Japan and Korea leaders have declared national emergencies around these issues. They have spent billions over the past 20-30 years and plan to spend tens of billions. However, Nextbigfuture believes the programs have already been flawed and inadequate. Japan's problem is not just that they have already dropped from a peak of 128 million people to 122 million today and are headed to 100 million people in 2050. If you are drowning, then going from twenty feet underwater to ten feet underwater is nice but you want to be breathing at the surface all the time. Being below replacement birth rate means that mothers are not replacing themselves with a daughter. The mother ages out around 30. It is still possible to have a baby after 30 but the percentages start dropping a lot especially if the women does not have a partner yet and they are not already trying. Twenty years of 1.1 or less fertility rate means that the country has half as many fertile women for the next generation. Japa