Japan 2014 Births Fall to Lowest on Record January 2nd, 2015 Via: Financial Times: Deaths outnumbered births in Japan last year by the widest margin on record, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing the government as it tries to ensure a dwindling pool of workers can support growing ranks of pensioners. The urgency of getting the country’s finances in order was highlighted this week as preliminary figures indicated that Japan’s population fell by a record 268,000 in 2014. … If the current nationwide fertility rate of 1.4 stays unchanged, a task force warned in November, then Japan’s population of 127m would drop by almost a third by 2060 and by two-thirds by 2110. Even if the fertility rate were to rapidly rise to the replacement level of 2.07 by 2030 and then stay there, the population would keep falling for another 50 years before stabilising at a little less than 100m. Relaxing the nation’s relatively strict controls on immigration could provide some relief, but Mr Abe has made it clear that he is “flatly opposed to opening the door”, said Masatoshi Kikuchi, a strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 00:27:50 +0000
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