The Aging Population of Japan

Japan is the “oldest” Nation in the world. The percentage of the population above 65 years is 19.7%, which is 25.2 million Japanese. This is higher than most of the other aging countries such as Italy 19.6%, Germany 18.6%, and France 16.3%. This percentage has increased drastically since 1950 when it was 4.9% and it is expected to reach 36.5% by 2050. This obviously have a huge impact on the over all dependency ratio.

The average life expectancy in Japan is 81.6 (77.9 for males and for 85.1 for females). In 2002 Japan was recorded to have the highest life expectancy compared to other developed countries such as USA, 77.1 and Switzerland 79.1. Japan, a country which had a life expectancy below most developed countries in the 1950, 63.9, (partly due to World War II) has made advances in medical technology and improvements in sanitation. The increase in recent years is also due the fact that there haven’t been any major outbreaks of flu or other infectious diseases. Japan’s life expectancy is expected to increase to 88.1 by the year 2050.

Japan is becoming older and is losing its youth. The percentage of children aged 0-14 will be 14% of the entire population in 2005. This figure is slowly is slowly decreasing and has been for 50 years (1950’s percentage was 35.4%). This is because of the reduced fertility; people are too busy and decide to have children late. Japanese people work 1966 hours a year that is about 300 more hours of work than the Germans, who work on average 1590 hours per year. More and more women are receiving higher education, 48% of the women continue on to higher education whereas only 42% of the men go on to higher education. Women who get a job and go on to higher wages don’t want to get married and because if they don’t get married they gather seniority therefore getting more pay. (The starting pay for men and women is about the same)

In the 1950’s Japan had a population pyramid similar to the developing countries of today which is called expansive. Its population then was 83.2 million. It had a large base to the “mini baby boom” between 1947 and 1949. Although there was a significantly large fall in each of the upward age groups due to high death rates and short life expectancy. The shortfall in the age group 30-39 was due to the casualties of World War II.

Japan’s population pyramid started to look more like a developed country in the years to come; the base became smaller ...

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Japan’s population pyramid started to look more like a developed country in the years to come; the base became smaller and the life expectancy rose rapidly.

Japan’s population pyramid of 2000, is similar to most developing countries although it might soon plunge into the next stage very soon. Sweden which has reached a stage further than most developed countries has fertility as low as Japan. Sweden which once had one of the highest fertility rates is now falling rapidly.

Its population in 2000 was 126.9 million (more accurate population pyramid for 2000 at end of the essay). The population of Japan has not started to decline yet although it is bound to happen very soon. The population grew just 0.17% in 2002. If the growth rate continues to shrink at its current pace the population will reach its peak by the year 2007. Also by 2007 the percentage of people aging above 65 will reach 20%, it will be the first country to do so.

This is Japan’s population pyramid prediction for 2050. Its population will have started to decline considerably. More than one third of the population will be above 65 whereas only 13% of the population will be below 15 years.

By then Japan would have gone through several problems due to its aging community. Demographers have predicted that 36.5% of the population will be 65+. This is a national average; some regions in Japan will have a low aging population whereas others will have a high aging population. It has also been projected that by 2025 there will be communities where 80%+ of the population is 65 and over.

This is also reflected in the median age of Japan’s population is relatively high compared to other countries, 42.8. This obviously has an affect on the dependency ratio. Right now the elderly dependency ration alone (child dependency ratio is with children under 15) is about 30%. That would mean three working age people would have to support one elder. This is projected to increase rapidly in the coming years. In 2050 demographers expect the dependency ratio to be three people from the working population to support two elderly people.

Tax revenues will cause problems for the working population, which therefore create problems for the government because of its huge deficit.

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There are several ways the government could control the aging population, although this would cost a lot. I think that the government should provide incentives for large families, two or more children so that the population should increase slowly and therefore increasing the youth population, raising fertility. This although take a long time, and couples would have to have time to take for the children and the hours of work would have to be reduced. The Government have been trying to reduce number of hours worked a year so that people that have more time to spend with their children.

Another idea to increase the young population and have people have more children would be to import people from developing countries (probably skilled so that they would be able to level up to Japanese standards or they might just have people to do civil work). This would probably have an affect on the population, the people coming from outside would have larger families, even though the work load is hard because they believe that they should have a lot of children, therefore increasing the under 15 population. There is also the negative fact that the young generations might start bring dominantly foreigners.

It the population is aging and it is hard to cope with, then they might as well move, export the aging people out, which has been happening recently. This would reduce the tax revenues on old people, and make the population “younger”. This of course not easy to do due to the cost needed to move the old people and etc.

Increasing retirement age will not in theory affect the aging population; it would just reduce taxes for elder. Although this might have a physiological affect on the population and they might think of having children. The population might appreciate working for an extra 10 years or more, and hence it is not easy to pass such a law.

People might be getting married, or living together and be sexually active but children are not being born because of contraceptives and abortion. Abortion should be made illegal, making people have children if they are pregnant. This might not have a great affect on the population, but it might stabilize the under 15 population or might even slowly increase.

The problem is that if Japan continues like this and doesn’t have more children and the percentage of people over 65 increases at a steady speed, the dependency ratio is going to be a one point is very close to one to one. This mean that the government will not be able to raise tax revenues to make the working population support the elders, but instead the population above 65 will have to support themselves, get their own medications. This means that the current working population will have to start saving up money because the government won’t be able to pay for them. Thus the working population won’t be able to spend money on children and remain childless, decreasing the population.

(Didn’t use this graph because you couldn’t see the labels on a small scale)