A population decline caused by a falling birthrate and aging society poses critical long-term challenges for Japan's society and economy, and its impact is profound.  While the national and local governments are implementing and promoting various measures to address the issue of low birthrate, the country’s population decline still continues.  Furthermore, although many initiatives are carried out in the civil sector, the sharing of information and results across the entire society is still insufficient.

Given this background and concern about these issues, the Toyota Foundation is launching a Special Subject grant program to deal with “Mitigating Population Decline” and “The Way Japanese Society Operates under Population Decline.”  This program views youth and next-generation talent who will live in this continuing era of population decline as ”future leaders.”  It will provide grants to initiatives where they will act independently and thoroughly review the effectiveness and significance of various past responses and measures.  Moreover, the initiatives should aim at closely examining the existing mitigation efforts to slow down the population decline.