Wall Street Journal — With more than half of its population older than 45 years, Japan is the world’s most aged nation. It is experiencing aging at a faster speed than any other developed country, with its median age projected to reach 53 in 2050, according to the United Nations.
As executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin usually focuses on the other end of the population spectrum: the health of pregnant women and babies and the education of young people. But he also pays great attention to population aging as it is an accelerating trend with global implications.
We asked Dr. Osotimehin, a physician and public health expert, how he views Japan’s aging during his trip here this week.
WSJ: As a specialist on global population, what aspects of Japan’s aging are you particularly interested in?
Dr. Osotimehin: Japan is an aged society. I think it could provide a laboratory for the rest of the world on how to manage aging. I think it’s important what Japan has done and achieved not be seen as negative. It should be seen as positive in terms of how the right investments were made and how democratization and good governance have allowed people to get where they are.
I think developing countries can learn from it and to understand that investments don’t have to be large but that you need to make them. When you make them, you provide quality of life for everybody, you increase their well-being. People become more productive and bring economic growth.
I think the social protection floor in Japan, and the way it’s managed, is awesome. The social protection floor means access to universal healthcare, education and pension, among other things.
WSJ: How should Japan cope with the increasingly heavy burden of its population aging?
Dr. Osotimehin: What you have is a demographic which is swung to one side. What you really want is a balanced demographic where you have the young and the old, where young people do the heavy lifting and older people provide the wisdom.
If you want to change that demographic, what you need to do is what the prime minister (Shinzo Abe) is talking about. Engage women and give them better visibility. Make sure that men participate in child rearing so they can take paternity leave. Make sure that women have the better career prospects so they don’t get married and then disappear from the statistics. Create an environment where women can get married, have a child or children, and are still guaranteed careers… If you do those things, you’d change the demographic.
WSJ: How long does it take to change a nation’s demographic?
Dr. Osotimehin: It should not be long. I’ve seen demographics change in 20 to 30 years. If you looked at Brazil 30 to 35 years ago, the average family had about four to five children. Today they have two children. My boss (U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon) says all of South Korea changed in his lifetime. Demographic change and prosperity go hand in hand. But there are some countries that have re-calibrated. France recalculated. They went down and they came back. Denmark did the same. If you look at the trend of child rearing in the Netherlands, you notice it’s rich Dutch people that have more children.[]
*Source: Wall Street Journal | Photo elderly in Japan/Flickr
