X owner and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has long urged people to have more children and is a father of 11 himself, has praised a recent move by the Tokyo administration in Japan to tackle the country's dwindling birth rates. Responding to a tweet, which mentioned the government in Japan's capital launching its own dating app in an effort to boost birth rates, Musk said he is "glad" the matter has been recognised.
"I'm glad the government of Japan recognises the importance of this matter. If radical action isn’t taken, Japan (and many other countries) will disappear," Elon Musk wrote on the microblogging site.
Elon Musk has for years encouraged people to have more children. In 2021, during an event, he said if people don't have more children, "civilisation is going to crumble", asking the world to "mark my words".
"There are not enough people. I can't emphasise this enough, there are not enough people," the X owner, who had six children at the time, told a Wall Street Journal event.
Elon Musk reiterated his call at a political event in Italy last year when he claimed having more children was the sole way to reverse the population dip threatening many advanced economies of the world.
According to reports, Tokyo will launch its own dating app as early as this summer to promote national birth rates, an official told news agency AFP on Wednesday (June 5).
Users will be needed to submit documentation proving they're legally single and sign a letter stating they're willing to get married. While it's common for citizens to declare their income on Japanese dating apps, Tokyo will require a tax certificate slip to prove the annual salary.
Although government-initiated dating apps are rare, the Tokyo administration has reportedly allocated 200 million yen in its 2023 budget and 300 million yen for its 2024 fiscal budget to promote marriages via apps and other projects.
The move comes after Japan's birth rates dipped for the eighth straight year to a new record low in 2023, according to government data released in February. The number of births fell 5.1 per cent from a year earlier to 758,631, while the number of weddings dropped 5.9 per cent to 489,281 - marking the first time in 90 years the number fell below 500,000. In 2023, Japan recorded more than twice as many deaths as new babies, The Independent reported. Out of wedlock births are rare in the Asian country.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had called the trend of declining birth rates the "gravest crisis our country faces".
The Asian nation's population is expected to dwindle by nearly 30 per cent to 87 million by 2070, with four of every 10 people aged 65 or older, according to estimates by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
