Many private analysts consider it more realistic that the birthrate will remain low. Barring immigration and assuming that fertility stays where it is, by 2050 the Japanese population would plunge 31%, from the current 127 million to 88 million. Environmentalists say population decline in an overcrowded, import-dependent nation like Japan will prove a blessing as world population skyrockets from 6.1 billion to an estimated 9.3 billion in 2050. But economists warn that the baby bust could keep Japan mired in a semi-permanent recession. The soaring ratio of retirees to workers will pose dire challenges to the nation's pension, medical and welfare systems, its labor practices, its bond ratings, even perhaps the viability of its financial system. For more than a decade, spooked politicians have tried castigating, cajoling and finally bribing women to have babies. But as long as men can't or won't help raise their children and are penalized if they put family ahead of work, their wives say they can't have both careers and children. Japan is hardly alone in grappling with these brave new social and economic problems. It's on the cutting edge of a phenomenon that will affect most of the leading industrialized nations. In the U.S., fertility rates are expected to hover just below replacement level for the next 50 years, but immigration and a large number of citizens of childbearing age will keep the population growing steadily.
However, according to projections by the United Nations Population Division, by the middle of the century, 39 countries will have populations smaller than they do today. Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Cuba are all expected to lose a quarter or more of their populations by 2050. In fact, while populations in the least developed nations continue to soar, 64 developed nations now have birthrates lower than the 2.1 children per woman required to keep a population stable. "Never before have birthrates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, all around the world," says American demographer Ben Wattenberg. "We are in uncharted territory." Historically, many populations have experienced temporary drops due to famine, plague and warfare, including, in modern times, the Stalinist purges in Russia and the mass starvation during China's "Great Leap Forward," notes Dr. Kenji Hayashi, a Japanese demographer. To some extent, the baby busts in Russia and Ukraine, which will experience even steeper population declines than Japan, can be explained by geopolitical turmoil, economic disaster and despair.

But never before has a nation like Japan, affluent, peaceful, with the world's longest life expectancy, experienced a sustained population decline, Hayashi says. And while European nations, notably Italy, Sweden and Spain, are facing similar demographic trends, the twin phenomena of a fast-aging society and an extreme birth dearth are putting a particular strain on tradition-minded Japan. Unlike Italy, xenophobic Japan is loath to allow immigrants to solve the labor shortages expected to begin in 2020. And unlike Sweden, which makes it financially attractive for single mothers to bear and keep their children, Japanese society is unwilling to tolerate out-of-wedlock births. Polls find that 84% of Japanese believe that their slumping birthrate and fast-aging population are serious national problems. In his first speech to parliament, new PM Junichiro Koizumi promised to end the day- care shortage and expand child-care hours to help mothers keep working and boost Japan's economy.

Still, many Japanese think govt policies will fail without dramatic changes in traditional attitudes about gender roles, both at home & in the workplace. "The falling birthrate & aging society are terrible for the future of Japan," says Japanese family planning expert Ryoichi Suzuki. "However, it will be futile for the govt to say to women, 'Please have children,' if that choice is not made by women themselves." Increasingly, marriage, esp.child rearing, is a bad deal. Financial, social and personal costs of motherhood, what American author Ann Crittenden has dubbed "the mommy tax", are far more punishing for Japanese women than for their more vocal American & European counterparts.

What happens to Japanese society as it becomes one of the most geriatric in the world? Besides the economic issues, the aging population will require sweeping social changes. Half of all elderly live with their families, and the burden of nursing them is falling hard on the shoulders of a generation of middle-aged Japanese women. The burden is likely to get worse as women in their 60s and 70s find themselves caring for parents and in-laws in their 80s and 90s. The widespread phenomenon, known as "nursing hell," is keeping older women out of the work force and contributing to their daughters' doubts about the institutions of marriage & family.

Why are Japanese staying unmarried in unprecedented numbers? War between the sexes is nothing new. 4 centuries before Christ, a Greek playwright had women stage a sex strike to force their men to end a war. Today, Japanese young people are reinterpreting that ancient drama. Women are postponing marriage by the millions, and then sometimes deciding not to tie the knot at all. They complain that they have changed but that Japanese men have not. Men gripe that women want their freedom but also want their bills paid. Even if Japanese women and men find a new modus vivendi and begin having more children now, population decline is unavoidable. But is it bad? Will a less-populous Japan be gloomy or glorious?

