The Independent’s Business Insider article via Andy Yan describes the increasing aging population of Japan, called by economists as a “demographic time bomb.” With little consumer spending the economy has shrunk and fewer people are having children, while people are living longer. With a population of 127 million, 26 per cent are seniors, roughly the same percentage as Canada will experience in the next two decades.
The Insider identifies several trends in Japan becoming a senior society. More adult diapers are sold annually than baby diapers since 2011. While annual births were over one million since 1899, that number started to decline in 2016. “Ubasaute”, the practice of bringing senior family members with dementia to charities or hospitals has commenced, when family members can no longer provide the care needed. While the numbers of this abandonment are still relatively low compared to the size of the population, it illustrates the desperation of families looking to cover the cost of care.
A surprising one-fifth of all Japanese crime, largely shoplifting and petty theft is done by seniors. While crime rates have fallen prisons have become nursing homes where seniors are assisted in day-to-day activities by prison guards. It would be usual for a family to take care of an elderly relative once released from prison but the care and keep for a senior can often be more comforting and familiar within the highly organized institutional setting of a prison.
Japan’s population projection. Source: Wikipedia
With a stringent immigration policy and very few refugees allowed, Japan could lose 34 per cent of its population by 2100. Government data suggests that by 2060 nearly 40 percent of the population will be over 65 years of age. It’s a sobering look at the importance of immigration to countries with a low birth rate, and offers one more reason to enhance policy supportive of families and children in our cities, to enrich diversity in age groups, backgrounds, and skill sets. It is our way forward.
I vaguely recall hearing that almost no “first world” country has a replacement birth rate. If true, this is a warning to all such countries, especially those with restrictive immigration and refugee policies.
Feel free to read the book “America Alone” by Mark Steyn that essentially argues that of all developed nations America alone is immune from this due to the largely Hispanic immigration that tend to have more children per female. Canada probably a distant second.
Europe will have more and more N-African and Middle East ( read Muslim ) immigration due to proximity and fairly open uncontrolled borders. Also see the rise of FN, UKIP, AfD, Gert Wilders and the like to lament ” where is my nation ” .. be it French, Swedish, German, Dutch, English etc .. UK may fall apart with Brexit as both Scotland and N-Ireland and even Wales may wish to remain in EU. A key issue of our times: demographics.
Of course this is all nothing compared to what we did to First Nations.
Typically it is only the first, maybe the second, generation that has lots of kids as they migrate from places where that is an advantage to places where it is not.
Education levels and # of children are HIGHLY correlated. The better educated women are, the less kids they have, on average.
See India: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4649870/
See World Bank research: http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
FN ? How does this matter in this context ?
Because there is a (heavily deleted) theme in your posts that WE are the chosen, and those we decimated are inferior and those who might decimate us are inferior.
How about we improve access to education for all? Let’s not make it near impossible for First Nations/immigrants/refugees to get a higher education.
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We just need a more honest debate about costs of immigration ie pressure on infrastructure (schools, healthcare, roads, bridges, LRTs, subways, housing ..) .. not merely – like sheep – bleep the benefits. There is light and there is shadow and BOTH have to be looked at.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
With the coming boom in automation and robots we should be celebrating this. Planet Earth needs fewer people, not more.
I can see this being a medium-term problem, and definitely one that needs to be managed, but is it a long-term one? Perhaps a world where, after soaring to 8 or 9 billion people, a population of 4 or 5 billion (earth’s population circa 1980) might not be such a terrible thing.
Birth rate decline seems to go hand in hand with increasing prosperity, so this may well be a phenomenon that will spread to much of the planet over the next 50 years. Maybe we should learn how to plan for it and let it happen. Perhaps we should also be thinking about an ‘ideal’ level of human population, in terms of restoring natural environments and allowing other species to flourish.
An interesting point worth considering.
However, one could also theorize that the carrying capacity of the planet has been surpassed by orders of magnitude through the unprecedented per person level of consumption in advanced countries, and that reducing the most wasteful practices first, and moving on to reduction in the next several tiers, would raise the carrying capacity.
Living in low-car count compact towns powered by clean electricity with food production in greenbelts nearby doesn’t really conjure up images of a lower standard of living. In fact, I suggest the quality of life would be higher than a daily 2.5-hour commute on a mega freeway.