Photo Illustration by Matt ChaseIn 1989, Japan seemed to be an unstoppable economic superpower. Its companies were overtaking competitors and gobbling up American icons like Rockefeller Center. But inside the country, the government had identified a looming, slow-motion crisis: The fertility rate had fallen to a record low. Policymakers called it the “1.57 shock,” citing the projected average number of children that women would have over their childbearing years.1989年，日本看上去就是一个不可阻挡的经济超级大国。它的公司正在超越竞争对手，大手笔买下洛克菲勒中心这样的美国地标。但在国内，政府已经发现了一场若隐若现、缓缓靠近的危机：生育率已降至创纪录的低点。政策制定者称其为“1.57冲击”，这个数字指的是女性在育龄期预计生育的平均子女数量。If births continued to decline, they warned, the consequences would be disastrous. Taxes would rise or social security coffers would shrink. Japanese children would lack sufficient peer interaction. Society would lose its vitality as the supply of young workers dwindled. It was time to act.他们警告说，如果出生率继续下降，后果将是灾难性的。税收会增加，或者社会保障资金会缩水。日本儿童缺乏足够的同伴互动。随着年轻劳动力的减少，社会将失去活力。是时候采取行动了。Starting in the 1990s, Japan began rolling out policies and pronouncements designed to spur people to have more babies. The government required employers to offer child care leave of up to a year, opened more subsidized day care slots, exhorted men to do housework and take paternity leave, and called on companies to shorten work hours. In 1992, the government started paying direct cash allowances for having even one child (earlier, they had started with the third child), and bimonthly payments for all children were later introduced.从20世纪90年代开始，日本推出了旨在刺激人们生育更多孩子的政策和公告。政府要求雇主提供长达一年的育儿假，提供更多得到补贴的日托，鼓励男性做家务和休陪产假，并呼吁企业缩短工作时间。1992年，政府开始向生一个孩子的家庭直接发放现金补贴（更早的时候是从生第三个孩子开始发放），后来又开始向所有孩子发放双月补贴。None of this has worked. Last year, Japan’s fertility rate stood at 1.2. In Tokyo, the rate is now less than one. The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since the government started collecting statistics in 1899.这些都没有奏效。去年，日本的生育率为1.2。在东京，这个比率现在还不到1。日本去年的新生儿数量降至1899年政府开始统计以来的最低水平。Now the rest of the developed world is looking more and more like Japan. According to a report issued in 2019 by the United Nations Population Fund, half of the world’s population lives in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 births per woman.现在，其他发达国家正变得越来越像日本。根据联合国人口基金会2019年发布的一份报告，世界上有一半人口生活在生育率低于“更替率”（每名女性生育2.1个孩子）的国家。Why should countries care about shrinking populations at a time of climate change, increasing risk of nuclear catastrophe and the prospect of artificial intelligence taking over jobs? At a global level, there is no shortage of people. But drastically low birthrates can lead to problems in individual countries.面对气候变化、核灾难风险增加以及人工智能取代就业的前景，各国为什么要关心人口减少？在全球范围内，人口并不短缺。但极低的出生率可能会给个别国家带来问题。Tomáš Sobotka, one of the authors of the U.N. report and a deputy director at the Vienna Institute of Demography, does a back-of-the-envelope calculation to illustrate the point: In South Korea, which has the lowest birthrate in the world at 0.72 children per woman, just over a million babies were born in 1970. Last year, 230,000 were. It’s obviously too simple to say that each person born in 2023 will, in their prime working years, have to support four retired people. But in the absence of large-scale immigration, the matter will be “extremely difficult to organize and deal with for Korean society,” said Mr. Sobotka.联合国报告的作者之一、维也纳人口研究所副所长托马什·索博特卡做了一个粗略的计算来说明这一点：韩国的出生率是世界上最低的，每名女性生育0.72个孩子，1970年出生的婴儿是100万多一点。去年，这一数字为23万。显然，如果说2023年出生的每个人在他们的黄金工作年龄要养活四个退休人员，这显然太过简单化了。但索博特卡说，在没有大规模移民的情况下，这个问题“对韩国社会来说将会极其难以组织和处理”。