Urban couple feels family spoils their fun
The Onos love traveling to exotic tropical islands. Children would limit their freedom and hurt their relationship, they think.
06.24.01   Sonni Efron L.A.Times

Tokyo   On a blustery Saturday afternoon, Sakiko and Hiromi Ono are out bikini shopping. Never mind that Sakiko, a 34-year-old graphic designer, already owns 30 of them. The Onos are about to leave for another exotic holiday, a snorkeling vacation in the Maldives. This bikini pilgrimage is a ritual they perform before each trip, just to get into the mood. Inside Seashell Pink, Sakiko's favorite bikini store, the music and flowers are tropical. After some delicious deliberation, Sakiko plunks down $80 for two bikinis in up-to-the-minute animal prints. Hiromi, also 34, picks up two new T-shirts. The Onos have been married 10 years and are obviously still in love. Children do not figure in their plans. Life is good, far better than their parents or grandparents could have imagined. A baby would mean kissing it all goodbye. When asked whether she wants a child, Sakiko gives the standard, polite Japanese answer that means "not yet." Surveys find that only about 8% of Japanese feel, or admit to feeling, they do not want children at all.

But for more and more Japanese couples, especially urbanites, "not yet" is turning into "never." They are marrying later and spending longer sampling the many delights of one of the world's most affluent consumer lifestyles. Couples like the Onos don't see a way to have it all with a baby on board. Judged by the traditions of their culture, the Onos are social revolutionaries, not because they don't want children, but because the goal of their life is pleasure. "I'm working in order to play," Sakiko declares calmly. "My work suits me, and I want to continue to work my whole life, but the content of my work isn't really that interesting."

Hiromi does computer-assisted quality control engineering for a plastics manufacturer. Unlike most salarymen, he usually comes home by 6 p.m., 8 p.m. at the latest. Then he and Sakiko watch TV, hang out in cafes or tend to their five tanks of tropical fish. She visits a gym, and he plays pachinko, a pinball-like game. They recently traded in their four-wheel-drive van for a Toyota bB, a boxy, funky new minivan that is one of the hottest-selling vehicles in Japan. They often spend weekends visiting hot springs or just exploring. But most of their time, money and attention go into their real passion: trips to tropical islands. They go three times a year, and their destinations are places most of the planet can only dream about: the Maldives, New Caledonia, Tahiti, Phuket, Bali, the Seychelles, Jamaica, Cancun, Anguilla, Hawaii, Lang Tengah, Borocay. This summer, the Onos are planning an African safari. After each trip, Sakiko compiles elaborate albums documenting every glorious aspect: the luxury hotels, the unspoiled beaches, the gourmet dinners by candlelight and the underwater photos from snorkeling. This winter, the Onos bought a $1,000 Canon camera, the better to chronicle their adventures. Hiromi says he is certain that he won't regret not having children.

"I want to keep traveling, even when I get old," he says. "Foreigners always seem to take their kids everywhere, and I guess that would be OK. But we have freedom and space, and we want to have fun." The Onos' focus on personal satisfaction and marital love would have seemed incomprehensible or downright immoral to generations of Japanese whose lives were ruled by duty to family, lord and country, and the struggle for survival. Sakiko hasn't told her parents that she doesn't think she wants children. They haven't brought up the subject for years. "I think they think I can't have any," she says. It isn't that Sakiko doesn't like children; it's just that she wonders why she needs them. And she's worried that the emotional dynamics of her marriage would change forever.

"When Japanese have children, they tend to focus on the child and not on their husbands, and I don't like this," Sakiko explains. "For example, if Westerners go on vacation, they will hire a baby-sitter and go out to dinner, but Japanese do not do this. The husband-wife bond turns into a mama-and-papa relationship, but I want to preserve my own relationship and time with him." It is an increasingly common complaint of young Japanese women in a land where hiring a baby-sitter, even if you can afford the standard $15-an-hour fee, is sometimes derided as "almost like checking your baby like luggage in a coin locker." In the postwar period, Japanese women by the millions fled hard factory work for the comforts of life as homemakers and devoted themselves to their children. Children were the purpose of marriage, indeed, the purpose of life. At weddings, it is still customary to exhort the young couple to "have children quickly, and be happy." Once a baby arrives, Japanese couples are expected to sleep with the child between them. Cribs are now more common but are still usually kept next to the bed. Many young couples could not afford a separate room for the baby even if they wanted one.

Much as she loves her husband, Sakiko does not think that he would get up at night with a baby. The child's well- being, behavior and educational attainment are all considered the mother's responsibility. If a woman isn't sure that she can produce model offspring single-handedly, or if she values herself as much as she cares for her children, it may be easier for her not to have kids. "I think most people are living for their children," Sakiko says. "I think most people would think I am selfish." Sometimes, she worries that in her old age, especially if her husband dies first, she might regret not having had a child. Then she wonders what she would gain in exchange for surrendering her freedom. "My life now is so happy, and so good, that I'm content. I don't need more," she says. "I don't need to go through all the difficulty and suffering of having a child to be satisfied. Everyone says if you have a child, you will be very happy, but I feel very happy now."

