Historically, Japan has been a leading global figure, full of rich culture, economic stability, and progressive development. Yet today, Japan finds itself shifting from a promising past into an uncertain future as a result of its aging society. Every country worldwide deals with the natural aging continuance of its citizens and has to accommodate the changes which surface as a result. For Japan, these growing pains prove to be intense and complicated, attributing to an alteration in social and economic policies. Various factors exist which contribute to this situation in its entirety and in examining these aspects, it remains apparent that no simple solution prevails. However, in looking at Japan's shifting structures and comparing them to those of the United States, we gain a better understanding of the social and economic complexities in existence worldwide.
Japan's population is aging more swiftly than any population in history. Over the next fifty years, the number of non-elderly will decline, while the number of elderly will increase. And it has been proposed that Japan will be the first developed nation to fall below the ratio of three working adults to each elder. This growing proportion of elderly persons will put a huge burden on the melting number of working people. With such projections, sociologists worldwide are trying to discover why Japan finds themselves in this predicament. In researching this topic, I found that the main factors include low fertility, declining marriage, and longer life expectancy.
The main cause of Japan's demographic trend resides within their low fertility rate, which compares the number of births per one thousand women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. Today, Japan's fertility rate is 1.39, one of the lowest in the world, whereas the United States has a fertility rate of 2.03. Since contraception and abortion became available in 1960, the fertility of older Japanese women between the ages of thirty and thirty-four has declined dramatically.
