Japan’s aging population a timely lesson for China

People in Japan tend to live longer, and stay healthier in their later years, with an increasing number of pensionaged people living alone. Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has projected that households headed by people aged 65 years or above will account for 44.2 percent of the total households in 2040, up from 36.0 percent in 2015.

Japan is on a fast track to “ultra-age” with people aged 65 or above accounting for 28 percent of its total population; it was 26.7 percent in 2015. The number of births last year, as Japan’s Health Ministry said, fell to its lowest (about 941,000) since records began in 1899.

Demand for care services for elderly people has boomed. A shrinking working population means fewer able-bodied adults are available to look after the elderly. There is a shortage of state-provided facilities for the elderly, and private healthcare is expensive. Many elderly people do not have the heart to burden other family members who may not live nearby or may be struggling themselves. They choose to live alone, and often die alone. Sometimes, days, if not weeks, go by before someone discovers their remains.

The Japanese government says the country will be short of 380,000 health nurses by 2025. Since Japan is reluctant to welcome immigrants, the government has turned to advanced robotics, which it has invested heavily in, to meet the shortage. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe believes robotics “could help the country overcome the handicap of a fast-aging populace and a declining workforce and to help the nation to use robotics, from large-scale factories to every corner” of Japanese economy and society.

The making of Japan’s demographic time bomb over the past more than two decades provides a case study for China, which, too, is faced with a fast aging population.