A young physician decides one child is enough
Motherhood means a drop in social status, Mio Masuda has found. A second baby would thwart her career.
6.24.01   Sonni Efron L.A.Times

Nishifunabashi, Japan   Maybe it was the men on the subway who pretended to sleep to avoid giving up their seats to the woman with the gargantuan belly. Or maybe it was the speeding cars that didn't slow down as she pushed her stroller along narrow neighborhood streets with no sidewalks. Or was it the undisguised annoyance of fellow commuters at the woman with child, stroller and parcels who occupied more than her perceived share of real estate on jampacked trains; the woman who presented a slow-moving obstacle to rush-hour traffic as she trudged up the steep station stairs? Or maybe it's the $18 an hour that Dr. Mio Masuda pays a baby- sitter to look after her 2-year-old daughter, Mayu, so she can work while her husband finishes his medical training?

There are many reasons not to have a baby in Japan, a country once world-famous for its reverence of children. From a corporate culture that demands marathon hours to its cramped, concrete playgrounds, institutionalized cram schools and lack of child care, Japan is now distinctly less hospitable to children, and especially to working mothers. So Masuda, a 31-year-old endocrinologist, and her husband have decided that one is enough. And even though most Japanese believe that an only child is a lonely child, baby Mayu will have lots of company in the one- child club.

Today's Japanese women have unprecedented opportunity and earning power. True, for some, the glass ceiling still feels like it's made of cement. But women who keep working full time in a system that rewards seniority earn 80% to 90% of the average male wage, and Japanese men are among the best paid in the world. But most Japanese women want or need to stay home while their children are young. And when they try to reenter the work force, they discover that the only positions offered are menial and part-time, with no job security and no benefits. Women who work part time earn just 42% of the average male wage, according to the Labor Ministry. A statistical analysis by Sophia University economist Naohiro Yashiro has proved what Japanese working mothers already knew: Child-rearing is bad for the career. Women who have more than one child are even more likely to have to quit their jobs, and they are less likely to recover their lost incomes later. Some married women who have been hurt by the country's economic downturn are resorting to abortion to keep their family size small, says Dr. Kenji Hayashi, a demographer and specialist in family planning at the National Institute of Public Health.

Masuda bore her child at the end of her medical training. She left her job at a prestigious university hospital to work part time with a child-friendly schedule at the private hospital run and owned by her family. She plans to return to a full-time job once Mayu enters kindergarten. The young doctor's income, education and occupation put her in the Japanese professional elite. But Masuda is on the wrong side of a huge divide for working mothers, separating those whose mothers or mothers-in-law will baby-sit and those whose relatives can't or won't. Masuda's mother works and has never volunteered. Masuda and her husband could put Mayu into public-run day care, but they demur. Mainly it's out of fear that the child will be exposed to too many illnesses. But there are social concerns as well.

Surveys find that more than 79% of Japanese believe that children younger than 3 should be looked after at home, whether by parents or relatives. One reason is the disdain many Japanese still feel for child-care workers. Traditionally, child care for well-to-do Japanese was provided by uba, or nursemaids, who tended to be impoverished women. "Caring for other people's children was something that only lower-class women did, so the attitude is still, 'So, is it really all right to entrust your child to such a person?' " Masuda explains. "I've been told off by other women: 'So, you leave your kid behind and get all dressed up nicely and go out?' " Masuda adores her child and plans to try to find a job that will leave her time for Mayu. Still, in this hierarchical society, she can't help but notice how far her social status plunged when she began walking around with a baby instead of a stethoscope. Recently, she hailed a cab when it began to rain and was scolded by the driver for failing to check the weather report before venturing out with her precious tot. "I was accustomed to being the one telling people like taxi drivers not to drink so much, to quit smoking," she says with a wry smile. "They seem to think that all women who have children are stupid. … They call it 'postpartum senility,' but what it is, really, is that they assume you are an idiot."

Masuda now fumes at things she never noticed: the irony that in hyper-polite Japan, men rarely offer to help baby- laden strangers; the dearth of elevators in public buildings; the number of pedestrian bridges that present major obstacles to people with children or disabilities. Recently, she thought that she was pregnant again. She remembered her long term with Mayu, the pain of childbirth and the hard physical labor of child-rearing. Then she did a quick calculation and realized that she would probably be 40, maybe even 50, before she could return to work full time.

By then, her medical training might be out of date. Her husband, still a student, has no income. Without hesitation, she made the decision to have an abortion then discovered that she wasn't pregnant after all. Most of her medical school classmates also have one child and are daunted by the idea of a second.
"If they think they might be pregnant, they're horrified," she says. "I wish [men] would understand the woman's point of view, what it is like to have a life inside you," she says. "Then a beautiful baby is born, and you cannot choose yourself over this beautiful creature. This child could be a threat to everything the woman is, but she will choose the child."

Still, more young women, themselves pampered by their mothers, are unprepared for the strain of 24-hour-a-day child care, and they decide not to repeat the experience.
"The odds against mothers being able to live up to their own child-care ideals are high; they consider bringing up children a risky gamble," writes Rieko Suzuki, author of a new book, "Hyper Birth Dearth: Japanese Society on the Brink of Crisis."
"Meanwhile, unable to withstand the pressure of people around them saying, 'What, no children yet?' they decide to have one child."

