Japan: Coping with the Challenges of a Hyper Aging Population

In March 2015, a McKinsey Quarterly article reported that Japan was the world’s oldest country with 25 percent of its people aged 65 or above. It also said that if the current trends continued, this ratio could go up to 36 percent by 2040.

For several decades, the aging population in Japan had been the highest in Asia. The aging of the population was attributable to declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy. Since 1970, the fertility rate had fallen by more than 25 percent in Japan. In 2007, Japan’s fertility rate of 1.27 (average number of children per woman) was the lowest in the world. In 2007, the United Nations reported that in 2005, Japan had the oldest national population in the world. The declining fertility was due to women getting married at a later age, delaying having children once married, and to a huge number of women not marrying at all. Increasing life expectancy was due to better nutrition and improved healthcare facilities.