Similar concerns arise from Italy to the United States: working-age populations outnumbered by the elderly; towns emptying out; important jobs unfilled; business innovation faltering. Immigration could be a straightforward antidote, but in many of the countries with declining birthrates, accepting large numbers of immigrants has become politically toxic.从意大利到美国，都出现了类似的担忧：老年人口的数量超过了劳动年龄人口；城镇人去楼空；重要职位空缺；商业创新步履蹒跚。移民可能是一种直接的解药，但在许多出生率下降的国家，接受大量移民在政治上产生了负面作用。Across Europe, East Asia and North America, many governments are, like Japan, introducing measures like paid parental leave, child care subsidies and direct cash transfers. According to the U.N., the number of countries deliberately targeting birthrates rose from 19 in 1986 to 55 by 2015.在欧洲、东亚和北美，许多政府都像日本一样推出了带薪育儿假、儿童保育补贴和直接现金转移等措施。根据联合国的数据，有意增加出生率的国家从1986年的19个增加到2015年的55个。The topic has surfaced in the American presidential campaign, with the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, chastising the country for its low birthrates and defending his past comments about “childless cat ladies” running the nation. Mr. Vance has suggested raising the child tax credit and said he would consider a policy, like one in Hungary, in which women with multiple children are taxed at a lower rate. On the Democratic side, Kamala Harris has proposed a $6,000 tax credit for families with infants. While Ms. Harris doesn’t present this as a pro-fertility policy, it echoes what other countries are doing.这个话题已经出现在美国总统竞选中，共和党副总统候选人JD·万斯谴责美国的低出生率，并为自己过去有关“没有孩子的爱猫女士”管理国家的言论辩护。万斯建议，提高儿童税收抵免，并表示他会考虑像匈牙利那样的政策，即对有多个孩子的女性征收较低的税率。民主党方面，贺锦丽提议为有婴儿的家庭提供6000美元的税收抵免。虽然贺锦丽没有把这说成是促进生育的政策，但它与其他国家的做法不谋而合。Advocates sometimes suggest that if you offer paid family leave or free day care, birthrates will magically shoot up. But for some 30 years Japan has been a kind of laboratory for these initiatives — and research shows that even generous policies yield only slight upticks.支持者有时会说，如果提供带薪家庭假或免费日托，出生率就会神奇地飙升。但在大约30年的时间里，日本一直是这些举措的实验室——研究表明，即使慷慨的政策也只能带来轻微的增长。After years of political grandstanding and a growing menu of government initiatives, modern families just don’t seem to want to grow larger. “The policies would need to be very, very coercive to push people to change their preferences,” Mr. Sobotka said. “Or to have kids they didn’t want or plan to have.” So what kinds of measures might actually induce people to have more babies? And if nothing really works, why not?经过多年的政治作秀和越来越多的政府倡议计划，现代家庭似乎不想扩大规模。“这些政策需要非常非常具有强制性，才能促使人们改变自己的偏好，”索博特卡说。“或者生下他们不想要或不打算要的孩子。”那么，什么样的措施可能会促使人们生育更多的孩子呢？如果什么都不起作用，又是为什么呢？The Great Baby Bust婴儿大萧条There’s plenty of evidence that governments can change fertility rates, but generally in one direction: down.有大量证据表明，政府的确可以改变生育率，但通常只有一个方向：下降。In East Asia, many of the countries that now have exceedingly low fertility initially imposed it on themselves. For more than three decades, China enforced a one-child policy. After World War II, Japan encouraged the wide use of contraception and decriminalized abortion to shrink the population. Likewise, in South Korea, the government legalized abortion in the early 1970s and discouraged families from having more than two children.在东亚，许多现在生育率极低的国家，曾经采取措施将生育率压低。三十多年来，中国一直实行独生子女政策。第二次世界大战后，日本鼓励广泛使用避孕措施，并实行堕胎非罪化，以减少人口。同样，在韩国，政府在20世纪70年代初将堕胎合法化，并且不鼓励家庭生育两个以上的孩子。Minchul Yum, an associate professor of economics at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied South Korean birthrates, said his mother told him that “if you brought more than two kids onto public transportation, it was like a social stigma.”