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ZOOM

WORLD IN THE BALANCE: THE PEOPLE PARADOX
Option 1
OLIVER PLATT (Anthropologist): Around the world, in Japan, thepopulation is careening in the opposite
direction of India's. 300 children once studied here, in theelementary school of Oguchi. But once this
lone fifth grader graduates, no new students will fill his place,because of a startling decline in birth
rates.
BEN WATTENBERG (American Enterprise Institute): Never before inhuman history has fertility fallen so
far, so fast, so deep and so unexpectedly. And no one should doubtthat it is a revolutionary change.
PAUL HEWITT (Social Security Administration): If you go back andyou look at the 1960s, there are all
these horrendous titles of books, like The Population Bomb, butmany more. And you find out that the
primary source of concern in intellectual circles about populationwas, and in some places continues to
be, the population explosion. And in all of the industrialcountries, our overreaction, potentially, to this
concern now has left us with just the opposite problem.
OLIVER PLATT: With crowded streets and packed trains, Japan hardlyseems to be in need of any more
people. But if fertility stays at its low rate of 1.3 children perwoman, by the end of the century, Japan's
population of 126 million, will shrink in half.
The impending decline has become a national crisis, with blametargeted against the soaring numbers of
unmarried youth. Called "parasite singles," they live with theirparents while pursuing careers and other
interests besides marriage.
MERRY WHITE (Anthropologist): Japanese women in the '70s felt that25 was your last chance to marry.
If you were 26, you'd be a Christmas cake, because December 25 isthe last day when a Christmas cake
can be sold, and after that, you're leftovers. Now, a woman willoften delay marriage until the last
possible time before she can have her first child. This is now seenby some as a kind of female
selfishness. But I think women in general are trying to dodifferent things with their lives.
OLIVER PLATT: Tomoko Omuro is a leading television journalist. Atage 29, she became one of Japan's
first female anchors.
TOMOKO OMURA (Television Executive): I think there are two doorsfor women. One door has a ladder
for promotion, and the other one doesn't really have anything, andyou just stay on the same level
forever. And lots of women end up taking copies and serving tea.And I didn't want to have that kind of
work, and I was looking for a good lifetime career.
OLIVER PLATT: By age 37, Tomoko had become an editor-in-chief,supervising a team of producers and
reporters. Her husband of nine years often asked her when theymight start a family.
TOMOKO OMURA: Many companies in Japan still consider women withchildren as burden. So, I was so
scared to have a baby, because I thought I would just drop out ofthe race. So, I kept on just postponing
it. But when I turned 37 or so, I started feeling like somethingwas missing in my life.
OLIVER PLATT: At 41, Tomoko gave birth to their daughter, Asumi.Her initial ambivalence about
motherhood is becoming increasingly common.

WOMAN #1: When I get married, it might be better to have kids,but I don't worry about it.
WOMAN #2: If I get married, I might think about having kids in my30s.
WOMAN #3: If I am working, I can live on my own. In the oldertimes, marrying, for Japanese women,
was like a dependency. It's not like that anymore.
OLIVER PLATT: But besides wanting careers, there's another crucialreason that more women are
working.
MERRY WHITE: In Japan, the economy since '89, '90 has been in arecession. Japanese women often
have to work even to keep their families middle class. One incomedoesn't work for many families,
especially in terms of the costs of children's education. It's anexceptionally expensive task to raise a
successful child in Japan.
OLIVER PLATT: There's a saying that Japanese men live at the officeand commute to home, often
catching the last train, at midnight. Now as more women join theirhusbands at work, they're
discovering that the long hours required by most employers makehaving a family, certainly a large one,
difficult.
For Tomoko, it was a tough challenge to find a daycare center thatcould look after Asumi for 13 hours a
day, given the unpredictable hours of the newsroom. For six months,her mother moved to Tokyo to
help. Now that she's gone, Tomoko agonizes at the thought that herdaughter may be asleep by the time
she's picked up.
TOMOKO OMURA: If you are an executive, you can't say, "Well, it'sfive o'clock, I'm leaving." If there's
work, you have to complete your work. Right now I'm trying tofigure out how to work with my full
ability, and at the same time just save the time for my baby. Myhusband, I know he's busy, maybe
busier than I am. Japanese people tend to work for long hours andunless we change that kind of idea,
the declining birth rate is going to continue.
OLIVER PLATT: Three hours from Tokyo, near the elementary school ofOguchi, one can glimpse the flip
side of the country's falling birthrates. By 2050, one in threeJapanese will be over the age of 65. In
Oguchi, this is already the reality.
Mr. and Mrs. Ohno's house was once packed with three generations.But since their parents died and
their children left for careers in the city, life for this80-year-old couple has become lonelier.
MRS. OHNO: In the old times, it was normal for a daughter-in-law tolook after her in-laws. So that's why
I took care of my father-in-law until he died, at 83.
MR. OHNO: Our children have grown up and gone to live in Tokyo.They've all gotten married and have
to worry about sending their children to school. That is theirplace now. They have to work, and they
can't afford to come back here and look after us.
MERRY WHITE: The governmental query now is, "Who cares for ourelders?" In essence, though, the
government really feels that families are responsible and societyisn't. And ultimately, when you say
"family," you mean "women."

