Warnings Japan's workforce dwindling
Updated
Japan is destined to lose 70 percent of it's workforce in the next forty years thanks to an aging population and a dwindling birth rate. The ruling party is floating the idea of a drastic increase in the number of migrants.
Presenter: Stephanie March
Speakers: Sumie Ishii, executive director Japanese Organisation for International Cooperation in Family Planning, Tokyo; Kent Anderson, director of Faculty of Asian Studies, at Australian National University.
MARCH: The size of families in Japan has been decreasing for decades.
Sumie Ishii is the executive director of a family planning organisation in Tokyo.
ISHII: If you conducted a survey the number of ideal children they want, it turns out perhaps around two or a little above two. However, the actual number of children they have normally, now it went down one point, nearly six - so there is a gap.
MARCH: One reason for that gap is that couples have concerns over the economic future of their children, and themselves.
ISHII: The people want to save up their money for their own preparation for the future of their life, rather than spend their whole money for the number of children that they want.
MARCH: Faced with this problems and an aging demographic members of the Liberal Democratic Party want to increase Japan's migrant population by ten percent, over the next fifty years.
Asian Studies professor Kent Anderson from the Australian National University says for many years the foreigners have made up less than two percent of Japan's population
ANDERSON: And to boost that to ten percent in a country of a 128 million means 12, almost 13 million people coming into the country so it's just fundamental, radical, I can't use adjectives strong enough to suggest what kind of change this will be
MARCH: The proposal will be presented to Japan's Prime Minister sometime this week, and Professor Anderson says there will definitely be dissent among politicians and society.
ANDERSON: Historically it has not had a large intake of foreigners really has sought one of it's national strengths as the unity that is around a largely homogenous community - iot's not purely homogeneous but a largely homogenous community.
MARCH: The government recently signed trade agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines that allows aged care workers special visas to work in Japan.
Professor Anderson says by directly linking the migration policy to the problem of caring for an aging population could be the way to sell it to constituents.
ANDERSON: once you start getting in large numbers of people who are taking care of elderly who are foreigners then a lot of the mystic and fear of foreigners will slowly roll back and that will allow for future increases.
