Some of the industrialized nations have long term declining populations. Japan is one of the worse. This population trends are slow moving, unstoppable jugernauts. Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children explains:
"The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.
The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.
Japan also has a surfeit of the elderly. About 22 percent of the population is 65 or older, the highest proportion in the world. And that number is on the rise. By 2020, the elderly will outnumber children by nearly 3 to 1, the government report predicted. By 2040, they will outnumber them by nearly 4 to 1. "
It is hard to anticipate what this all means, but one things seems to be happening, the Japanese population is slowly diappearing.
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
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Technorati tags: Japan, population
4 comments:
I read an article about this a while back. It pointed to the fact that Japan is very hard-lined against immigration and culturally, they believe in pure Japanese blood-lines to attain permanant residency. Children of other races are considered "foreigners" even if they are born and lived their whole life in Japan. Same for their children and their children after that. This is why the decline shows heavier there than anywhere else.
The problem is not unique to Japan, just that Japan has one of the largest anticipated declinging population rates. I have heard that Italy is also in the same boat.
My brother is seriously dating a Japanese woman (they met while she was attending graduate school in the U.S.) He says the reason why Japanese women don't want to have kids is because of the way Japanese culture deals with childraising. The mom basically devotes her entire life to getting the kid into a prestigious university while the dad is never around because he's working 80-100 hour weeks at his job. In addition, living space is at a high premium given the island's overcrowding.
Doesn't sound very appealing to me!
Interesting.
I wonder what changed. A hundred years ago Japan was a growing society.
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