Japanese media： young people who don't get married and have fewer children become social problems

　　Japan's Sankei Shimbun recently published an article entitled "Young people's marriage has become an extravagant hope", written by Masahiro Yamada, a professor of literature at the Central University of Japan. The full text is as follows:

　　The total number of newborn babies in Japan last year was only 770,000, a record low. If Japan's future pillars continue to decrease, it may have a major impact on our lives. Premier kishida fumio put forward the so-called "different-dimensional policy of declining birthrate", that is, the population of all ages should provide support for families raising children. The declining birthrate is like a "silent incident". How can we curb the downward trend of population?

　　The children's future strategy put forward by the government includes helping informal employment groups, etc. There is no problem in the general direction, but the scale is still insufficient. In particular, the policy of reducing the expenditure on higher education such as universities is limited to families with many children whose annual income is below 6 million yen (about 42,500 US dollars), which seems too harsh.

　　The main reason for Japan's declining birthrate is the low marriage rate. In Japan, if married, every couple will have two children on average. The essence of the problem is that young people who do odd jobs and have unstable incomes can't get married. Many young people in Japan today are strongly uneasy that they may fall out of the "middle reaches of society". Therefore, those who do odd jobs, can't see the expectation of salary increase, or are burdened with student loans will not be chosen as marriage partners. In addition, there are more and more young people who think that owning a marriage and starting a family are "extravagant hopes". When their wishes cannot be realized, they will be disheartened, and many people have no plans to get married at all.

　　If we really want to curb the trend of declining birthrate, we must alleviate young people's economic anxiety and negative expectations for the future. It may be an effective solution to reduce the income gap between formal employment and informal employment and drastically reduce the fees for higher education. (Compile/liu ling)

　　Caption: Japanese children wear traditional costumes to celebrate the festival (AFP profile picture)

　　(Source: Reference News Network)