Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan has called population decline the country's "biggest problem" and set out an action plan for her ministers to follow in hopes of tackling the issue. These demographic trends have hollowed out rural communities, driven up the dependency ratio—the number of working people supporting those outside the labor force—and placed growing strain on social safety nets, threatening the long-term growth of Asia's second-largest economy . Japan, like many high- and