On a recent morning, Masuda's husband, Ayumu, was carefully tending their feverish baby before his wife rushed home to relieve him so he could study for exams. She says Japanese men are changing: Most of the Masudas' male classmates wash dishes and change diapers when they are around. The problem is, they're usually not.
To have a second child, Masuda says, she doesn't need govt subsidies. She needs a husband with an employer who would not hold it against him if he took a day off to care for a sick child. And that day has not come.
"The first thing they would say is, 'So what's happened to your wife?' "

We're a state of independents
6.18.02   Mike Steketee The Australian

Those professing no religion jumped to 15% of the population, more than double the figure 3 decades ago. Also revealed: a nation growing apart. Incomes in Sydney & Melbourne are higher than in the other state capitals, and are increasing faster, although Adelaide matched their growth over the past 5 years. The same applies to monthly mortgage payments, an indicator of house values. Perth matches the almost one-third of the population born overseas in Sydney, and Melbourne is not far behind on 29% . But the proportion is only 21% in Brisbane & 12% in Hobart.

Sydney is also much more Asian in its make-up, with China the second-largest source of people born overseas, after Britain. Despite the concerns sometimes expressed about Australia's changing ethnic composition, those born in all Asian countries still make up only 5.2% of the population and those from the Middle East & North Africa 1.1% . The Census measures Australia's population on 8.7.01 last year at just below 19 million. Australian Bureau of Statistics latest official estimate, which includes categories such as Australians temporarily overseas, was 19.6 million last December. It expects the figure to pass 20 million in 2004.

On the Census measure, Australia's population rose by 6% in the past 5 years, and 13% since 1991, a major contributor to Australia's impressive economic growth rates. One of the largest increases has been in people who identify themselves as indigenous. The total of 410,003 was 55% higher than in the 1991 Census. Over the past 5 years, the increase was 16% , made up of 12% natural growth and 4% mainly attributable to those newly identifying, or being identified, as indigenous.
The gradual ageing of the population is evident in a rise in the median age from 22, when Australia became a nation in 1901, to 32 in 1991, and 35 last year. The median is the point at which half the population is younger & half older. The proportion of people over 65 has more than tripled to 12.6% in the past century, and is projected to double again within 40 years. This means a shrinking taxpayer base supporting an increasing proportion of older people. But the spread of superannuation will reduce the burden. So will govt savings from reduced spending on education & programs for children as proportion of young people falls. Moreover, unemployment should gradually shrink as the number of entrants to the workforce falls.

Young voters' disengagement skews politics
Graying electorate's issues predominant, fueling trend
10.20.02   Amy Goldstein & Richard Morin, asst polling dir. Claudia Deane Wash.Post

The nation's electorate is rapidly graying, with the cadre of older Americans who plan to take part in the Nov. 5 elections outnumbering people younger than 30 by more than 2 to 1, creating a distorted national politics in which the issues that dominate campaigns and Capitol Hill reflect an ever-smaller slice of the country.

This underrepresentation of young voters is becoming more acute: If current trends continue, the number of people 65 & older who vote in midterm elections is likely to exceed that of young adults by a 4 to 1 ratio by 2022. These findings emerge from a study conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, which surveyed political beliefs & behavior of Americans of different ages and created a forecast of future elections based on population patterns and recent voting habits.

The study shows that young adults hold beliefs quite distinct from those of their parents & grandparents, more conservative in many of their views of govt, more tolerant in many of their social values, and yet are not expressing them at the polls.
The net effect is an accelerating cycle of political disengagement. "If young people don't vote, their issues don't get addressed, which further diminishes their incentive to participate in the process and keeps the downward spiral going," said Harvard political scientist Thomas E. Patterson who studied public attitudes during the last presidential campaign. "We've got a real disconnect between the rational strategies for candidates to win elections and good strategies for maintaining a healthy democracy."

Disaffected & relatively nonpartisan, the country's 45 million young adults are a constituency-in- waiting, if candidates could capture their imagination. But in the final weeks before the next elections, which will determine which party controls Congress, attempts to capitalize on the potential young vote are rare, while appeals to older people are pervasive.
The themes that politicians are emphasizing this season are evident in the advertisements that Wichita residents see on television for their local congressional race. Rep. Todd Tiahrt R-KS has used an ad in which the congressman walks through a hospital corridor as he tells voters, "I'm working to secure prescription drug coverage for seniors, just like we fought to protect their Social Security, their Medicare and their retirement savings." His Democratic challenger, attorney Carlos Nolla, is airing an ad in which an elderly man & woman sit at a table criticizing the incumbent. "The idea to invest Social Security money in the stock market," she says, "could've wiped us out."

