This article discusses the looming demographic crisis in Japan, characterized by an aging population and declining birth rates. It highlights the challenges posed by this trend, including a shrinking workforce, increasing healthcare costs, and a potential impact on the economy.
So, a big, round-numbered and menacing birthday is coming up in a few weeks. Not to give too much away, but in the month I was born, Momoe Yamaguchi’s Fuyu no Iro was electrifying the charts, Terror of Mechagodzilla was about to hit cinemas, and Okinawa was busying itself with last-minute preparations for Expo ’75. There are various ways to put this sombre milestone in context.
I am a year younger than Hello Kitty, a decade younger than the Shinkansen bullet train and 100,000 years younger than Mount Fuji. All of those are still going strong, I suppose, although none are troubled by high cholesterol, resting-rate ruefulness or the ever-louder clicking from the mileometer of missed opportunities. But then I remember, more cheerfully, that this birthday will be taking place in creaking, ageing Japan — a land where grey is the new black, lumbago is the new “Lambada” and 50 is not only the new 20, but more or less the median age. Japan’s candle-at-both-ends demographics put it on the global frontline of both care home citizenship and youth-erosion. In a crisis now simply referred to by both the public and private sector as “the 2025 problem”, the giant, 8mn-strong generation of postwar baby boomers born between 1947 and 1949 have moved from the category of merely “elderly” to “advanced elderly”. By 2030, predicts the government, more than 8mn Japanese will be performing some sort of caregiving role, 40 per cent of those on top of an actual job. It is impossible to miss. From this year, one in five Japanese will be over 75 and almost 30 per cent of the population will be over 65. Demographics, warn some economists, are about to wreak as much havoc on Japan as the collapse of the 1980s asset bubble. No population on Earth has ever been this old at this ratio to the rest of the population and with this many open questions about how it will cope. No population this peaceful, healthy and well-fed has ever shrunk at such a rate
Japan Demographics Aging Population Economic Crisis Social Issues
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