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The story
An analysis by Kyoto University, reported by the Asahi Shimbun on September 7, 2026, found that the rise in the number of university-educated women has had only a ‘mere 5%’ effect on Japan’s declining birthrate. Since the original article is behind a paywall and only partially readable, opinions split on 5ch over whether that 5% should be read as a rounding error or as a number too significant to ignore. Some pushed back by citing comparative data on university enrollment rates and birthrates across Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Japan, while many others pointed to economic factors unrelated to education — rising social insurance burdens, student loan repayments, and the low wages of the ’employment ice age’ generation — as the real drivers.
September 7, 2026, 7:00 AM — Paid article
Asahi Shimbun
Japan’s declining birthrate is accelerating
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
That, plus student loans and inflation
So plenty of women who had the grades to get into a former imperial university went to women's colleges or junior colleges instead.
Yeah, basically.
It's less about education level and more about whether women work full-time and go hard at their careers.
Even the 'dying alone' fear doesn't hit as hard now — there are services that make sure you're found before you start decomposing.
Exactly what the 'rat utopia' experiment predicted (Calhoun's mouse-utopia experiment).
The mice never went to college.
Blame a fake-rich country drowning in debt.
The people trying to grab budget and public funds use 'the birthrate' as their excuse — they don't actually want to fix it.
Taiwan's university enrollment rate: 85%
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Taiwan's total fertility rate: 0.695
South Korea's university enrollment rate: 73.6%
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South Korea's total fertility rate: 0.80
China's university enrollment rate: 70%
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China's total fertility rate: 0.93
Japan's university enrollment rate: 60%
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Japan's total fertility rate: 1.14
This is good data.
Though Japan's university enrollment rate is way too low.
I don't want to bring a kid into a world this miserable, and honestly, the right move is to walk away from women entirely.
Caring about women is what makes me unhappy in the first place — for guys like me, the key is killing off any interest in them, since they're the root of the misery.
And if a mentally unstable woman ('menhera') has kids, everyone ends up miserable.
Are you childless yourself? (小梨 — slang punning 'no kids' with 'no pear')
If we're supposed to believe this estimate…
the completed fertility rate for college-educated women is much lower than for women with a high school education or less.
And the share of college-educated women has grown a lot compared to the past.
So the effect isn't 'just 5%' — if anything, this data strongly supports the theory that more college-educated women IS what caused the falling birthrate.
So why are they lying about it?
Because they started with the conclusion they wanted.
Re: #104
They'd sing a very different tune if you told Kyoto University 'we're cutting your budget by 5%.'
In statistics, anything under 5% is generally considered within the margin of error.
Women who still want kids are having them, and men who want a partner aren't being picky about it either.
Now with social media, that loneliness is gone. People don't even bother with romance anymore, let alone marriage.
Romance and marriage cost money, eat up your time, and are just a pain lol
Re: #215
Yeah, exactly, so honestly this is fine as it is.
People who get married tend to be surrounded by friends who are also married.
Calling that 'division' is a stretch… if anything, instead of the media only covering failed matchmaking stories, they should go interview the 90% of first-time married couples who got married without even trying formal matchmaking, and run that instead.
But they won't, because writing about ordinary, natural encounters doesn't make money lol.
I guess the real problem is treating 'whatever makes money' as automatically good.
If it were truly instinctual, people would be a lot more desperate about it.
If people aren't desperate enough to actually do it, then it was never that strong a drive to begin with.
Calling something that weak an 'instinct' is way overselling it.
Spot on.
Sex drive is instinctual, but marriage and child-rearing actually go against instinct.
Women might have an instinct to raise kids once they've given birth,
but for men, getting married goes against instinct.
It's a sign of evolution.
Once instinct recedes, the most primitive biological urge of all — perpetuating the species — is the first thing to fade.
Just look at how bears and deer in Japan have exploded in numbers lately —
instinct probably only functions when there's freedom and safety.
Seriously, this.
Labor has just become a way to enrich capitalists.
It's the capitalists and politicians who built a society where 'working makes you a loser' — they're the ones at fault.
Honestly, it's just a substitute for immigration.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
This discussion was sparked by an Asahi Shimbun article (September 7, 2026) reporting on a Kyoto University analysis; since the original article is paywalled, 5ch users could only see the headline and a rough summary, which is largely why interpretation of the ‘5%’ figure became the central debate — a product of asymmetric information. Statistically, there’s a divide between those who see a figure around 5% as within the margin of error and those who argue that even a small annual effect becomes significant once it compounds — and both readings have some validity; the difference is largely one of interpretation. The thread also cited correlational data comparing university enrollment rates and birthrates across Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Japan as counter-evidence, but correlation isn’t causation, and this doesn’t necessarily contradict Kyoto University’s conclusion that the effect is small. It’s also worth noting that economic factors like the social insurance burden, student loans, and the treatment of the ’employment ice age’ generation tend to be discussed independently of educational attainment, underscoring that the declining birthrate is hard to pin on any single cause.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread ‘Is the declining birthrate caused by more women going to university? Kyoto University analysis: “only a 5% effect”‘.
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