Japan’s Demographic Time Bomb
April 14th, 2016Via: Vox:
Japan has a major demographic problem: 26 percent of its population is elderly, the largest percent of any country in the world. That’s because Japan’s birthrate is declining, as is its overall population. In other words, a huge chunk of its population is getting old and leaving the workforce, and not enough people are being born to take their place.
…
By 2050, the OECD projects, nearly 40 percent of Japan’s population will be elderly.
This is very, very bad: Countries need new people to support the older ones who can’t work and to generate economic growth. If Japan doesn’t turn its birthrate problem around, or somehow make each of its workers a hell of a lot more productive, it’s in for a disaster.
“The working age population is falling by about 1 percent per year, and the rate of shrinkage will eventually approach 1.7 percent per year, so that even productivity growth of two percent or more will deliver very low aggregate or per capita growth,” the OECD report explains. “There will simply be no way to sustain high living standards and quality public standards in a ‘super-aging’ Japan unless the country is able to achieve much higher rates of productivity growth.”
The Japanese people will have to choose between bolstering their workforce with immigrants or robots. Anyone want to put their money on immigrants? Anyone?
There is also the factor that Japan was fairly strong traditions and married women often are encouraged not to work. It depends on if your perspective favors the work life balance of women or households, or the GDP of the country, but changing cultural rules to have most women work does increase productivity.
By the way, there was a phenomenon to take note of in Europe after the plague in the 13th century. The following generation of peasants had much stronger labor bargaining power against the feudal landlords. Many families gained farmland and gained better terms with the landlords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death