The causes of Japan's economic recession

There are two main reasons for Japan's economic recession: on the one hand, since the mid-1990s, with the bursting of Japan's real estate bubble, Japan's economy can no longer grow at a high speed and has been stagnant. On the other hand, the emerging economies represented by China are developing rapidly. In 20 10, China's GDP has surpassed that of Japan and become the second largest GDP power in the world. Compared with emerging countries such as China, Japanese economic growth appears decadent, giving people a feeling of sluggish growth and stagnation.

Now many people find it strange that Japan's domestic economy has been stagnant for more than 20 years. What is the reason? First of all, Japan's domestic population is aging and declining. After all, manpower is one of the most important factors in social development. There are 34 million elderly people in Japan, of which the relative poverty rate over 65 years old is 18. 1%, and the relative poverty rate over 75 years old is 25.2%. However, the huge elderly population has brought about an increase in social security costs. In 20 16, Japan's social security expenditure reached 3.2 trillion yen, accounting for 33% of the total national budget. In other words, Japan spends one-third of its budget every year to deal with the problem of providing for the aged.

On the other hand, there is a shortage of young people. In 20 17 years, the average age of first marriage of Japanese men rose to 3 1. 1 year, and that of women was 29.4 years old, with an average of only 8.4 children per 1000 Japanese residents. This has made Japanese society in a state of declining birthrate for a long time. In the long run, the social security gap will get bigger and bigger, and fewer and fewer people will participate in the insurance. Obviously, this is a very heavy burden for Japan's economic development.

The causes of Japan's economic recession

Second, the social structure is solidified, and young people have no room for improvement. The solidification of Japanese social strata exists in various fields. Both government members and corporate executives are mainly middle-aged and elderly people, and there is no room for young people to rise. In addition, because Japan experienced the impact of the bursting of the real estate bubble in the 1990s, many young people also pursued stability and jobs within the system, and were unwilling to take risks, innovate and start businesses, which meant that the channels for self-improvement in Japanese society were also blocked.

The solidification of social structure leads to the lack of market vitality and the decline of innovation, which indirectly restricts social productivity. Due to Japan's lack of innovation and weak consumption growth, it can't create much wealth or consume much wealth. The biggest driving force for a country's economic growth is human capital, not assets. Even if assets are fired higher, and there is a lack of human capital to create and consume wealth, the economy will stagnate for a long time.

The third reason for Japan's economic recession is the ineffective transformation of industrial structure. As early as the 1960s and 1980s, Japan's manufacturing industry quickly changed from labor-intensive to technology-intensive society, thus completing the economic structure dominated by the tertiary industry. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan also realized that it was no longer possible to develop real estate, and gradually transformed into high-end manufacturing, mainly to improve the quality of GDP, not the quantity.

However, the Japanese government has frequently changed the prime minister's cabinet for more than 20 years, which has led to the vacillation of Japan's foreign economic policy, which not only affects the investment of external funds in Japan, but also makes it difficult for low-end industries to transfer abroad. In addition, Japan's domestic industrial and commercial consortia often hold shares with each other, report to the group for warmth, and attack and defend the alliance. When the international financial crisis broke out, some enterprises could not resist it and closed down one after another, which brought about the crisis of consortium holding shares, formed a domino effect and lacked the industrial chain.

Many people like to say that the Japanese economy has been in recession for 20 years, in fact, GDP has been stagnant for a long time, and economic growth has been stagnant, which is in sharp contrast with emerging economies such as China. The stagnation of Japan's economy is mainly due to the aging of Japan, the serious phenomenon of declining birthrate, the solidification of social structure and the ineffective industrial transformation. If these problems cannot be solved in a short time, Japan's economic growth will stagnate.