More Low Birthrates and Little Miss Sunshine Geography

I have been reading alot about low birthrates in the news lately. George Will wrote about the impact of low birthrates on Japan yesterday. Several Japanese government officials made interesting points.

Another says of immigration that it is wrong to import workers to do "hard, risky jobs. Hardships should be shouldered by the Japanese themselves." And, he asks, "Why should we increase our population?" Leaving aside the welfare state's grinding imperatives, that is not a foolish question. In 1920 Japan's population was 56 million. Today it is 127.5 million on a land mass the size of California (population: 36 million) that is three-quarters mountainous. A third official, noting that Japan imports 60 percent of its staple foods, says, "It might be good to have a declining population" of, say, 100 million by 2050.

Why should population always stay stable or increase? Sure, it is more expensive to run a pay as you go systems--both to fund consumption and social welfare--than to save for the inevitable. But, if you can see the train wreck coming, why not prepare for it instead of bemoaning the fact that women aren't willing to bear the brunt of the burden in producing more people to shore up the pyramid scheme?

What does it say for a society when it outsources the difficult and risky work to immigrants and foreigners? Is it a society to be proud of? If you believe in the free market, then employers would compete for workers by making the jobs less risky through industrial engineering and generous insurance plans and also improve the pay and working conditions. But why do that when cheap and compliant workers can so easily be found? For example, an appalling number of people are hurt lifting patients in hospitals and nursing homes or working in construction; not surprisingly, that work is mainly done by immigrants.

I also want to point out that, in Mayan culture, two groups acquire exalted status upon death. Men who die in battle, and women who die during childbirth. Both made the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good.

As a Californian, I also have to groan at the comparison to the land mass to California. Land mass is not everything. Much of CA is also mountainous and even more of it is a veritable desert. It isn't land so much as water that should be the constraint on population here. People who live on the lush east coast just don't get it.

Also in George Will's column:

But other senior officials say the way to square a declining population and workforce with the pension costs of long-lived retirees is to rethink retirement -- to "work for life," one official says.

As my daughter would say, "Helloooo?" Who are the retirees they are referring to? The women never get to retire. Their work load actually increases when the men stay home. That is why retired men are called "wet leaves" in Japan. They stick to your shoes.

WaPost had another piece recently about the low birthrate in Japan. My heart goes out to the princesses of the Chrysanthemum Throne. I wish they could be valued as whole human beings rather than just for their (in)ability to produce male heirs. It is especially unfair because, biologically, the princes determine the gender of the baby. In addition, all this business about ensuring the purity of the line is bunk. The only way to really ensure the purity of a line is matrilineally. ;-)

Little Miss Sunshine Geography
Mark and I went to see Little Miss Sunshine last night. I laughed so hard. I heartily recommend the movie to anyone who has read or wishes they had read Nietzsche and Proust. Or, if you are short of time like me, you can just read about reading Proust. The cinematography was quite good, but geographically inaccurate. Mark and I decided to give the filmmakers a pass on that. However, if you were doing the drive for real, you might see something like this sunset. We even have the buggy windscreen for realism!


Read an earlier post about plunging birthrates here.
keyword: modern motherhood

Grrrr!

So we were driving along the other afternoon when I noticed that the moon was right in front of us. Mark chimed in that it was almost a full moon. Iris looked up at the moon and remarked that there would be no moon that night. Mark started to correct her, and then stopped.

I said, "That's amazing, Iris. Do you know how old I was before I made the connection between seeing the moon during the day and not seeing it at night?"

"Grrrr! Hellooo? What do you think Ms. A teaches us in science class?" (Kindergarten science class)

Because I didn't take a photo of the moon that day, I will have to post a similiar picture taken from our rental car near Volterra, Italy.


Iris started first grade at a new school today. Of course, I took photos. However, the memory card in the camera is not cooperating and needs to be replaced. You will have to take my word for it that she looked adorable. She also chose her own outfit and I made or refashioned every item she wore. (Top, skirt, jacket, tie-dyed unmentionables--but not her shoes and socks.) Very pink. Very girly.

Home Sweet Home and Plunging Birthrates

We drove home from San Francisco to Los Angeles yesterday afternoon and evening. Driving Interstate 5 at the end of a holiday weekend is not a bright idea. We sat in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic through the grapevine. The air quality was also not great.

At first, I thought that the sunset was really spectacular. Then I realized that was not the soft backlight of the sun setting over the coastal mountain range, but a wildfire. My little point and shoot camera got a couple of images of the brightest part of the fire. Click here to see a map of CA wildfires. Then click on the big red area north of LA to see the extent of the fire. [You can manually edit the link http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/fireplots/cgbYYYYDOY_HHMM.jpg where YYYY is the year, DOY is the day of year from 001-365, HH is hour from 00-23, and MM is minute and should be left at 00.]
Addendum: This has been dubbed the Day Fire because it began on Labor Day. I post more about that on September 15.

We did show Iris the exact spot that mommy and daddy met. Unfortunately, the laboratory was all torn apart and not very photogenic.

I rest my case.

Now the plunging birthrates part

There was another article about plunging birthrates (in eastern Europe) over the weekend. Read it soon before the link disappears. Notably, the governments put their main focus on changing the behavior of women. There didn't appear to be any attempt to change the behaviors of the men who father children or the employers who make life so difficult for mothers. Linda Hirshman is right. Maybe, if the birthrates plummet enough, there will be more than band-aid changes.

When we were in Australia in 2003, I read an article in one of the papers about the low birthrate in Australia. The government there had surveyed birthrates in industrialized countries around the world and found a strong correlation between the amount of time fathers spent on housework and childcare and the birthrate. Australian men fared very badly compared to American and Canadian men, and so did their birthrate. I wonder why that was not a bigger international news story?

Maybe they should bring back mandatory home economics classes in high school for both boys and girls. Equal participation in family work would be much more character and nation building than sports programs for boys. I am not advocating getting rid of sports entirely. A study of the factors that influence girls to earn doctorates in the sciences found that childhood participation in competitive sports was the second greatest influence (only slightly less influential than the encouragement of a teacher or parent). ;-)