70-year-olds and above account for 20% of Japan's population for 1st time

Authored by japantoday.com and submitted by urgukvn
image for 70-year-olds and above account for 20% of Japan's population for 1st time

Participants including elderly and middle-aged people exercise with wooden dumbbells during a health promotion event to mark "Respect for the Aged Day" at a temple in Tokyo on Monday.

Japanese people aged 70 and older account for more than 20 percent of the total population for the first time at 26.18 million, in further evidence of the country's rapidly aging society, according to government data.

The data, released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry ahead of Monday's Respect-for-the-Aged Day holiday, showed that as of Saturday people aged 70 or above account for 20.7 percent of the population, up from 19.9 percent the previous year.

With the percentage of retirees increasing and the total population declining due to a low birth rate, the government needs to address rising social security costs and a shortage of the working population.

Elderly people -- defined as those aged 65 or older -- came to a record 35.57 million, up 440,000 from the previous year, making up 28.1 percent of the total population, also a record-high.

Elderly women topped the 20 million mark for the first time at 20.12 million, substantially more than 15.45 million elderly men.

Japan's proportion of elderly people in the population was the highest in the world, followed by 23.3 percent in Italy, 21.9 percent in Portugal and 21.7 percent in Germany, the ministry said.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that the ratio of the elderly in Japan will reach 35.3 percent in 2040.

Japanese people also appear to be living longer, with those aged 80 or above reaching 11.04 million, up 310,000 from the year before, including 2.19 million aged 90 or older, a rise of 140,000.

Meanwhile, elderly people who have jobs increased for the 14th straight year to a record 8.07 million in 2017, accounting for 12.4 percent of those employed in the country. Among elderly workers, three in four were part-time workers or other types of non-regular employees at 3.16 million.

observer2018 on September 17th, 2018 at 15:52 UTC »

Apparently Germany's median age is 47.1, just behind Japan's median age of 47.3

I just got curious about median age per country and looked at Wikipedia. I wonder why we never talk about Germany's aging population...

ClockworkAeroplane on September 17th, 2018 at 14:27 UTC »

It’s like a nursing home up in this bitch, for reals.

autotldr on September 17th, 2018 at 14:00 UTC »

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 64%. (I'm a bot)

Japanese people aged 70 and older account for more than 20 percent of the total population for the first time at 26.18 million, in further evidence of the country's rapidly aging society, according to government data.

The data, released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry ahead of Monday's Respect-for-the-Aged Day holiday, showed that as of Saturday people aged 70 or above account for 20.7 percent of the population, up from 19.9 percent the previous year.

Elderly women topped the 20 million mark for the first time at 20.12 million, substantially more than 15.45 million elderly men.

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