研究韩国出生率的弗吉尼亚联邦大学经济学副教授余明哲（音）说，他的母亲告诉他，“如果你带着两个以上的孩子乘坐公共交通工具，在社会上被认为是可耻的。”In Europe and the United States, fertility rates declined as more women entered the work force and the influence of religion — particularly Catholicism — receded. Young people, who started to leave the communities where they were raised, pursue careers and build networks that normalized postponing marriage, had fewer children as they started childbearing later.在欧洲和美国，随着越来越多的女性进入劳动力市场，以及宗教——尤其是天主教——的影响减弱，生育率下降了。年轻人离开成长的社区，追求事业，并建立起使得推迟结婚正常化的网络，随着他们开始晚育，他们生下子女的数量也减少了。Lower birthrates signify progress: Declining infant mortality rates reduced the need to have many children. As economies transitioned away from predominantly agricultural or family-owned businesses that required offspring to run, people focused on leisure and other aspirations. Women could now pursue career goals and personal fulfillment beyond raising children. Undergirding it all was the rise of birth control, which meant women could determine whether and when they got pregnant.较低的出生率意味着进步：婴儿死亡率的下降减少了生育许多孩子的需要。随着经济从农业或以家族企业为主、需要后代经营的企业转型，人们开始关注休闲和其他愿望。如今，女性可以在抚养孩子之外追求职业目标和个人成就。这一切的基础是节育措施的兴起，这意味着女性可以决定是否怀孕以及何时怀孕。But the impediments to having multiple children have also grown. Housing costs are ballooning and the gig economy has made young people worry about their own — and their potential offspring’s — financial security. The cost of educating children and preparing them for a more competitive and inequitable job market keeps increasing. The kinds of institutions that once helped people meet future partners with whom they might want to have children, such as the church or formal matchmaking services, have waned.而生育多个孩子的障碍也在增加。住房成本不断膨胀，打工经济让年轻人担心自己和潜在后代的财务安全。教育孩子并让他们为竞争更激烈、更不公平的就业市场做好准备的成本不断增加。教堂或正式婚介服务等曾经帮助人们找到未来伴侣的机构已经衰落。As families have fewer children, they invest more in those they have. Parents in China, Japan and South Korea compete to enroll their children in the best schools and pay for rigorous tutoring from a very young age. Some of those practices have become familiar in the United States, too. In August, Vivek H. Murthy, the surgeon general, issued an advisory to call attention to rising levels of stress and mental health concerns among American parents.随着家庭子女数量的减少，父母会在现有子女身上投入更多。中国、日本和韩国的父母争相让自己的孩子进入最好的学校，并在孩子很小的时候就花钱请他们接受严格的辅导。其中一些做法在美国也很常见。今年8月，卫生局局长维韦克·穆尔蒂发布了一份建议，呼吁人们关注美国父母日益加剧的压力和心理健康问题。Children no longer provide direct economic value with their labor, or an insurance policy in the way that in previous generations it was virtually guaranteed that children would take care of their parents in old age, according to Poh Lin Tan, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore. “We are at the place where having children is really a matter of pure joy and a preference where you kind of have to pay for and make some sacrifices in terms of your leisure and career advancement,” Tan said.新加坡政策研究所高级研究员陈宝林（音）表示，子女不再以劳动提供直接的经济价值，也不再像前几代人那样，几乎可以保证子女会照顾年迈的父母。她说：“我们现在的处境是，生孩子真的是纯粹的快乐，是一种偏好，你必须在休闲和职业发展方面付出代价和做出一些牺牲。”Better Dads, More Babies?更好的爸爸，更多的孩子？Despite changes in family and work life, traditional ideas about who should take care of children — women, of course — have proved resistant to policy prescriptions. “Cultural expectations are designed to fit a way of living that doesn’t exist anymore,” said Matthias Doepke, an economist at the London School of Economics. “That is the root cause of these extremely low fertility rates that we have in rich countries.”尽管家庭和工作生活发生了变化，但事实证明，关于谁应该照顾孩子——当然是女性了——的传统观念成为了政策方略的阻力。