Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, home to global giants ranging from automobile manufacturers to video game makers, and a vital link in global semiconductor supply chains.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet about Japan’s low birthrate sparked a barrage of sarcasm and outrage, with the billionaire suggesting that if the current trend continues, the island nation will “eventually cease to exist.” Because of the low total fertility rate, Japan’s population peaked in 2008 and has been declining since then (TFR).
Musk responded to a report that claimed Japan’s population would fall by a record 644,000 to 125.5 million in 2021 “At the risk of stating the obvious, Japan will someday cease to exist unless something happens to induce the birth rate to exceed the death rate. This would be a huge setback for the entire world.”
Despite warnings from the Japanese government and periodic measures to increase the birthrate, the TFR remains significantly below the replacement threshold of roughly 2.1 children per woman. While the tweet sparked a barrage of sarcasm and outrage, much of the outrage was directed at the Japanese government, which many claimed did little to address the problem.
“What is the point of tweeting this?” you might wonder. Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote about this.
“The fears about Japan’s demographic future aren’t so much that ‘Japan will eventually cease to exist,’ but rather the fundamental social dislocations that are occurring as a result of the population reduction.”
Some readers pointed out that slow birth rates are a problem in many countries other than Japan, including Germany, where Tesla recently constructed a new facility. According to Reuters, Japanese analysts said the situation was not surprising and chastised the government for not doing enough to combat it.
