Inside Japan’s ‘miracle town,’ where the birth rate is soaring amid a demographic crisis

19 comments

1. Pretty easy to put policies in place in a town of 5400, hard to make those policies workable in larger metropolises.

2. What’s the content of the article?

3. I can’t read it, but the inaka seems to just pump out children. I see so many married couples and they all have like 3+ children. The problem is probably everyone leaving. The inaka has different problems than the big cities it seems.

4. Here’s the article without a registration requirement:

   https://ca.style.yahoo.com/style/inside-japans-miracle-town-where-090057439.html

5. Full article:

   For decades, this lush mountain town’s specialty was growing rice, black soybeans and satoimo, a taro root that features widely in Japanese cuisine and serves as the town’s official mascot.

   But visitors are flocking to Nagi from across Japan and even other countries these days out of reverence, and maybe a touch of envy, for its spectacular success at producing something else: babies.

   In a nation struggling with record low birth rates and population decline, Nagi has become known as a “miracle town,” where nearly half of the households have three or more children. Far from the bustling cacophony of cities like Tokyo, mothers here chat leisurely as their children’s laughter rings through the fields, and shrug off official hand-wringing over a dearth of youngsters.

   “I can’t really feel the birth rate issue,” said Sachie Genba, 42, who grew up in the neighboring city of Tsuyama and is raising her two children in Nagi. “Many mothers here even have four children.”

   The Japanese government is eager to unlock the secret of Nagi’s fecundity, which in 2019 resulted in an impressive local fertility rate of 2.95 — the average number of children a woman there will bear in her lifetime. By contrast, the national fertility rate fell to 1.26 last year, well below the 2.1 figure that demographers estimate is needed to ensure a stable population.

   Fewer babies mean a steadily shrinking workforce that will be unable to support the country’s elderly as their numbers grow. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has warned that Japan is already on the brink of being unable to maintain its social security system.

   “It is now or never when it comes to policies regarding births and child-rearing — it is an issue that simply cannot wait any longer,” he said in a policy speech in January. The following month, he made his own pilgrimage to meet with parents and officials in Nagi, which has a population of 5,700.

   Since then, Nagi has hosted or scheduled visits by more than 100 delegations of assembly members and government workers from other parts of Japan, according to Takamasa Matsushita, the town’s director of information planning. Several South Korean officials also visited earlier this year amid growing alarm over their country’s 0.78 birth rate — the lowest in the world.

   In the U.S., the fertility rate hit a record low of 1.64 in 2020 before rebounding slightly over the last two years. China, the world’s most populous nation before India overtook it earlier this year, recently recorded its first population decline in six decades.

   Nagi’s defiance of those trends stems in part from having faced its own existential crossroads two decades ago, Mayor Masachika Oku said. In 2002, the town held a referendum on whether to consolidate with other neighboring cities, an initiative encouraged by the national government to streamline administrative operations.

   Slightly more than half of the town’s residents voted against the proposal. But choosing to stand alone meant that Nagi had to dedicate more resources to nurturing its own population, then about 6,500, said Oku, 64, who was already serving as a local government official at the time.

   The government cut funding on traffic safety, administrative reform and some health and fitness activities in order to allocate more money to helping families. In 2004, Nagi began offering free medical services for children until junior high school. It also started paying parents 100,000 yen, then about $1,000, for every child born after their second.

   “People went through a big mental change when they chose not to merge with other municipalities,” Oku said, “because we had to survive as a town.”

   Those family-friendly policies have since expanded. Medical care in Nagi is now free for youngsters through high school. The 100,000-yen incentive starts with the first child, not the third. And the town has added other policies to encourage families to have children, such as subsidizing child care, education costs and infertility treatments.

   Beyond the savings from trimming administrative expenses, Nagi officials said their budget is buffered by millions of dollars in loans from the national government, meant to assist areas suffering from depopulation. The local military base, which occupies one-fifth of the town grounds, brings in subsidies that help offset the cost of maintaining public works.

   The recent flood of visitors hasn’t hurt either.

   On the tours — which cost about $70 per group and an additional $7 per person — Nagi officials attribute the town’s high fertility rate to both financial assistance and community initiatives that offer support to parents.

   On a quiet recent morning, Genba, the mother of two, conversed with other moms at a child-care facility as they nursed and watched their toddlers play. Across the street, young children shouted and ran around their school playground, while the sound of cannons boomed from the nearby mountains.

   Genba moved to Nagi eight years ago with her 2-month old daughter and husband, who works at the local industrial park. She was exhausted from the birth, and had no one to turn to with the anxieties that plagued her as a new mother.

   A few months later, she received a flyer for an event at Nagi Child Home, where parents could meet, play with their children and find temporary child care for about $2 an hour. With a dozen other mothers, she learned how to massage her baby, and took the opportunity to ask a question that had been weighing on her: Was her daughter drinking enough milk?

   The others reassured her that her baby seemed healthy, and that there was no exact amount she needed to adhere to.

   “I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be so strict, I can relax a bit,’ ” said Genba, who now works at Nagi Child Home part time. “That gave me peace of mind.”

   In April, the national government created the Children and Families Agency, with an annual budget of about $34 billion, to incentivize having kids.

6. Lots of children in the town I’m in near Nara. A few good schools, low cost housing and an easy commute into Osaka is all it took.

7. TLDR you have a small community that doubled down on being self reliant, versus acquiescing to the problem and passing the buck to the government to resolve. They made local policy change that proved effective. And now other governments are looking to emulate. Bottom to top change, not top to bottom. Ultimately you need inherent, internally motivated desire to change and a community that acts on that desire.

8. Sounds like a sexy town

9. Let’s go, Nagi and Japan!

10. Seems like people who already want children are moving into this town because of their family-friendly policies. They haven’t cracked the code on raising fertility rates so much as figured out how to draw in a certain type of family. So, while their fertility rate is up, it’s likely down wherever those families came from.

    Two mothers are quoted in the article; the first moved there after having her first child, and the second settled there specifically because she wanted to have a family. Again, both suggest the town is attracting people who want families rather than creating a desire for more children.

11. Surprise! A town solves the少子化by actually taking care of its residents by providing free medical care and financial incentives for families to have kids.

12. So people will have children when their economic future is stable? Wow, what a concept.

13. Look at these fuckers in this fucking town; they’re fucking!

14. For some reason Tsukuba is also positive birth rate

15. My ex girlfriend was telling me how all her high school friends had 3-4 kids. Most had their first around 19 she said.

    She comes from a very quaint but boring country town.

    Her quote, “There is nothing to do there except sing karaoke and fuck.”

16. When you have teens growing into adults and all they see are pixelated genitalia, it’s a big problem.

    Introduce proper porn and improper TV shows and make them into man whores and lady sluts, and I’m sure they’ll have plenty of babies.

17. Same old story, but no news.

    Good for them for supporting families, which builds a family positive atmosphere around the town.

    Won’t do nothing for Japan as a whole tho; So what is Kishi-sans plan here??

18. So this article shows some ways which might help young families and encourage them to have more kids than they would otherwise.

    But more important issue is if adults don’t form long term relationships in the first place. I couldn’t find data for just long term relationships, but the marriage rate is way down: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1249856/japan-marriage-rate/

    I think marriage is pretty strong indicator of a long term relationship in Japan. (the main detractor would probably be the divorce rate rather than people having serious long term relationships outside of marriage) So the government might be better off investing in sex education classes and dating services!

19. I never understood the worry about the declining population meme.

    Isn’t Japan massively overcrowded?