“各种文化期望是为了适应一种已不再存在的生活方式而设计的，”伦敦政经学院的经济学家马蒂亚斯·多普克说。“这就是富裕国家生育率极低的根本原因。”In Japan, a demanding work culture that originated in an era when many women stayed home makes it difficult to balance career and family. Despite some changes, employees are still expected to put in long hours, socialize with colleagues or clients at night and travel frequently for business. More than in the West, Japanese mothers, even those with careers, take care of the majority of child care and housework.在日本，许多女性早年是不出来工作的，源自那个时代的严苛的工作文化使得人们难以兼顾事业和家庭。尽管有所变化，员工仍然需要长时间工作，晚上应酬同事或客户，并经常出差。与西方国家相比，日本的母亲，即使是那些有工作的母亲，也承担了大部分的育儿工作和家务活。Kumiko Nemoto, a sociologist and gender scholar at Senshu University in Tokyo, interviewed 28 Japanese women in executive or managerial positions. Many did not have children. Those who did either relied heavily on their parents or paid as much as $2,000 a month for child care. “Almost all of these women said their husbands did not help them,” Ms. Nemoto said.东京专修大学的社会学家和性别学者根本宫美子采访了28名担任高管或管理职位的日本女性。其中许多人都没要孩子，而那些有孩子的要么完全指望父母帮忙，要么每月的托儿费高达2000美元。“几乎所有这些女性都说，她们的丈夫没有帮助她们，”她说道。Some governments on the other side of the world have tried to address these kinds of inequalities. Scandinavian countries have enacted policies to shift some of the burden onto men in the hope that they can support bigger families.在世界的另一端，一些政府已经在尝试解决这种不平等问题。北欧国家颁布政策，将一些负担转移到男性身上，希望他们能够支撑更大的家庭。In 1995, Sweden introduced what came to be known as the “daddy month,” a month of parental leave given to the spouse — usually the father — who had not already taken leave after the birth of a child. If that spouse did not use the month, the couple would lose it. With the addition of second and third “use it or lose it” months in subsequent years, more fathers took paternity leave. “That has created a change in cultural expectations on what it means to be a good father,” said Ylva Moberg, a researcher in economics and sociology at Stockholm University.1995年，瑞典引入了后来被称为“父亲月”的制度，这是为期一个月的育儿假，给孩子出生后还没有休假的配偶（通常是父亲）。如果配偶没有使用这个假，就会被取消。在接下来的几年里，随着这种“要么休假，要么取消”的假期经过两次延长，越来越多的父亲开始休陪产假。斯德哥尔摩大学经济学和社会学研究员伊尔瓦·莫伯格说：“这改变了人们对好父亲的文化期望。”Yet fertility rates in Sweden have not increased. Economists say it’s not clear that that means the policy has failed, given that Sweden’s rates are higher than those in East Asia. “The problem for economists is that even if the fertility rates haven’t gone up, they could have gone down more,” said Anna Raute, an associate professor of economics at Queen Mary University of London.然而，瑞典的生育率并没有增长。经济学家表示，考虑到瑞典的生育率高于东亚国家，目前还不清楚这是否意味着该政策已经失败。“经济学家面临的问题是，即使生育率没有上升，也可能避免了进一步下降，”伦敦玛丽女王大学经济学副教授安娜·劳特说。Some conservatives and religious scholars suggest that rather than encourage fathers to do more, governments should incentivize women to quit work to raise children. But even countries like Finland and Hungary that provide generous benefits, such as letting a parent take up to two or three years off after a child is born, have not seen significant increases in their fertility rates.一些保守派和宗教学者建议，政府应该激励女性辞职照顾孩子，而不是鼓励父亲承担更多责任。但即使是在芬兰和匈牙利这样的国家，提供慷慨福利，例如允许父母在孩子出生后最高可休两到三年的产假，生育率也没有显著提高。Marriage, or Something More Fundamental是婚姻，还是某种更基本的东西If more gender equality between parents, tax rebates and cash allowances can’t create bigger families, what else can a desperate government do?如果父母之间更多的性别平等、退税和现金补贴都无法创造更大的家庭，那么绝望的政府还能做些什么呢？