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Why Japan Is a Dying Society

Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
10 min readNov 11, 2024

This article will discuss and explore the reasons for Japan’s declining birth rate.

Still, Japan is not the only nation heading towards a society where 75% of the population will be over 65.

(Here is the behind the paywall link)

The trends in Japan are happening worldwide, with East Asia being the first impacted by a potential population and economic collapse.

The causes of Japan’s population problems will be discussed throughout this article.

The Japanese birth rate has been falling since the Japanese government started to take serious notice of its declining births in 1989, in an event known as the “1.57 Shock” — the total fertility rate (TFR) that was recorded that year, less even than the 1.58 of 1966, when couples avoided having kids due to superstition over an inauspicious event 1 in the Chinese Zodiac (Grech 2017, Pages 133–135).

Japanese Pregnant Woman

Japan’s population has declined since 2008, and the number just keep falling yearly.

In 2008, the country lost around 20,000 people.

The number was 100,000 in 2010. By 2019, it stood at over half a million (Statistical Handbook of Japan, 2021).

It is also essential to point out that by 2050, 75% of the Japanese population will be over the age of 65, which will…

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Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

Written by Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

I have been writing from 2014 to the present day; my writing is focused on history, politics, culture, geopolitics and other related topics.

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