Japan is staring down a demographic cliff. The population has shrunk for 15 straight years, with births hitting a record low of 730,000 last year and deaths a record high of 1.58 million.

It now stands at around 125 million, but projections warn of a staggering drop to just 87 million by 2070. Japan’s fertility rate hit a low of 1.20 births expected per woman’s lifetime last year, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Meanwhile, the proportion of seniors aged 65 or older is forecast to rise from 30 to 40 percent by that year.

This has lit a fire under policymakers, who have warned the country only has until around 2030 to reverse the trend.

Japan’s demographic crisis is a warning sign for much of East Asia. Neighboring countries like South Korea and China are also grappling with plunging fertility rates and a greying labor force. Analysts say the challenge lies not just in more policies but in reexamining family roles and the workplace.

Newsweek contacted the Japan Agency for Children and Families email for comment.

The government has deployed all its means to fix the problem, from monetary incentives to matchmaking apps. Since taking office in October, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru has announced a series of new measures aimed at supporting families and easing pressures on the “super-ageing” society.

This year alone, the government has set aside 5. 3 trillion yen (about $34 billion) to help young families. Over the next 3 years, 3. 6 trillion yen per year will be spent on expanding child benefits and strengthening child care and education. The measures will convince couples that starting a family does not have to be a monetary gamble.

Japan has also begun enforcing its notoriously inflexible immigration policy. With sectors such as aged care and agriculture in desperate need of staff, this year the government made the decision to relax visa regulations to allow more foreign staff to stay longer, change jobs and bring their families.

Authorities hope to triple the number of foreign staff by 2040 as Japan’s continues to shrink.

The grind of Japan’s work culture has long been blamed for discouraging parenthood, especially for women who fear losing out on career opportunities. Starting in April, Tokyo will adopt a four-day workweek for its 160,000-plus state employees. A separate policy will allow parents with young children to clock off two hours early in exchange for a pay cut.

Analysts such as Ekaterina Hertog, an associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Institute for Ethics in AI who researches the societal impact of Japanese labor practices, have warned real change won’t happen unless more men step up to share in parenting duties.

This is taking advantage of the 12 months of parental leave they have, which just over 3% of men took in 2019, according to a study.

Another challenge is that of marriage, which in Japan and other East Asian societies is strongly linked to childbirth. Last year, the number of Japanese people getting married fell below one million for the first time in 90 years.

Hertog highlighted the influence that classical attitudes continue to exert on the institution.

“Marriage trends in Japan and South Korea are largely determined by economic situations and their intersection with gender roles,” she told Newsweek. He cited “traditional breadwinner expectations” as an example and highlighted the tendency among lower-paid men to postpone marriage or skip it altogether.

“Another important set of factors are family norms, that prescribe children’s support of elderly parents and the difficulty of negotiating them in societies which have had low fertility rates for decades,” she added.

This responsibility traditionally falls to the eldest son and his spouse, and this may conflict with a preference among Japanese women of younger generations to prioritize their own parents, Hertog noted.

Updated 1/1/25 at 8:00 a. m. ET: This article has been updated with more data and observations from Ekaterina Hertog.

Micah McCartney is a Newsweek Taiwan reporter based in Taipei. Covers US-China relations, security issues in East and Southeast Asia, and ties between China and Taiwan. You can contact Micah by emailing m. mccartney@newsweek. com.