A piece by Richard Lloyd Parry in today’s Times:
A quarter of young Japanese are virgins, researchers have found, a finding that will add to anxiety about the country’s low birth rate and increasingly aged population.
Japanese and Swedish researchers say that the proportion of people aged 18 to 39 who have not had heterosexual intercourse has risen from about one in five in 1992 to one in four today.
Older people had more sexual experience — among those aged 35 to 39, 9.5 per cent of men and 8.9 per cent of women are virgins, although this is close to double the proportion in 1992.
Explanations for the lack of interest include the poor quality of sex education, and the decline of traditional matchmakers, who used to arrange unions between young people of marriageable age. Others attribute it to the habit among young Japanese of socialising in groups, making it harder for men and women to break off as couples, and the rise of hikikomori, or social recluses, who live at home and never go out.
However, the new research suggests that much of the problem comes down to money. While salaries among male workers have declined since the “Bubble Economy” of the 1980s, research shows that women’s expectations of income in a potential mate remain unrealistically high. [J4MB emphasis. “Much of the problem comes down to money”. No, much of the problem is female hypergamy. Why do journalists never attribute blame where it lies, when the group in question is women? They have no problem doing that when the group is men. Sheer unadulterated gynocentrism.]
The conclusions were drawn from a study of long-term survey data compiled by Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR).
Japan’s fertility rate, the number of children which the average woman will bear in a lifetime, is 1.43, far below the “replacement rate” of 2.1. Old people are living longer and longer but the bill for their pensions and medical bills falls on a shrinking number of taxpayers.
The NIPSSR predicts that the Japanese population will fall from 126 million today to 88 million in 2065. Before that happens, the country could be bankrupt. [J4MB emphasis]
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