. Korea has set up the Korea Human Resources Development Institute for the Elderly, which is committed to providing proper employment and social activities for the elderly.

（Source: www.CHINANEWS.com）