Declining fertility is turning the country into one big retirement home
In May of this year that keen observer of future trends Elon Musk caused a storm when he observed that, if their ultra-low birthrate were to continue, the Japanese would eventually ‘cease to exist’. He was responding to an eleventh consecutive drop in population numbers caused by a lack of births and the ever-increasing longevity. Japan now has a record 86,000 centenarians, and adult diapers have outsold those for babies since 2011.
Musk was accused of alarmism but more evidence to support his grim hypothesis emerged recently with a survey of attitudes to marriage among the Japanese young.
