Well once again Japan's birthrate and aging problem has made headline news. Companies at the request of the government are encouraging employees to go home early 2 days a week to spend time with their families and to make more babies.
For those of you who do not know Japan has a serious problem with their birthrate as it is the lowest in the world at 1.34 well below the 2.0 it needs to maintain the population. Add in the the fastest aging society in the world and you have the makings of a disaster waiting to happen. Japan wont even have enough citizens to work the jobs needed in the coming years.
I thinks its great the government is getting involved and trying to get the population to have more children (except for the Diet member who resigned because he called Japanese women baby making machines) but its going to take more than going home early 2 days a week to fix this problem. Its not just the long working hours but many other social problems and factors and i think many of these factors need to be addressed before a plan of action can be crafted to fix the problem. They are being encouraged to have more children during a economic downturn thats kind of ironic.
Any thoughts? speak up.
here is the article.
Workers urged: Go home and multiply - CNN.com