Japan Population Growth Declining Birth Rate and the Problems

a) Study a country on how and why its population has aged rapidly during the last 40 or 50 years, and analyze its consequences.

Japan’s graying population: The reasons behind it, steps taken to curb it and the implications of an aging society

Introduction
Japan has seen rapid development from the times of Meiji Restoration (1868) up till today. In fact, it has grown more rapidly than any other countries from 1870 to 1994 (Nafziger,1995) because of the various economic policies its government had undertaken after the war ended. Thus, as a result of this economic growth, standard of living has gone up and along with technological advancements, Japan enjoys one of the highest life expectancy compared to any other countries in the world today. It even had the highest life expectancy in 1987; 76 for males and 82 for females (Martin, 1989). It is because of this rapid economic growth that has triggered Japan to be faced with a dilemma; an aging society.

Background
After World War 2 had ended, there was an influx of birth and a rise to the population in Japan. There are a host of reasons attributed to this influx; Firstly, soldiers had just returned from the war to their wives and that because of this, there was a lack of family planning which resulted in a baby boom. Secondly, the economic policies adopted by the government which included having a high savings rate resulted in Japan to eradiate famines, epidemics, and infanticides on a large scale, as compared to other Asian countries. Nutrition levels also increased and by 1993, it had the highest life expectancy of seventy nine years and lowest infant mortality rate (4.4 per 1000) in the world (Bennett, 1951)

Reasons for aging population

Figure 1

Figure 1
There are many reasons to explain why Japan, one of the leading economic industries in the world, has a society which has a demographic transition model as such;