Japan's population crisis: Determining the effectiveness of Japanese population policy

• Main Author: Pirotto, Christopher John
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2016
• Subjects: Political science
• ISBN: 1339930668; 9781339930664

The focus of this thesis is to determine which population policies have been effective in Japan to combat the decreasing population and low fertility rate. This thesis begins with explaining why the fertility rate has decreased in the last several decades and why the population is currently decreasing. There are many reasons why the fertility rate dropped and continues to remain well below replacement level. These reasons include high opportunity costs for women if they get married, traditional gender roles and expectations, a labor industry not conducive to a fair work and family balance, individuals choosing to live independently, a weak economy and economic concerns, and a decline of desirable partners. This thesis then explores the various policies the government has implemented in response to these problems. These policies all have the main objective of increasing the fertility rate. I hypothesize that workplace oriented policies are more effective population policies than child-rearing related policies. Original interview and survey questions were created to test this hypothesis by testing the knowledge of population policies, determine how friendly work environments are towards new parents, and measure the level of confidence in job security for individuals who wish to take advantage of policies such as childcare leave. Data was collected across four different regions in Japan between December 2014 and May 2015. At this time literature and government studies have largely ignored the issue of how effective specific population policies are. It is the hope that this thesis can provide a glimpse into which policies are not being as effective as they potentially could be while at the same time providing a blueprint and encouragement for other researchers to ask questions similar to those in this thesis.