[Japan’s birth rate continues to decline, plunging to new record low]
Japan posted the fewest births in its recorded history last year, continuing a seven-year decline that further aggravates the challenges of its rapidly aging society.
The number of newborns fell to 799,728 in 2022, down 5.1% from a year earlier, to lowest since it began record-keeping in 1899, according to data Japan’s health ministry released Tuesday. The number of deaths rose 8.9% to 1.58 million for the same period, it said.
The lack of births means Japan will have a smaller workforce and fewer taxpayers to sustain the world’s third-largest economy in the years to come. The rising cost of caring for its elderly citizens, who make up a higher proportion of the population than in any other country, is draining the nation’s coffers, helping make it the world’s most indebted country.
"We recognize that the falling birthrate is a critical situation,” said Yoshihiko Isozaki, a deputy chief cabinet secretary, in a briefing Tuesday. "My understanding is that various factors are intricately intertwined, preventing individuals from realizing their hopes for marriage, child birth and child rearing.”
The government has been trying to increase the labor force by encouraging more women to work and accepting some immigrants. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made support for children and their families a priority. The government will lay out its child and child-rearing policies and present a framework by June for doubling the budget allocated to them, Isozaki said.
The government allocated ¥4.8 trillion ($35.2 billion) from the fiscal 2023 budget to a new agency dedicated to children and their families, the Nikkei newspaper reported in December.
Japan’s neighbors are facing similar problems.
China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in six decades. It had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than the year before, according to data released by National Statistics Bureau last month. It was the first drop since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong, and coincided with the second-slowest economic growth rate since the 1970s.
South Korea’s fertility rate, the world’s lowest for years, fell to 0.78 children per woman in 2022, according to the country’s statistics office, aggravating the economic challenges of an aging population. At 0.81 in 2021, it was already at the bottom of the more than 260 nations tracked by the World Bank.
>>3
I presume this is too difficult for Golden Sugar to understand. The way sentences are structured is intricately intertwined and the level of vocabulary used is far beyond his knowledge. I don’t have any alternatives, though.
>>5
By that case you mean if he quits, right?
I feel the same way. He can’t repeat the same shit any more. Some people advise him to take a WAIS test to identify the root cause of his successive failures in exams or something like that. It can be helpful, but seems like he is not willing to do so. That’s a shame. But it’s his call after all.
Yeah, I, too, somewhat agree with you guys.
Realistically speaking, he needs to take a completely different course of actions to change outcomes.
That’ll do make a huge different in the medium or long run.
All things considered, though, it is he himself who decides on how he lives, so there is virtually no point mentioning he should do this and that, I’d say…
>>3
This article shows that the future of the country depends on its population and Japan has been in a severe situation. Here, there are two suggestions I would like to inform.
Firstly, to improve this situation, the government should support parents much more stronger than now. For example, the government gives financial support to parents who have more than three kids. One possible reason for the declining birth rate is that many parents cannot afford to grow up their children, with financial support, they would raise more children at ease.
Secondly, the government should encourage companies to help mothers take maternity leave. Now, Japanese society put women in severe situations, especially women who have children. Women are needed to do tasks regardless of having children in Japanese companies. If women easily take maternity leave, they would be more eager to have their children.
This article shows that the future of Japan depends on its population because the country has been in an aggravating situation for so long.
Here are two suggestions I would like to make to improve the situation.
Firstly(First of all), the government should support parents financially much more than now. One of the possible reasons for its declining birth rate is that many(a large number of) parents can not afford to raise(bring up/rear) their children. With more financial support, however, they would be able to raise their children with more ease. For example, the government can give more financial support to parents with more than three kids.
Secondly,(The second reason is that) the government should(ought to) encourage companies to help mothers take maternity leave. Now, Japanese society puts women in severe conditions, especially women with children. For instance, women who work for Japanese companies need to(are required to) do tasks regardless (of the fact that they have children to take care of). If women could take maternity leave more freely, they would be more eager to have children.
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These are two excellent suggestions to improve Japan's situation regarding its declining birth rate. Financial support for parents and encouraging companies to help mothers take maternity leave can make a significant difference.
By providing more financial support to parents, the government can reduce the financial burden of raising children. This can make it easier for parents to have children and encourage them to have more. Furthermore, providing financial support to parents with more than three kids can be an excellent incentive for parents to have larger families.
Encouraging companies to help mothers take maternity leave is also an excellent idea. This can reduce the burden on women who work for Japanese companies and help them take care of their children. This can make it easier for women to balance work and family life and make them more willing to have children.
Overall, these two suggestions can make a significant difference in Japan's situation. The government should consider implementing these policies to encourage parents to have more children and help women balance work and family life. By doing so, Japan can address its declining birth rate and ensure a brighter future for the country.
[We Must Stop Treating Grasslands as Wastelands(The grasslands of India and elsewhere do not need to have economic value to be worth studying and preserving)]
As a research scholar at the Indian Institute for Science Education and Research, I once monitored birds that inhabited tall wet grasslands in Daying Ering Memorial Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area in Northeast India. This habitat forms a part of one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Yet despite their ecological importance and uniqueness, most grasslands are classified by the Indian government as “wastelands.” I wondered why this was, as I stood on the deck of a governmental outpost, watching a critically endangered Bengal florican—a bird native to South Asian grasslands—perform its mating display of short jumps with its thick neck pouch extended.