Those ads reflect a basic political logarithm: Campaign funds are used to target people who are going to vote. "Are people advertising on 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer'? Absolutely not," said a GOP consultant involved in campaign strategy nationwide, and who requested anonymity. "Any political party that allocated a huge chunk of its resources for a good civic purpose [increasing the participation of young adults] would be malfeasant in its prime duty, which is to win elections."
John Chiola, 27, of Goose Creek, S.C., thinks politics is "a game" and most politicians are crooks. "It's all about greed, money, who has the most power, who can manipulate who," said Chiola, a BellSouth technician. He has never voted and doubts that he ever will. "It seems pointless," he said.
Doretta C. Orr, 78, of Audubon Park, N.J., shares his cynicism. Orr grew up in nearby Camden and was dismayed to see "two or three mayors" from her hometown go to prison. She sees politicians influenced by vested interests, not the public good. Does she vote? "Oh, yes," she said. "You still have to have some kind of a voice. It may not be listened to, but you have to show that you are paying attention."

Chiola & Orr stand on opposite sides of a divide: the majority of younger Americans don't vote; the majority of older Americans do. And that gap has been widening. In the 1974 off-year election, voters younger than 30 slightly outnumbered those 65 & older, based on information from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey . By 1998, older voters outnumbered the young by more than 2 to 1, a chasm that is expected to expand in next month's election. 20 years from now, fully one-third of all voters will be 65 or older, while only 8% will be younger than 30, according to projections based on recent voting trends.

The gap is growing partly because more people are voting into old age. 3 decades ago, federal surveys show, participation in elections peaked among Americans in their mid-fifties, compared with those in their early seventies this year and, probably, in their late seventies within the next 2 decades, according to the Post/Kaiser/Harvard analysis.
But the trend cannot be explained entirely by changes in the country's age makeup. Although older Americans represent an increasing proportion of the population, young people still outnumber them. Even 20 years from now, when most of the large baby boom generation will have reached old age, the number of people 65 and older will only modestly exceed that of people younger than 30.

Instead, younger voters are vanishing because each generation is going to the polls less than its predecessors. In 1974, about 30% of all 25-year-olds voted. Next month, 23% are expected to vote. If those trends continue, only about 19% will vote in 2022. And although it is customary for some people to pick up the habit of voting as they grow older, no generation born after World War I has caught up with the ones that came before, a series of federal post-election surveys shows.

Young voters are increasingly absent on Election Day for many reasons. They are moving more frequently, and they are marrying and buying their first homes later, all factors that dampen civic involvement, according to Pennsylvania State Univ. political scientist Eric Plutzer. Fewer people strongly identify with either political party, and that, too, has eroded the voting habit, Plutzer has found. 2 of every 5 people younger than 30 described themselves as neither a Democrat nor a Republican, the Post/Kaiser/Harvard survey showed, compared with about 1 elderly person in 5.

Political cynicism is playing a part, too, but younger people are no more disdainful of govt. The survey found that young, middle-aged and older people were similar in their mistrust of the govt, with roughly equal percentages of each group believing that most politicians were crooks and that people like themselves had little say in govt. But young people who held such cynical views were 30 to 40 percentage points less likely than older cynics to be planning to vote next month, or to be registered to vote.

Even some young people who have voted wonder whether it was worthwhile. "Every year I'm less inclined to vote," said Amarillo College (TX) criminal justice student Sam M'Laker, 23. "I'm not going to vote this year, most likely. It doesn't make me very happy. I wish it was like when my grandfather was alive. They took pride in voting. It was almost like a holiday. It wasn't all about [candidates] slamming their opponents."
While they are less prone to vote, younger people have distinctive ideas about what the govt should, and shouldn't, do. In particular, younger people are markedly more enthusiastic than older generations about privatizing what have been public responsibilities. Nearly 3 in 5 young adults in the survey, but only one-third of the elderly voters, said they favored tax vouchers that would help families pay tuition at private & religious schools, an idea that President Bush has promoted but that the Democratic Senate has turned down.
Similarly, when asked what would be the best way to make it easier for elderly patients to afford prescription drugs, nearly half of all young adults said the govt should help them buy private insurance. That approach was favored by less than a third of people age 50 & older, most of whom said they would prefer that the govt expand Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly.
A total of 2,886 randomly selected adults nationwide were interviewed in August for the survey. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The most striking generation gap in ideas about the govt's role, the survey found, involves the future of the nation's retirement system. 3 out of 5 people in their twenties said Social Security should be redesigned so that workers could invest some of their payroll taxes in the stock market, a change favored by less than half the baby boomers and only one-fourth of people 65 and older.
Older people believe it is the federal govt's job to protect retirees' well-being. The stock market "is too risky for something as important as your future," said John Wessel, 79, a retired pipe organ builder in Brattleboro, VT. Twana Kelley, 21, of Vacaville, CA, is typical of her generation's emphasis on individual responsibility. "People should have the right" to manage retirement savings the way they want, said Kelley, who is staying home with her 7-month-old daughter. "It's their money. They should be able to pick and choose where it goes to, even if they end up losing it."

