Demographic & economic future of Japan? (crime, life, cost, country)
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Japan is going to face (and already faces) some serious demographic issues.
Even though its population is of 127.3 million, it has started decreasing (I can recall that it peaked in 2008 or 2011 at 128.08M) and it will keep decreasing. It is expected that Japan will have a population of the 87M (slightly larger than the current population of Germany). That's not a problem, until you keep reading the data and see that 40%, or almost half of the population will be 65+!
Also, Japan's yearly births fall every yearly and I believe that they will be below 1 million next year (1.03 children were born in Japan in 2012, while births peaked in 1948 at 2.67M). Deaths also increase (deaths reached 1.26M in 2012). Can a pension system work for 40% of the population? I believe it can't. Also, how will Japanese children be able to take care, or pay a residence for such a high amount of old people.
What's next for Japanese society? I believe this problem won't be solved until at least 2080-2100, where the last Japanese baby boomers (born in the 1970s-1980s) will die, so this problem with Japanese society will be with them for a while.
Even European society is going to face (and some Eastern countries already face) this problem, it won't so dramatically.
What do you think? Will Japanese government have to raise the retirement age? Will taxes rise in Japan in order to pay the pension to 40+ million people in the next decades? Will pension system be abolished? Please leave your thoughts.
Further reading:
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan]Demographics of Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan]Aging of Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]
Japan could do with some thinning anyway. The COL there is insane. Part of the reason why Japanese people are having fewer children is because they cannot afford to. Overcrowding = inflated cost of living, namely housing. The cost of a small apartment in Tokyo, for example, (where most of the jobs/schools are) can easily eat up 1/3 of their income. Underpopulation also has other benefits, like less traffic congestion, less pollution, less crime, less noise and less disease (infectious diseases spread easily in cramped conditions).
Japan does not need more people. Those islands are seriously overcrowded, and flat, arable land there is in very short supply. Most of the country consists of mountains and narrow valleys. The benefit of less people is more money in the pocket of the average worker, as well. Not a single developed country really needs to import 3rd world poverty to keep their economies affloat. Domestic companies (well, more in the West than East) want more people so they don't have to pay their workers more. The upside down pyramid and its effects on old age pension programs is vastly overstated, IMO.
japan could do with some thinning anyway. The col there is insane. Part of the reason why japanese people are having fewer children is because they cannot afford to. Overcrowding = inflated cost of living, namely housing. The cost of a small apartment in tokyo, for example, (where most of the jobs/schools are) can easily eat up 1/3 of their income. Underpopulation also has other benefits, like less traffic congestion, less pollution, less crime, less noise and less disease (infectious diseases spread easily in cramped conditions).
Japan does not need more people. Those islands are seriously overcrowded, and flat, arable land there is in very short supply. Most of the country consists of mountains and narrow valleys. The benefit of less people is more money in the pocket of the average worker, as well. Not a single developed country really needs to import 3rd world poverty to keep their economies affloat. Domestic companies (well, more in the West than East) want more people so they don't have to pay their workers more. The upside down pyramid and its effects on old age pension programs is vastly overstated, IMO.
Less population isn't a bad thing for Japan. But the process of losing population is painful, because it comes with the problem of aging population.
Much like a petri dish of bacteria but not enough agar nutrient, Japan is seeing its population decrease because there are too many people and not enough resources to support it. Japan is not in a crisis, it is simply finding its natural equilibrium for a currently oversaturated environment.
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