Aging Population

Most developed countries currently experience a reverse of the population pyramid to different degrees. That is to say, the birth rate is declining and the population is aging. People live longer and have less children; there’s not much we can do about it except hope for change. I know I’m definitely not part of the solution: over 30, no kids — heck, not even married. But hey, I’m not going to talk about me.

 

Even within this global context, Japan is a special case. We need to talk about a super aging population. Indeed, Japan holds the world record of aged population (65 and over) with 24.1% of the total population in 2012. And projections show that number reaching 38.8% by 2050. That’s more than one third of the population!

The speed of this aging of the population is also much faster than European or North American countries. For example, in the 24 years between 1970 and 1994, it nearly doubled (7.1% to 14.1%). In comparison, Italy took 61years to reach that level; Sweden, 85; and France, 115!!!

It wouldn’t be too bad if that were the only problem. But let’s take a look at the declining birth rate. In 2012, the child population (14 and under) in Japan was at an all time low of 13% of the total population. Need I say that this is the lowest level on record! You know your country is in deep shit when the number of elderly beats that of children by almost 2 to 1.

Not that Canada is the best example, but just to compare, Canada records 16.5% for child population and 14.2% for aged population, a ratio of 0.86.

As I wrote at the beginning, two factors that are stated for this situation in Japan is the increase of average maternal age at childbirth from 25.6 in 1970 to 30.3 in 2012, and the sharp increase in life expectancy after WWII. I’ll try to post some graphs tomorrow.

(Data taken from the Statistical Handbook of Japan 2013 published by Statistics Japan)

Statistics of Japanese Expats in Canada

As Canadian, even if I don’t pay attention to information about Canada, it just finds its way to me. Much like the phenomenon where, no matter how far you are or how crazy busy you are with other things, you turn around at the slightest mention of your own name: when you live abroad, the name of your country just taunts you with as many useless pieces of information. So, as I was browsing the notices packaged for circulation around my office, I came upon statistics of Japanese nationals living abroad. And of course, there were stats about Canada.

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Oh, yeah! I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet, but I work in a Japanese office. And as far as I can tell, there’s an unwritten rule somewhere – maybe a memo I didn’t get – that say “use as much paper as you can, even for the most trivial reason.” You end up surrounded by paper all the time and it piles up on your desk. Then you basically spend your time moving in ways so as not to create the slightest flow of air, lest it topples in an irreparable mess. I’m barely exaggerating.

You know those emails that end with a little notice for ‘thinking green’ like “do you really need to print this email?” Well, Japanese offices will print the shit out of it without giving it another thought!

Don’t worry, I mostly have good things to say about Japan. But I had to get this one out, because I was very surprised when I arrived.

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Anyways, back to the story.

According to the Statistic Bureau of Japan, the ratio of Japanese expatriates living in North America is 38.46%. Of those, 12.51% can be found in Canada. And as you can probably predict if you know anything about the west coast of Canada, close to half of that resides in or around Vancouver (49.51%).

Montreal has a little Japanese community making up 5.77%. Remember, that’s 5.77% of 12.51% of 38.46%… For all practical purposes, that’s not a lot of people. What? How many, you ask? Well, I do have the answer for you 😉

There are 564 men and 1222 women for a grand total of 1786 people. Among them, 1022 people have permanent residence. Since I read this document last week, I think those should be the stats for 2013, but it might have been for 2012. I must admit I don’t remember. As for the exact number of Japanese expats in Canada or North America, go ahead and do the math if you want ^^;