Japan's centenarian population tops 100,000 for the first time
More than 100k people in Japan are now aged 100 or older
Japan now has 107,677 people aged 100 or older, the most in the world, with 88% of them women. The health ministry credits medical advances and healthy lifestyles, but the milestone comes as the country's fertility rate hits a record low of 1.14 and the population shrinks. The government calls the decline a 'quiet emergency'.
Japanese authorities have called the trend an "existential crisis" with Prime Minister Sanae Takichi describing the decline as a "quiet emergency".
- shoobiedoo
This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.
I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.
Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.
- dzink
“A government audit of family registries in Japan in 2010 uncovered more than 230,000 people listed as being aged 100 or older who were unaccounted for, some having died decades previously.
The miscounting was attributed to patchy record-keeping and suspicions that some families may have tried to hide the deaths of elderly relatives in order to claim their pensions“ Thus they need to redo the audit in 2026.
- phyzome
Wild that the article goes on about the percentage of centenarians, then just has this brief note about how the data are completely unreliable, and never squares the two sets of statements.
- zugi
Years ago people warned that we had to limit the population to save the planet.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.
- briandw
The secret to extreme long life is bad record keeping.
- sottol
Semi-related, but I did recently wonder if China's real-estate bust might serve as a strong fertility support measure / incidental pronatalist policy.
Tier-3 and tier-4 cities supposedly saw 30-50% property value declines, setting them back more than two decades. If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.
Otoh, rural Japan has lots of cheap or even free real estate but it doesn't seem to support fertility rates at all.
- ashleyn
How common is pension fraud in Japan?
- delichon
centenarians per 10,000
Japan 8.8
France 6.3
Italy 3.6
Canada 3.2
US 3.0
UK 2.4
Germany 2.2
Russia 0.9
China 0.3
India 0.2
What are Japan and France doing so much better?