Those same young adults, however, hold other attitudes that traditionally have been regarded as liberal. They are more tolerant of diversity than previous generations and more resistant to govt interference with personal choices. People younger than 30 are the most likely to believe that gay people should be allowed to marry. They are more sympathetic to affirmative action programs that aid minorities. When asked whether it is more important for the country to work for family values or for the rights of women, young adults are more than twice as likely as the elderly to put the emphasis on women.
Young adults say they do not see an incompatibility between conservatism & inclusiveness. Bob Paschal, 33, of Louisville, considers himself "a big traditionalist," a Republican who admires the party for creating "opportunity for individuals to better themselves." The owner of a company that makes fishing boats, he said he believes that laws should permit gay couples to get married. "I don't think it's right to tell someone what to do."

Such a mingling of views could tilt the policies of the major parties if young people participated more in politics, analysts and consultants believe. Whether Democrats or Republicans stand to gain the most, however, remains uncertain. Even as this year's candidates confront an electorate that is virtually evenly divided between Republicans & Democrats, few of either party are reaching for the large pocket of would-be voters. "I think it's completely rational for your typical 18-year-old not to vote, because campaigns don't make a particular effort to contact them," said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic consultant who has studied young voters and is in her thirties herself.

A few House Democrats, led by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro D-CT, have just produced a "tool kit" for colleagues with tips on how to try to attract young people's support. The Young Republicans have sent 33 field directors into the states in recent months to try to heighten turnout. Rep. Tammy Baldwin D-WI, who helped create the Democrats' kit, is one of a few members of Congress for whom a focus on young voters is virtually essential. After winning her first two races by margins of less than 2 & 3 points, she concluded that she owed her victories to the fact that her district includes Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin's largest branch. Now seeking a third term, Baldwin has been meeting with editors of campus newspapers, has printed campaign signs small enough to fit in dormitory windows and plans to help student volunteers emblazon campus sidewalks with her name in colored chalk.

Since 2000, the Pew Charitable Trusts has sponsored the Campaign for Young Voters, which this year has chosen 5 cities for experiments aimed at countering "the entrenched cynicism among campaign consultants … that you don't bother with young adults," as the project's director, Adam Anthony, put it. In 3 of those cities, Des Moines, El Paso and Little Rock, the project has asked candidates to sign a pledge that they will devote some resources to targeting young voters.
Originally, the pledge required a commitment of 10% of their campaign spending, but the exact amount was eliminated because candidates proved reluctant. Such initiatives, however, are few. No candidates of either party are taking a chance this fall of antagonizing the elderly by saying they want to privatize Social Security, as much as the idea appeals to people younger than 30.

Politicians steer their time & money toward older voters because the strategy is efficient. After studying congressional & other campaigns, Yale political scientist David Nickerson estimated that it costs at least 3 times more to get people in their twenties to vote than people in their sixties. At the Univ.Indiana Bloomington, student leaders sensed that their "Vote Hard" registration drive would require a dramatic inducement, so they added one: a red Corvette, to be given away in a lottery after the election. "Had this just been the regular student registration campaign," said Bill Gray, the student body president, "maybe there would be 200 people voting." But nearly 18,000 registration forms have flown out of the Student Govt Association's office.

Youthful indifference is familiar to R. Stuart Jones Jr., 23, who graduated from American University in the District last spring and went home to his native Arkansas, one of the Pew project sites, to try to stir up youth support for Sen. Tim Hutchinson R-AR. "It's a chicken- and-the-egg syndrome," Jones said. "The young people don't feel connected to the candidates, because they don't campaign to them. And the candidates don't feel connected to the young people, because they think they don't vote."

The tragedy of the commons   excerpt
12.13.68   Garrett Hardin

… To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.
Unfortunately this is just the course of action that is being pursued by the United Nations. In late 1967, some 30 nations agreed to the following :

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

However, let us not forget what Robert Louis Stevenson said: "The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy". If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United Nations.
We should also join with Kingsley Davis in attempting to get planned Parenthood-World Population to see the error of its ways in embracing the same tragic ideal.

It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton Darwin made this point when he spoke on the centennial of the publication of his grandfather's great book. The argument is straightforward and Darwinian.
People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The difference will be accentuated, generation by generation.

In C. G. Darwin's words: "It may well be that it would take hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but if it should do so, nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus".
… In any instance in which society appeals to an individual exploiting a commons to restrain himself for the general good by means of his conscience, such an appeal is to set up a selective system that works toward the elimination of conscience from the race.

Nadasaki, Japan   Spend a day with Sachie and Shoji Takamori and it's easy to see why they have not had the second child they yearn for. When Sachie, a 29-year-old piano teacher, scrambles out of bed at 7:30 a.m., steam is already rising from their preprogrammed rice cooker. She runs for the kitchen to fry up fish and vegetables for her husband's lunch box.
Shoji, 28, a used car salesman for troubled Mitsubishi Motors, sleeps until the last moment before squirming into his gray uniform. He takes the lunch box and grabs the garbage on his way out the door. By 8:05, usually before their 3-year-old son, Ryo, wakes up, Shoji is gone. He probably won't be home until after 10 o'clock tonight.

