Generally speaking, the population of Japan is going down and the population of the Greater Tokyo area is going up.
Once youth hits college or working age, they disproportionately head for the capitol.
But then there's a small counter current where younger (say, 30's) are moving back to their original prefectures as they realize that they might be able to afford a better QoL making less money but also paying much less in expenditures.
With the country’s record-low birthrate, aging population, and the threat of losing a third of its population by 2060, Japan faces a number of crises...
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few decades. Many European countries have similar problems with low fertility rates, but Japan has the additional disadvantage of being extremely xenophobic. While other countries may be able to bolster their populations with immigrants and refugees it seems unlikely Japan's culture will allow that.
Your harsh judgements of Japan's trajectory make assumptions that are not evidently true (to me).
What do you mean, "problems with low fertility"? That looks a highly desirable outcome to me, a blessing in disguise.
Sure, most governments run Ponzi-like schemes and depend on "exponential growth" all around to finance themselves (pensions), but that's an economic snafu. Ultimately unsustainable in any case.
Not sure where this mentality of "more is always better" comes from. You could argue Japan would still be overpopulated even at half its current population.
Random thought: being "extremely xenophobic" seems desirable (necessary?) for such reversal process to stand a chance. Otherwise the country would be overrun by people who simply procreate more (aka race to the bottom when it comes to quality of life). Should maximum procreation trump everything else?
I completely (and unfortunately) agree. This population pattern manifests in so many countries. The United States would be in this situation if not for our immigration inflow. South Korea actually has an even lower birthrate than Japan. China has a smaller population base in its youth vs its middle aged segment as a result of their one child policy [1].
I wonder... will all developed nations engage in a war for productive immigrants in order to prevent a population pyramid based collapse of their economies?
Count Europe out of it for now. If I'm to believe the things I see and read all the time, most of the EU population is rapidly turning against immigration. It's a huge issue on the continent now, and it causes tensions between people and local governments - the latter are being painted as giving out free aid to immigrants while not being able to care for their own people. Population pyramid is a distant concern, when the commonly held fears are that a) immigrants are trying to "steal our jobs", and b) the whole Europe will get slowly converted to Islam if we keep letting them in.
The perception of scarcity of wealth (for lack of a better term) and things being zero sum between nationals and immigrants is truly regrettable. And SV is not immune to it, considering engineers' general opposition to increasing H1B quotas.
It seems to me that the labour market issues we face would exist regardless of how many immigrants are let in. In the long term jobs are at risk from automation. We have fewer middle income people who can afford or are willing to pay high income tax rates.
True - but machines tend to sneak in unnoticed, while immigrants, and for us especially Muslim immigrant, are obvious boogeymen. They are human, they are there on TV and newspapers, you can point your finger at them and say "it's their fault!".
It's yet another topic that lets public avoid having a discussion about real, coming issues.
The places where the immigrants are coming from are getting richer and their birth rates are dropping so there won't be enough immigrants to grow developed nations' populations.
People will just have to learn to run countries with a stable population.
Developed countries are all dropping below replacement fertility rate, sustained only by immigration and the higher fertility rate associated with recent immigrants.
I haven't seen any evidence for a stable point of population - it looks like it will grow, until it begins to decline in the not-too-distant future. Then does it ever stop declining?
Does it stop declining at a point we can sustain a technological society, much less technological progress?
That's my vote for resolution of the Fermi paradox.
I blame young women, who don't want to get married and don't want to have children. Sigh. It may be that western culture will collapse on its own when it reaches a certain point.
I hope some move back. From what I've seen/heard, the countryside is suffering radical population shifts. The following article has some great graphs to illustrate the point. There is a giant dip in the 20s (school) and a terrifying peak in the 55-60 range. But the greatest disparity is that there are many many more old (70s) than teenagers in the countryside. Across the nation those two groups are roughly equal.
Japan has a immense centralization of jobs in Tokyo (and to a much lesser extent Osaka). It's "go make your fortune in New York", but 10x as extreme.
They've been talking about the need to decentralize for decades now. The earthquake showed the risk of centralization and having a single point of failure for the economy and the government (famously, some foreign companies moved HQ and/or datacenters to Osaka). Nothing has changed though. If anything things are becoming even more centralized.
There has been minority political endeavors talking of introducing the concept of "States" to Japan to structurally support this sort of decentralization. At times attempts have come close to fruition (most recently Hashimoto's attempt in Osaka), but none have borne fruit.
Once youth hits college or working age, they disproportionately head for the capitol.
But then there's a small counter current where younger (say, 30's) are moving back to their original prefectures as they realize that they might be able to afford a better QoL making less money but also paying much less in expenditures.