In Japan, policymakers are trying a new gambit: promoting weddings. Last year, fewer than 500,000 couples got married in Japan, the lowest number since 1933, despite polls showing that most single men and women would like to do so.One obstacle is that many young adults live with their parents — close to 40 percent of people aged 20 to 39, according to data from 2016, the latest year for which it is available. “Living with your mom is not the best romantic environment for finding your lifelong partner,” said Lyman Stone, director of the Pro-Natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies in Charlottesville, Va.在日本，政策制定者正在尝试一种新策略：鼓励结婚。去年，日本只有不到50万对情侣结婚，这是自1933年以来的最低数字，尽管民调显示，大多数单身男女都愿意结婚。一个障碍是，许多年轻人与父母同住——根据2016年的数据（可获得该数据的最新年份），在20岁至39岁的群体中，有近40%的人与父母住在一起。弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔家庭研究所支持生育倡议主任莱曼·斯通说：“和母亲住在一起，可不是什么寻找终生伴侣的理想浪漫环境。”Japanese politicians have also talked about the importance of raising wages, and some economists say the government should support corporate social activities that could lead to relationships. L.G.B.T.Q. advocates argue that Japan should legalize same-sex marriage and help such couples have children.日本的政界人士也谈到了提高工资的重要性，一些经济学家表示，政府应该支持可能促成交往的企业社会活动。LGBTQ的倡导者认为，日本应该将同性婚姻合法化，并帮助这类伴侣生育。The Tokyo government recently launched its own dating app, but it has not released any enrollment figures. On social media, the initiative seems to have gotten more attention from Elon Musk than from local residents.东京政府最近推出了自己的约会应用程序，但尚未公布注册数据。在社交媒体上，这一举措引起了埃隆·马斯克的注意，本地民众却没什么兴趣。It’s hard to imagine that this pro-wedding push will succeed in boosting the birthrate any more than Japan’s last three decades of initiatives have. In the end, it seems that governments can only do so much.很难想象，与日本过去三十年的举措相比，这一支持结婚的举措能更有效地提高出生率。归根结底，政府能做的似乎也就这么多了。Influencing those choices may be beyond the reach of traditional government policy. For most people in affluent countries, having children is deeply personal, touching on our values, what kinds of communities we want to be part of, how we view the future. Sometimes it’s also about luck. “Policies cannot find you the best possible partner you dreamed of at the right time,” Mr. Sobotka pointed out.传统的政府政策可能无法影响这些选择。对于富裕国家的大多数人来说，生育是一件非常私人的事情，涉及我们的价值观、我们希望成为哪种社区的一部分、我们如何看待未来。有时，这也与运气有关。索博特卡指出，“政策不可能在正确的时间为你找到你梦想中的完美伴侣。”That’s not to say that some of the policies implemented to spur higher birthrates, or at least partly for that reason, are not meaningful. Providing high-quality, subsidized child care, motivating fathers to take part in their children’s lives and refashioning the workplace to let employees engage with their families can all help improve the lives of those who do have children.这并不是说为刺激高出生率——或者至少部分出于这个原因——而实施的一些政策，是没有意义的。提供高质量、得到补贴的托儿服务，鼓励父亲参与孩子的生活，并重塑工作场所，让员工与家人互动，这些都有助于改善那些为人父母者的生活。Here in Tokyo, friends with young children rave about the wonderful, affordable nursery schools where children from early infancy to as old as 5 eat nutritional lunches and caregivers send daily photos and personalized updates. Compared to when I was here as a newspaper intern in the late 1980s, I see more fathers taking their children on the subways and to playgrounds on weekends.在东京，有孩子的朋友都对这里物美价廉的托儿所赞不绝口，在这里，从婴幼儿到五岁大的孩子都能吃到营养午餐，保育员每天都会发送照片和个性化的最新信息。与上世纪80年代末我在报社做实习生时相比，我注意到现在越来越多的父亲在周末带着孩子乘地铁和去游乐场玩。Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling that old people far outnumber babies. And I’ll tell you what I see more frequently than parents walking with toddlers: adults with their dogs dressed in sweaters and bootees, toting them in carriers strapped to their chests or pushing them in strollers.然而，人们还是难免有这样的感觉：老年人的数量远远超过婴儿。而我所看到的比父母带着幼儿更为常见的情景是：成年人牵着穿毛衣和毛线鞋的狗，用背带把狗狗挂在胸前，或者用婴儿车推着它们。