Concerns over mounting male health problems and revolutionary approaches triggered by introduction of birth control pills for women and drugs against impotence for men have become catalysts for open discussions. A world forum on male health was held last week in Buenos Aires. In recent years, conferences devoted to male sexual & reproductive health are taking place now & then.
Studies have shown that at least one out of every ten marriages is infertile. Whilst in the past the blame for infertility was generally laid on women, now it appears to be shared by both parents alike. Impotence caused by erectile dysfunction has become the main factor contributing to male infertility. This condition, making it impossible for a man to have children, is aggravated by inability to have sex, crucial component of life.
  [ False opine; water, air & nutrition are crucial to sustaining life. Sex IS crucial to perpetuating life at large, but hardly crucial to sustaining an individual's life. ]

It was the "blue pill"   [ presumably Viagra ]   … rectified weakness of nature. The pharmaceuticals market offers a variety of drugs allowing additional convenience for men. There are pills that can be taken before a sexual intercourse, or those with sustained action. Most likely that pills for radical treatment of erectile dysfunction may emerge soon.
Today, other aspects of the problem are coming into being, i.e. to what extent society as a whole and its male component are ready to accept and make use of technology advancements, and the level of sex culture & education.

According to Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences sociologist Igor Kon, countries with low sexual culture show low economic performance since their population is too inhibited to realize their ambitions in full. A good opposite example is Japan with its high rates of economic development with over 44% of men remaining sexually active after 70, not to mention younger ages. Andrologists say that over 70% of men think about sex "often or very often". Science does its best to make them not just think.

Japan's centenarians at record 28,395
9.16.05   Chisaki Watanabe AP

Tokyo   The number of Japanese living beyond 100 has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years, with the once-exclusive centenarian club expected to surpass 28,000 this year, the govt said Friday. The Health Ministry said Japan was likely to have 28,395 citizens aged 100 years or older at the end of September, a jump from last year's record 25,554 of which women comprised 85 percent. The ministry conducted a nationwide survey and the figure is a projection of centenarians by the end of the month.

The number of people living older than 100 has been on the rise since 1971, and has accelerated since 1996 when Japan had 7,373 people who had reached three figures, according to the ministry. The rapid increase underscores both positive and negative sides of the country's aging population.
While experts say that there are more active centenarians than before, the rapidly graying population adds to concerns over Japan's overburdened public pension system. Its centenarian population is expected to reach nearly 1 million, world's largest, by 2050, according to U.N. projections.

Yone Minagawa is the oldest woman at 113 in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, while the oldest man at 110 is Tomoji Tanabe in another southern prefecture, Miyazaki, the ministry said. Tanabe drinks milk and keeps a diary every day, saying that the key to long life is not to drink alcohol, the ministry said.
Tokyo has the most centenarians with 2,562. Okinawa, Japan's southernmost chain of islands, has the highest concentration, with 740 centenarians, or 54 for every 100,000 people, well above a nationwide average of 22 per 100,000.

The ratio for the United States was about 18 in 100,000, according to the 2000 census. The announcement was made prior to Respect for the Aged Day on Sept. 18, a national holiday honoring the country's elderly, when the government gives each new centenarian a letter from the prime minister and a silver cup.

Higashimatsuyama, Japan   For more than 3 decades, Masako Shimano has been the perfect wife, dutiful daughter-in-law, self-sacrificing mother and tireless nurse. Now she works to spare other Japanese women the same fate. In this farming exurb about an hour's train ride northwest of Tokyo, women like Shimano, a 58-year-old grandmother, are still referred to as yome, or brides. But these brides are not wrinkled women in wedding kimonos. In rural Japan, "bride" is a job description for the wife of the eldest son. It might better be translated as "drudge."

As Japan's population ages, the form of the drudgery is evolving from child care to elder care. And the burden of caring for this senior population, whose numbers & longevity have never before been seen, has landed hard on the shoulders of millions of aging yome like Shimano. Japanese live longer than anyone in the world: currently 77 years on average for men, 84 years for women.

More than 13,000 Japanese are older than 100. With the birthrate stubbornly remaining below replacement level, those older than 65 already make up 17.2% of the population, outnumbering the 14.7% who are younger than 15. The percentage of those older than 60 will nearly double to 42.3% by 2050. Demographers predict that the population will peak by 2007 and then fall continuously for the next 100 years.

Nowhere in the world are the strains of the swiftly aging population so acute. Wage structures, pension policies and retirement ages, as well as the definition of aging, the role of women and the meaning of filial devotion, are all in play.
Japanese tradition has always required the wife of the eldest son to care for her husband's aging parents as well as other disabled relatives until their deaths. Those who would put the bedridden in nursing homes faced ostracism.

