As McDonald points out, two senior American demographers who were strong proponents of this strategy, Warren Thompson and Frank Lorimer, worked with McArthur’s Occupation administration in early post-war Japan. ‘Thompson had argued since the 1920s that rapid population growth in Asian countries was an obstacle to development and a potential source of insecurity and’, says McDonald, ‘within the McArthur administration, he advocated for lower fertility in Japan. Lorimer was part of the same group of demographers as Coale at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Between 1944 and 1958, the argument against rapid population growth and in favour of lower fertility was made in a remarkable collection of books on specific countries or regions in two series stimulated by the Office of Population Research’.
This striking example of the power of the ideas of those long dead has intersected with economic and social forces in determining trends in fertility in the intervening decades on top of the remarkable increase in longevity to shape current demographic circumstances and predicaments. The latter, too of course, was a product of the impact of rising incomes on health and the accessibility of improved medical technologies.
The ageing of Japan’s population has been unprecedented both in its level and its speed. The proportion of people aged 65 years old and over is now more than one-quarter of the total population of Japan — proportionally, the largest in the world. This will grow to one-third of the total population in 2035. The population over 75 is also getting larger: the proportion of the population over 75 is likely to reach 20 per cent by 2035. Japan’s population has aged twice as fast as Germany’s and more than four times faster than France’s. When I first went to Japan in 1964 the typical face was that of a young person; today the typical face is that of a middle aged or elderly person.
In this week’s lead essay, top Japanese labour economist Atsushi Seike details the enormous pressure that ageing is putting upon the Japanese economy and society. ‘Total spending on social security was almost 110 trillion yen (approximately US$924 billion) in the 2012 fiscal year — 22.8 per cent of GDP’. Japan depends on a smaller and smaller workforce to carry this and other social burdens. Productivity will have to increase more rapidly if Japanese people are to continue to enjoy the same living standards.
What can be done to alleviate the problem of fewer young working age people to carry Japan’s social and economic burden?
Seike suggests a number of measures: increasing the fertility rate (though the impact will be lagged a couple of decades); increasing the participation of older people in the active workforce (though the structure of pensions and mandatory retirement encourage them to stay out of the workforce); and expanding childcare and other benefits to young people with the aim of lifting female participation in the workforce. Lifting migration (a difficult sell in Japan) might be another.
As Seike concludes, Japan’s incredibly high debt-to-GDP ratio means that social security system reform is vital. Without it Japan will not be able to sustain the social security system that has enabled it to attain the highest longevity in the world for future generations.
And without a reversal of fertility trends or immigration, Japan’s population will dwindle to extinction, it’s estimated, before the 31st century.