SILVER YEARS

Japan has the longest-living, most aged population in the world. International comparisons of average life expectancies are difficult, because such figures are produced at different times in different countries, but even so the longevity of the Japanese is obvious from published materials. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s Abridged Life Tables for Japan 2004 show that in 2004 Japanese men could expect to live for 78.64 years and Japanese women for 85.59 years on average. The figure for Japanese men is slightly lower than that for Icelandic men, who have the highest male life expectancy in the world (78.8 years), but Japanese women are easily the longest-living in the world, with a life expectancy nearly two years longer than that of Spanish women, who rank second with a figure of 83.6 years.

In 1947, two years after Japan’s defeat in World War II, average life expectancy was 50.06 years for Japanese men and 53.96 years for Japanese women. In the space of 57 years, male life expectancy has increased by 28.58 years and female life expectancy by 31.63 years. According to estimates released by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, as of September 14, 2004, Japan’s population of seniors (aged 65 and over) was 24.84 million, accounting for 19.5% of the country’s total population. In other words, one Japanese in five is a senior. The same set of statistics shows that there were 10.49 million men (16.9% of the total male population) and 14.35 million women (22.0% of the total female population) aged 65 and over. In 1983, there were 8.66 million households including seniors, accounting for 25.0% of all households. A decade later, in 1993, the number had passed the 10 million mark and stood at 11.76 million, and another 10 years on, in 2003, there were 16.40 million such households, accounting for 35.0%—more than one-third—of all Japanese households.

Three-generation households, with grandparents, parents, and children living under the same roof, used to be the norm in Japan. In the postwar era of high economic growth, however, nuclear families became more common, with the result that today there are far fewer three-generation households and far more households composed entirely of seniors. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s National Livelihood Survey for 2002, the number of seniors who live with their children (11.25 million) is about the same as the number who do not (11.79 million). Among those who do not live with their children, 28.9% (3.41 million) live alone; of these solitary seniors, 77.8% are women. The proportion of seniors who live with their children declined continuously between 1980 and 2002, while the number of seniors who do not live with their children has increased by 160% in the past 10 years, and the ranks of seniors living alone have risen by about 80%.

The average per capita income of senior households (households composed either solely of people aged 65 or over or of seniors and unmarried people aged under 18) stood at 91% of the average for all households according to the National Livelihood Survey for 2002. As of 1998 the average total income of senior households was 64% of that of all households; though this is a different measure, it indicates that the income gap between senior households and others has narrowed substantially over the years. If we go back further and compare the distribution of income including transfer payments in the early 1970s and late 1990s, we find a substantial improvement in the picture for senior households. The expansion of the public pension system and other social security systems has been a major factor. That is probably why senior households now account for a greater proportion of those with high levels of savings.

Perhaps due to the economic pressures of the last decade, an increasing number of households report feeling that money is tight. Yet the proportion of senior households that feel this way is both lower and rising more slowly than that of households of other generations, according to the 2003 White Paper on the Labor Economy. What is more, the proportion of Japanese seniors who consider themselves free of financial difficulties is 78.2%, which is slightly below the figure in Germany (81.9%) but much greater than that in the United States (67.9%).

The recently coined term healthy life expectancy transcends mere measurements of longevity and refers to the number of years a person can be expected to remain healthy and active. According to World Health Organization data, Japanese men and women rank number one in the world for healthy life expectancy. This is why Japan’s working population is aging. A National Institute of Population and Social Security Research survey revealed that the proportion of the labor force population aged 60 and over rose from 11.5% in 1990 to 14.9% in 2005 and is set to rise to 19.6% in 2025.

Seniors with low incomes often have no choice but to live with their children, resulting in situations where people who are aged themselves have to provide nursing care to another senior, such as an elderly parent or spouse. In some of these cases, both parties—the parent and child or husband and wife—suffer from illness, meaning that neither receives adequate care.

There are certainly many aspects of the Long-Term Care Insurance system that require improvement, but as the above figures show, on the whole Japanese seniors are quite fortunate. Yet most magazine articles on this subject portray elderly Japanese as far from fortunate and tend to focus on the negative aspects. Japan and the Japanese people have entered an age of unprecedented longevity, suddenly and without preparation, and this new reality may be causing a sense of bewilderment among the Japanese, both as individuals and as a society. (Kondô Motohiro, Professor, Nihon University)

© 2006 Japan Echo Inc.