For many modern women, the sacrifice is too severe. Some cite this "nursing hell" as one reason for not marrying or not having as many children as they might like. Shimano and many scholars believe that Japan's success in managing its rapid aging comes down to whether it supports or exploits middle-aged women like her.

"In Japan, the birth dearth and the aging society are inexorably linked. Both are women's problems," says Keiko Higuchi, a specialist in gender studies and aging society at Tokyo Kasei University.
About 85% of those who care for elderly relatives are women. More than half of the caregivers are older than 60.
More than a third of the caregivers are women who nurse their husband's relatives, sometimes simultaneously caring for their own aging parents.

Shimano had to quit her job as a teacher when she got married. She raised 3 children while helping in her husband's family fields. Then she nursed her father-in-law, who was bedridden for more than a year, changing his diapers until the day he died. "I don't know exactly what his disease was," she says. "As the bride, I was not informed."

Now Shimano looks after her 92-year-old mother-in-law while baby-sitting her 6-year-old grandson and keeping house for her husband, a widowed daughter and a son who is still in graduate school. In her spare time, she has become a grass-roots activist who champions the needs of the elderly, the disabled and their beleaguered caregivers.

Arrest of Japan's most notorious white slavers sparked massive raids of strip clubs across the country, rescuing scores of women whose dreams of getting the hands on some "Japan money" turned into tales of woe & misery, according to Asahi Geino (3/6). Koichi Hagiwara is accused of being one of the most powerful "brokers" of Colombian strippers in Japan. A reporter from a national daily outlines the details of his December arrest.

"A Colombian woman who contacted her embassy in May last year led the cops to him. She only complained about the atrocious conditions she had been forced to live under, but Hagiwara's name came up in the discussions. Hagiwara was known as a top white slaver, with about 80 women under his control," the hack tells Asahi Geino. "On Dec. 17, cops from 18 prefectures conducted simultaneous raids on 24 strip clubs Hagiwara was sending girls to across the country. They also arrested 68 Colombian women."

It's rare for Colombian sex industry workers to be arrested, as another white slaver points out.
"Most of the women arrested during trafficking raids are Thai. They're nearly always picked up for overstaying their visas. Many Thai come into Japan using a fake passport or on a tourist visa," the "broker" tells Asahi Geino.
"For the Colombians, it's different. In Colombia, there are white slavers called 'tekiya.' They start a Japanese-run co. over there and employ women. The women are sent to Japan on co. business, so can get long- term visas. As they're in the country legally, it's hard to arrest them." Even if the women are given the token status of co. employees, their treatment couldn't be further from the truth.

"To make sure the woman can't run away from her employer, her passport is confiscated. They don't pay her until her work is finished, either. When they do pay, they always call it a prize for perfect attendance or congratulatory tip. Most of the girls send the money back to their homes. They can't live on that money so, in my case at least, I give them 5,000 yen to live on every couple of weeks. They live together in groups of five or six," the "broker" says. "Somehow, they seem to be able to get by on that money. But whenever they find themselves a Japanese lover, instead of asking for designer label good presents (like a Japanese woman usually would), they're usually much happier getting household appliances."

Nearly all the women are also forced into selling themselves. "It's accepted that women working as strippers are also there for customers who want to go all the way. A 16-year-old Colombian girl was also picked up at the same time as (white slaver) Hagiwara was arrested. She had been having sex with customers who won the right to have sex with her by defeating her in a public game of scissors, paper and rock," the national daily reporter tells Asahi Geino.
"Nearly all the women were prepared to go off to a private room to go all the way. But they only ended up being paid about 1,000 yen each time."

Sakuragicho, Japan   Only a decade ago, Japanese women who failed to marry by age 25 were warned not to become "Christmas cakes" left unsold on the shelf past their expiration date. But millions of them are now flouting their elders' advice--and getting away with it. Japan today is a paradise for singles. Nearly half of Japanese women are still single at age 29. Growing numbers are postponing marriage until 35 or beyond. A country that until recently considered its few "spinsters" to be pathetic or defective, Japan now has a far higher percentage of single women ages 20 to 40 than does the United States, higher than almost anywhere in the world except Scandinavia. The better-educated and better-paid a Japanese man, the more likely he is to marry. But the better-educated and more successful a Japanese woman, the more likely she is to decide that marriage and child rearing are bad deals. Consider:

•   80% to 90% of single Japanese women live with their parents, as do about half of men in their 20s. Most pay little or no rent and do no housework. One sociologist estimates that Japan has 10 million of these "parasite singles", roughly equal to the entire population of Greece.
•   56% of single women do want to marry eventually. But marriage is widely seen as a sayonara to personal freedom. A recent Mainichi newspaper survey of single women ages 20 to 40 found fewer than a third wanted to marry "soon."
•   10% of single women ages 35 to 39 told the survey they have resolved never to marry. So did a quarter of single women in their 40s. This marks a revolution in a society where in 1950, only 1.4% of women never married.