CJS Lecture Series | How Japan Got It Wrong: Government Policy, Gender, and the Birth Rate

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Over the past three decades, the Japanese government has enacted a series of measures to boost the country’s anemic birth rate. Nevertheless, the birth rate has hovered around 1.4 children per woman, far below what is required for the population to reproduce itself. Why haven’t the policies worked? I argue that policies that have focused on trying to make women’s work lives more like men’s have fundamentally missed the mark. Not only have such policies failed to raise the birth rate, they have also arguably exacerbated gender inequality. This paper suggests that future government and workplace policies move in a different direction.

Mary C. Brinton is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and the Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Her research focuses on contemporary Japanese society and economy, labor markets, social demography, and gender inequality. She has published widely on gender inequality in Japan and in East Asia more broadly.

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