OLIVER PLATT: But with more women working, there's often no oneat home to care for the elderly. The
stress on families is mounting, especially since neither thegovernment nor private industry has been
able to fill the gap. If the Ohnos should get sick, the only nearbynursing home is full.
To ensure their security in old age, the Ohnos had counted onprofits from their forest, but as
globalization brought in cheap timber from the Philippines, theywere unable to sell their trees.
MR. OHNO: I can't depend on my children, so I don't know what todo. It would be great if the
government builds lots of nursing homes and takes care of us, but Idon't have high expectations.
Staying healthy is the best thing, but we can't stay healthyforever.
OLIVER PLATT: Japan's population pyramid looks like India's turnedupside down, reflecting how the
elderly dramatically outnumber the young. The Japanese now livelonger than anyone else, with men
averaging 78 years and women 84.
JOEL COHEN (Rockefeller & Columbia Universities): And withincreasing education, we find that disability
rates among the elderly have been dropping steadily. That isfabulously good news. It's a revolution in
human demography. It means that people of 60 have the function ofpeople of 40 at the beginning of
the century.
OLIVER PLATT: But this good news is tempered by a sobering realityin aging countries. There will soon
not be enough young people entering the work force to support thoseretiring. Not only will there be
fewer workers, but as the population declines, there will be fewerconsumers.
PAUL HEWITT: It's going to be extremely hard for businesses to makea profit. And when businesses
don't make a profit, they don't pay taxes. And when taxes don't getpaid, you can't support the welfare
state. And so the older countries face such a huge problemfinancially that they really could undermine
the global economy.
OLIVER PLATT: To keep its workforce from shrinking, an agingcountry like Japan would need to take in
600,000 immigrants a year. Yet the Japanese resist, obsessed bypreserving their own ethnicity. In stark
contrast, America's workforce continues to grow as a result ofimmigration.

Qualitative Analysis Worksheet
Answer the following questions using the lesson PowerPoints andother resources listed
on the last slide.
1. What is the research question outlined in the transcript, “Worldin the Balance:
The People Paradox?”
2. What type of qualitative data is this? What theoreticalframework or type of
qualitative research was used? What type of data collection methodwas used?
3. Who were the participants? What kind of sample do you think thisis? Why were
these particular participants’ perspectives valuable?
4. Was there evidence of internal validity (credibility) in thetranscript such as
triangulation (gathering more than one source of data) or skillfultechniques that
probe for details and depth?
5. Analyze the data provided using the coding methods outlined inthe PowerPoint
presentation and other resources listed on the last slide. Yourcoding can be
completed using highlighting, text colors, styles, or comments orbe in a table.
What were three distinct supported themes in the data? What dothese themes
say about the research question?
6. Present your codebook.
7. What challenges did you face during your analysis? Do you thinkthat qualitative
is easier or harder than other research methods?
8. Upload your completed worksheet and coded Word document intoCanvas.