WaPo Notices Japan’s Population Decline

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WaPo Notices Japan’s Population Decline

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | Population |

Washington Post - Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children:

The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate. Japan, now the world’s second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.

Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.

In what is now being called a “super-aging” society, department and grocery stores have recorded declining sales for a decade — and new car sales have fallen for 18 consecutive years.

Rural Japan, thus far, has borne the brunt of the slide. In depopulated small towns, stores are closing, governments are desperate for tax revenue and there are chronic shortages of doctors and nurses. The government is subsidizing the development of robots as caregivers for the old.

There’s always the hope that Japan’s government will change the policies that led to the baby bust, but it may not be pretty. People have fewer children because they depend more on government programs than the family, and because of the taxes required to fund the programs they have no choice but to have fewer children. Japan is likely to have to cut those government retirement and health programs or else the burden on the ever-shrinking working population will grow more burdensome. Else young people will realize they’re better off taking their college degrees and their passports to a country that doesn’t punish them for the poor decisions foisted on them by politicians who will have passed on by then. Either way, one generation or another is going to have to pay for those decisions.

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