That. Japan's citizens are aging at an unstoppable rate: one in 10 Japanese is 80 years old or older. In proportion, it is the nation with the most elderly people in the world.
Because. Families do not expand and towns become empty due to the lack of births.
When. The population fell in 2022, causing widespread concern as the workforce deflates and there may be problems funding pensions.
In Japan there are more 70-year-old gangsters than 20-year-olds. The famous yakuza is getting older and the vast majority of its members are in their fifties. More and more programs are being broadcast on television aimed at grandparents, and advertisements abound with offers of funeral services or medicines to relieve joint pain.. Even in Japanese porn there is a booming market with actors who are past retirement age and consumers who are increasingly wrinkled.. The local star within that niche in the industry is Maori Tezuka, an octogenarian former opera singer who, although she recently retired from the spotlight, her videos remain among the most viewed on the platforms.
Japan's population is aging at an unprecedented rate and that is shaking almost all fronts of society, from porn to depopulation, including medical centers, saturated in some prefectures, which have had to reinvent themselves by promoting telematic assistance to older patients who do not suffer from serious illnesses.
One in 10 Japanese is 80 years old or older. And those are many (12.59 million) in a country where more than 125 million people live. Japan, in proportion, is the nation with the most elderly people in the world. The latest official data published this week says so.
There is a lot of concern in the third and grayest world economy. They recently announced that the population will fall in 2022: 1.56 million deaths for just 771,000 births. It was the fifteenth consecutive year on this descending ramp. Now, on top of that, it comes to light that 29.1% of Japanese people are already above retirement age, although the elderly still support 13% of the national workforce.. By 2040, those over 65 years old are expected to represent 34.8% of the census. It is an unprecedented demographic disaster.
The island nation, which has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, is grappling with a plummeting birth rate and a deflating workforce, which may have significant implications for funding pensions and health services, especially as the demands of an aging population continue to increase.
“Our nation is about to know whether it will be able to maintain its social functions,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned at the beginning of the year, desperate because measures to revive the birth rate are not working, such as the promise to double spending on child care. and allocate up to 4% of GDP to support young couples who want to have children. Or the program that offers houses and jobs to families with children in exchange for them moving to rural areas that are losing neighbors.. But the families have not expanded and the towns are just as empty.
More pessimism in recent data: all 47 prefectures in the country are registering a population decline, without exceptions. Not even a record increase in foreign residents (more than 10% in 2022) is stemming the dramatic trend – Japan's population is expected to fall to 87 million in 2070 – that threatens to deplete the fuel of the ever-vibrating locomotive of the economy. Asian power.