The Japan implosion

The BBC reports on new alarm in Tokyo about plummeting birth rates in Japan. Preliminary figures from last year's Japanese census show that the number of people aged 65 and over reached 21%, overtaking Italy for the first time."  In FP's anniversary package last year, Singapore's former PM Lee Kuan Yew speculated about the new ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The BBC reports on new alarm in Tokyo about plummeting birth rates in Japan.

The BBC reports on new alarm in Tokyo about plummeting birth rates in Japan.

Preliminary figures from last year's Japanese census show that the number of people aged 65 and over reached 21%, overtaking Italy for the first time." 

In FP's anniversary package last year, Singapore's former PM Lee Kuan Yew speculated about the new steps that governments will have to take to encourage procreation. The traditional hands-off approach, he argued, will end.

It will gradually dawn on governments that immigration alone cannot solve their demographic troubles and that much more active government involvement in encouraging or discouraging procreation may be necessary.

The new numbers from Japan may win him some additional converts.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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