Japan’s Population In Freefall As Twice As Many People Die As Are Born
March 6th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
Japan’s population is in freefall.
In 2022, the number of births registered in Japan plummeted to another record low last year according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health – the latest worrying statistic in a decades-long decline that the country’s authorities have failed to reverse despite their extensive efforts.
The country saw just 799,728 births in 2022 – the lowest number on record and the first ever dip below 800,000 – and about half of the number of deaths, which at more than 1.58 million, was a record high. The number of births in Japan has nearly halved in the past 40 years: in 1982, Japan recorded more than 1.5 million births, a number which was then more than double the number of deaths. This ratio has since reversed.
As shown in the chart above, deaths have outpaced births in Japan for the past 15 years – a trend which is unlikely to reverse ever again – posing an existential problem for the (aged) leaders of the world’s third-largest economy. They now face a ballooning elderly population, along with a shrinking workforce to fund pensions and health care as demand from the aging population surges.
I think that this is quite a poorly researched and written article. I could go into the various reasons for this view, but I think readers who are interested are quite capable of finding other articles on this topic that are much more informative. What I will say is that the writer gives the game away about his poor grasp of the topic right in the first sentence:
“In 2022, the number of births registered in Japan plummeted to another record low last year according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health – the latest worrying statistic in a decades-long decline that the country’s authorities have failed to reverse despite their extensive efforts.”
The final four words of this sentence are patently laughable. I can assure you that politicians and bureaucrats here have spent the last 25 years paying lip service to the falling number of births, but have dome virtually nothing of any substance to address and reverse the decline. In fact, quite the opposite, they have continued to make it harder and harder for people to have children through a range of policies implemented.