Percentage of Elderly In Japan Continues to Grow as Number of Children Drops

First time accepted submitter Cornelie Roe (3627609) writes in with some bad news about the population of Japan. "The number of children in Japan has fallen to a new low, while the amount of people over 65 has reached a record high as the population ages and shrinks, the government said. There were an estimated 16.33 million children aged under 15 as of 1 April, down 160,000 from a year earlier, the internal affairs and communications ministry said on Sunday. It was the 33rd straight annual decline and the lowest level since records began in 1950. Children accounted for 12.8% of the population, the ministry said. By contrast, the ratio of people aged 65 or older was at a record high, making up 25.6% of the population. Jiji Press said that, of countries with a population of at least 40 million, Japan had the lowest ratio of children to the total population – compared with 19.5% for the United States and 16.4% for China. Last month, the government said the number of people in the world's third largest economy dropped by 0.17% to 127,298,000 as of 1 October 2013. This includes long-staying foreigners. The proportion of people aged 65 or over is forecast to reach nearly 40% in 2060, the government has warned."

Comments

This may be crass but...

[ZorinLynx]

This may sound crass, but this is a problem that'll solve itself in a couple of decades, after which you'll have a much lower population on the island, which given the lack of space (especially in large cities) is probably a good thing.

There are way too many people on the planet in general. Breeding more is NOT the answer. Do the best we can to take care of our elders, and when they're gone, let's be more responsible about population growth going forward.

Re:This may be crass but...

[CRCulver]

I would imagine that Japan's cities will stay as crowded as ever for a long time. As the population in the countryside thins out and becomes greyer, what young people there are will flock to the cities for better opportunities. So, you'll have densely populated cities and an increasingly empty rest of the country.

Look at Russia where the population has fallen significantly, but Moscow just keeps growing. If you visit the hopeless backwaters, all the young people there dream of leaving their collapsing communities for the big city.

It has to happen sometime

[dugancent]

Economic policies based on an ever growing population are failed policies.

Re:Jiji press?

[EuclideanSilence]

...for those who haven't seen 10000 hours of anime (shame on you), JIJI is japanese slang for a man old enough to be a grandfather. It's like saying "old fart".

Re:Jiji press?

[lgw]

Where I grew up, "old enough to be a grandfather" meant "30". Now my friends are having their first kids around 40.

Something pretty basic is broken with work-family balance IMO. It's great that we left "one parent works, the other does family" behind, but "both parents work, and neither does family" is even worse. As automation increases, and unemployment with it, you'd think we could move to shorter work weeks and "both parents work, and have plenty of time for family too"!

It's far easier medically to have kids in your 20s, and far easier to cope with their teenage years in your 30s than your 50s! Society needs to be built on more than just career, and I think we're getting it completely backwards with the ongoing division between workaholics and government-dependents.