[raztogt21]

We know what went wrong. It's housing.

When housing became a vehicle for investment instead of a place to live, it all fell apart. The only way forward is to discourage multiple property ownership through very draconian measures.

If you fix housing, you fix commitment, increase birth rates, and improve general happiness.

[bloomca]

Housing is definitely in a very tough spot and causes a lot of issues among mostly young people.

I do agree that it would fix a few problems, but I don't think the birth rates will meaningfully increase. It would have a bump, but overall that ship has sailed, people just don't want to have a lot of kids (if any) in today's world.

[tokioyoyo]

Housing hasn’t been the biggest problem in Japan since 2000s. Like it is, but not the biggest one. Yet the birth rates have never increased after the initial bump.

People, especially women, have other things they can spend time on instead of giving birth to 3+ kids.

[raztogt21]

Japan is an ethnostate with unique problems and situations that no other country shares.

I agree with you that other factors, such as cheap international travel and constant bombardment of people's highlights on social media, make it less attractive to invest in having a family.

Still, housing is a huge problem for Western Mediterranean Europe (Spain, Portugal, and Italy) and most of Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Colombia).

[bloomca]

Today's world is just too exciting and there is too much to do, so I agree that kids are pretty low on a list of priorities for a lot of people.

Also for the record, in the US the birth rate per woman was below 2.1 for about 50 years.

So this is not really a new problem, it's just that there were enough young people back in the day and people didn't have the same life expectancy.