Hijacking top comment but also relevant to 'too late for that.'
I taught ESL in Japan in 2006-7. Talking about this makes me feel old as fuck. But one of the things I noticed speaking with my students, was that when we'd do the very common 'so why are you interested in learning English?' type question, the answer from the younger women was basically 'to flee Japan,' albeit put more diplomatically.
That answer was laden with all the demographic nonsense. I went back to study some of it when I did some of my graduate work at Waseda. They've created a horrible self-perpetuating cycle; women are still encouraged out of the work force (Japan has the worst or near the worst rankings for gender equality among rich nations), men are still encouraged to be absent from their families for their work (making family life that much less appealing), living costs are high, elder care is essentially mostly a family matter (and thus marrying women are essentially signing on as future nannies to their husband's parents), etc. At the same time, many women are very keenly aware of all of this and are looking for better personal prospects, but that almost certainly means being single beyond what is considered ideal. Less marriage -> shifted demographic pyramid -> more elders for the wives to not want to deal with -> less marriage. And that's just one of the kind of feedback loops.
Almost all of the government efforts to deal with the problem are childcare focused (ie various iterations of the 1994 'Angel Plan' which is in a lot of ways the start point to the whole demographic panic in popular discourse), but aiming at childcare is addressing the problem too late. The costs of raising a child are part of the concern, but they come after many more significant concerns that they really haven't done much about.
(40 children)
