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The story
In a survey on marriage attitudes conducted by Japan’s Children and Families Agency among roughly 44,000 unmarried people aged 15 to 39, 35.1% said they “have no intention of marrying” — closing in on the 37.5% who said they “want to marry eventually.” The figures, released as interim results from a nationwide web survey of 100,000 people, were picked up on 5ch’s Nanchara Jikkyou G (Live News) board, sparking a wide-ranging debate over the agency’s reason for existing, how its budget is spent, and the root causes of Japan’s declining birthrate. Posters offered a string of theories — the pension system, changing family structures, women entering the workforce — while opinions split sharply between criticism of the agency and its defense.
35% of Unmarried Young People Say They “Have No Intention of Marrying” — Children and Families Agency’s Large-Scale Youth Survey
The Children and Families Agency conducted a web survey of 100,000 people nationwide aged 15 to 39 and has released interim tabulation results.
There were roughly 68,000 valid responses. Among the roughly 44,000 unmarried respondents who were asked about their attitude toward marriage, 37.5% said they “want to marry eventually,” followed by 35.1% who said they “have no intention of marrying.”
Source: news.ntv.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
That said, it's the busiest ministry out there
Most of it is social security spending, though.
They just consolidated welfare that used to be scattered across different ministries, but there's way too much off-base criticism like this.
And what's worse, even politicians say the same thing, which makes it genuinely bad.
To hand out taxpayers' money to their buddies
Gen Z doesn't need welfare either.
Those guys are able to work.
They just don't want to, so make them work.
Instead, why not cut the basic pension and medical subsidies, and have part of a person's actual children's pension taxes and insurance premiums go directly to their own parents?
The more kids you have, and the more your kids earn, the richer your retirement.
That's not it. The root cause of the declining birthrate is the pension system itself.
This system is the root of the problem.
Once you know you'll get a pension and won't struggle in old age, you can pursue your own life without worry.
That's why marriage gets delayed, and why people pile on more and more conditions when choosing a partner.
That's why, throughout history, regardless of race, civilization, religion, or marriage customs, birthrates decline everywhere in the world once economic growth kicks in.
Everyone's just got no slack left.
Social media (especially X) is a hellscape.
It's less about being self-centered and more that even vulnerable people can now live on their own.
Even if you can't do housework, there are handy appliances and delivery meals, and women can now become full-time employees just like anyone else.
Active for life! 😊
That song gave me courage, so I told my mom I'm not getting married and I'm not moving out, but I'll pay her 10,000 yen a month — she was so moved she cried.
They should play that on "Minna no Uta" (NHK's long-running kids' song show)
If you can support yourself, doesn't that mean you're not really "vulnerable" anymore?
Exactly, so the ones who can't live on their own are the real vulnerable ones.
Sounds like something you'd say about stocks
>According to preliminary vital statistics released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the number of babies born in 2025 came to 671,236 — down 14,937 from the previous year — falling even further below 2024, which had already dropped under 700,000 for the first time. This marks the 10th straight year the number has hit a new record low since record-keeping began in 1899. The total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) fell 0.01 points from the previous year to 1.14, also a record low.
From here on, the men and women born in the 1990s — back when the birthrate was still stable — are going to age out of their childbearing years, so what exactly is there to be hopeful about?
Guess you could call it the "Sazae-san system" (after the multi-generational household in the classic anime/manga Sazae-san)
It's kind of sad seeing people struggling to raise kids without being able to rely on the grandparents.
Some idiots tried to copy just the nuclear-family system like America, without America's land or money.
Slap a penalty on real estate agents.
I agree that the collapse of the extended-family system and the shift to nuclear families raised child-rearing costs and led to the falling birthrate.
But it's a stretch to blame the shift to nuclear families entirely on real estate agents.
Corporate relocation systems that suit big companies, and mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflicts, deserve plenty of the blame too.
The direct benefits just disappeared.
Sure, people say you shouldn't have kids based on cost-benefit math, but you can't get by on nice-sounding ideals alone.
Kids stopped being labor a generation ago already — it's just that most people didn't think of themselves as being at the bottom.
Now social media and everything else has made that visible, and in a Japan with no bright future in sight, you've got people who can't bear to saddle a kid with a life as bleak as their own or worse, plus people who can't even reach the starting line of marriage — that one-two punch is just brutal.
The problem is that nobody anticipated what was bound to happen once women entered the workforce, and no countermeasures were ever put in place.
Honestly, I keep thinking, what do these people even do all day at work?
Background and Key Points of Debate
What the Children and Families Agency released was an interim tabulation from a 100,000-person web survey, with about 68,000 valid responses; the pool asked about marriage intentions was limited to roughly 44,000 unmarried respondents. The agency was established in 2023 to consolidate child-related policy, and most of its budget is not newly created spending but a reallocation of social security spending — things like child allowances and childcare — that used to be split across different ministries. In the thread, criticism that “the budget is wasted” clashed with rebuttals that it “merely consolidated social security spending,” and this difference in starting assumptions is what’s driving posters to talk past each other. As for the causes of the declining birthrate, posters pointed to the pension system, changing family structures, and women’s employment status, among others — but none of these is an academically established single cause, and it’s worth noting they remain speculation confined to 5ch rather than settled fact.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanchara Jikkyou G) thread “[Sad News] Children and Families Agency Heads Toward Despair.”
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