Ecosystems throughout the world are reeling from the effects of unchecked habitat loss and climate change. While all types of ecosystems—forests, grasslands, oceans, wetlands and deserts—feel these effects, there is evidence of bias towards the research and conservation of forest biodiversity. These landscapes have been prized for their economic value since the colonial era. However, this bias hurts the preservation of other ecosystems, including the grasslands that make up 24 percent of the Indian landmass. These grasslands harbor immense biodiversity and support the livelihoods of millions of people, yet are defined in India by their value in being converted into forests for climate mitigation. It is time for India, and other countries with grasslands, to hold the ecological and social value of these ecosystems above their economic value. Trees can only do so much to save us and our climate, and the biodiversity within the tall grasses and wide plains of this planet deserve our attention and protection.
To understand how grasslands became “wastelands,” we need to understand how British colonists valued the high-quality timber of India’s forests. They harvested trees for construction, laying railway lines in India, and shipbuilding, all of which supported Britain’s economic expansion and war efforts. The British also undertook plantation operations to maintain the supply of timber. This led to the formation of the Imperial Forest Service, whose main mandate was to aid in British silviculture. At the same time, the British government created the baze zamin daftar (wasteland department) to map and control areas, like grasslands, that they deemed economically useless.
The forest service also called grasslands “degraded forest,” because they believed these more open swaths of land could have held forests but for what they called the “destructive” practices of the Indigenous and pastoral communities living there. Both these designations ultimately motivated the conversion (or “restoration”) of grassland habitats into forested landscapes, as we show in a recently published paper that critically analyzes grassland conservation policies in India. This also ushered in the displacement of Indigenous and pastoral communities that depended on grasslands for livelihood. Colonial authorities criminalized (through regressive acts like the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871) communities and unjustly denied them any control over these “wastelands.” The colonial government was particularly wary of pastoral or “wandering” communities and invoked the Criminal Tribes Act to penalize them for activities that included grazing of livestock—an important mechanism to maintain grassland habitats. As Atul Joshi and colleagues report in their paper on the colonial impact of forestry on the high-altitude shola grasslands, colonial officers also began converting such grasslands into fuelwood plantations of Acacia and Eucalyptus to supply to settlers, while prohibiting Indigenous communities from using them for firewood.
As forests are ecologically complex, so are grasslands. They range from the dry and semiarid grasslands of Central and Western India, to wet grasslands on riverbanks of the Himalayas, to high-altitude grasslands in the Western Ghats and cold desert grasslands in North India. These lands also have deep cultural significance based on their role in pastoralism or fire practices. Yet, the historical framing of grasslands—and indeed other non-forested ecosystems—as “wastelands” continues to hamper preservation efforts.
Whereas colonial officers had economic motivations for converting grasslands, today governments worldwide are banking on forests and foresting to mitigate climate change. To this end, there are global efforts to map potential areas for afforestation initiatives, but these efforts often identify grassland ecosystems as good candidates for afforestation, threatening more than one million square kilometers of grasslands in Africa, for example. In India, we find something similar: large areas of grasslands earmarked for large-scale afforestation activities.
Yet, grasslands could be equally good—if not better—at storing carbon. Apart from being costly and flawed, a carbon sequestration-based strategy also neglects the ecological and social value of grasslands by converting them to monoculture forests, which do not provide the same ecological benefits.
India and other countries with substantial grasslands need to recognize, support and prioritize evidence-based scientific endeavors that focus on grasslands by establishing long-term monitoring plots and grassland-specific restoration efforts, as well as by mapping their extent and the ecosystem services they provide to humans. In an era where environmental justice is at the forefront of conservation discourse, the time is ripe for abandoning colonial labelings like “wasteland” that have led to violence against people of marginalized caste and class.
Already, communities like the Todas, the Phasepardhis, and the Idu Mishmi people are protecting grasslands in India through collective action and local stewardship. These roles are also helping them reclaim their dignity and connection with the land. In the spirit of righting wrongs, and with the aim of preserving the richness of nature, governments must restore greater agency and rights to Indigenous, pastoral and marginalized communities to manage grasslands and include their knowledge in grassland restoration. Grasslands are an important feature of an ecologically sound India, one that must be preserved for that value above all others.
I saw Golden Sugar making a lot of grammatical mistakes the other day, so he should study grammar from scratch, along with usage of basic vocabulary.
Most of all, he had better limit access to the Internet. It’s crystal clear that one year is not sufficient enough for him to hone his English skills, let alone succeed in entrance exams next year, given his previous academic performance, specifically English, at Hiroshima University.
>>33
I personally recommend you read without translating English into Japanese or analyzing grammar because it takes unnecessary time, and more importantly, the way of reading English will hinder your listening ability sooner or later.
>>35
I suppose it is not the point s/he is making.
The gist of the message must be that you have to get a higher score on English whether you like it or not.
>>37
I noticed what is wrong with your English is collocation.
Not “enter the internet” but “ access the Internet” sounds more natural.
It would be better for you to learn words as a phrase by heart rather than words only.
He might get too confused to assimilate all the info since we offered too much to him already. I would be in a panic if I were bombarded with that floods of information. Most likely, it’s time to call it a day.
>>53
My opinion is that you might wanna start from the very basics.
Above all else, why don't you begin with pronunciation?
I'm certain that'll do you good in the long term. https://youtu.be/nEpewJsEgUg
>>62
Were there any words you didn’t understand?
Memorize all of the words and listen to the audio multiple times. Use the new words you learn when you write English here or elsewhere until you get capable of using them subconsciously.
