:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/LNE3BDLGXNBPZCZWTZ4VQLE7DE.jpg "In Japan they are betting on a dating app to stop the low birth rate: why has the lack of children become a problem? | South Korea | China | Applications | Tinder | Omiai | Bumble | WORLD")
It is a formula so that citizens can not only find a partner, but also someone to commit to, have children with, and give them a safe environment for growth.
To use this app, users must prove that they are single and willing to get married, and present documentation on the payment of taxes and the annual salary they receive.
“We want to give them a little push to find it,” a capital official told the AFP agency. And, according to the newspaper report, 70% of people who want to get married do not usually use these options.
Another of the powerful reasons for the appearance of this app is the low birth rate that has remained constant for the eighth consecutive year in the Japanese country. In figures it translates into 5.1%, during 2023, reaching 758,631 births, while the number of deaths was 1,590,503.
Although Japan is certainly not the only state experiencing this situation.
“It is a general trend, in fact, perhaps it is more acute in Japan and South Korea; But China is also on the same path: in 2023 the Chinese population decreased compared to 2022. In the case of South Korea, the population has already decreased since 2021 and in the case of Japan this began to be noticed since 2009,” he indicates. Carlos Aquino, director of the Center for Asian Studies (CEAS) at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
In February of this year, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington reported that South Korea’s rate was below the 2.1 children needed to maintain a population that today reaches 51 million citizens. At this rate, it is believed that by the year 2100 the South Korean population will have fallen to 26.8 million.
In China, despite being one of the most populated countries in the world, for the second consecutive year it faces a decrease. According to CNN, in 2023 it registered 6.39 births per 1,000 inhabitants, below the 6.77 the previous year.
In other words, the population fell by 2.08 million people, the lowest birth rate recorded since 1949.
Having and caring for children costs
What is the reason for the low birth rate in these countries? Aquino points out that there are several factors, but that there is a difference in the economic factor.
On the one hand there is work. The San Marcos teacher points out that in the case of women there are no facilities for them to be mothers and do their jobs at the same time; second, education is quite expensive, “since these Asian countries are very competitive in the educational field”; and a third factor is that having a house or an apartment also represents a great expense.
In addition, there are also other social components such as machismo itself.
“In Iceland, Sweden or Norway, parents even carry their children. In countries like South Korea and Japan, men expect women to take on absolutely everything. Because? Because the man is at work all day, he does not share the domestic tasks, so no woman is going to enslave herself taking care of the children,” Aquino comments to Trade.
“An app is not going to solve it”
Faced with this panorama, is a dating application a solution?
These formulas are not new, far from it, for current generations. The best known are Tinder and Bumble, but they have also been used in Japan for a long time. Some of the most popular ones are OkCupid Japan, JapanCupid, and Omiai. The latter takes its name from an ancient practice of arranged marriage.
However, for the specialist this is not enough.
“Right now what prevails is the economic factor. Having a house is prohibitive, raising children is prohibitive, and a dating app is not going to solve that. That the population is going to fall, that is inevitable. What we want is to reduce the rate. The same is in China, in South Korea and it is also in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and the rest of the Asian nations,” Aquino highlights.
As a result of the low birth rate in Japan, this year the diaper manufacturer Oji Holdings changed its business as production fell from 700 million units in 2001 to only 400 million last year, the AFP agency reported.
The specialist also adds another consequence in the payment of pensions, since there are more older people and fewer people of working age: the cost of pensions is enormous because they live longer and fewer children are born.
“The problem is that even if they want to have children, they face the economic problem of high education, the high cost of houses and everything else, and the other thing that is also a problem in Japan and Korea is machismo,” he concludes. about a situation that, in general, has been affecting countries considered rich or developed the most.