JAPAN’S DEPOPULATION ACCELERATES

JAPAN’S DEPOPULATION ACCELERATES. Birthrate hit another record low last year.

In the developed world, about one child in 20 dies before reaching adulthood. For that reason, replacement fertility rate is not 2 children per woman, it’s 2.1. When fertility is below 2.1, the number of babies falls, all other things remaining the same, as a percentage of total population. For that reason, fertility falls over time.

That’s what’s happening in Japan, where the fertility rate is about 1.37 children per woman. As a result, the number of births in Japan last year, when total population was in excess of 125 million, was about the same as it was in 1899 when Japan’s total population was about 40 million.

Make no mistake, this is a crisis. The shrinking population of younger workers in the developed world is not capable of funding the healthcare and retirement costs of a rapidly growing aged population.

As this CNN article points out, the problem goes far beyond Japan.

The country’s demographic decline means a shrinking cohort of workers is left supporting an increasingly elderly population in need of healthcare and pensions.

Japan isn’t alone in facing falling fertility rates. Germany is a also a “super-aged” nation. And by 2030, the US, UK, Singapore and France are expected to have earned that status.

Neighboring South Korea, too, has struggled for years with an aging population, shrinking workforce, and low birth rates. In 2018, the country’s total fertility rate fell to its lowest since records began.

This could be fixed if anti-aging biotechnologies were adopted quickly. The technologies to reverse the symptoms of aging and extend healthspans already exist, but are slowed by a regulatory tradition of excess caution.