China Times News quoted the BBC as saying that in 2023, the number of newborns in Japan was only 758,631, a decrease of 5.1% from the previous year. This is also the lowest number of births in Japan since modernization in the 19th century. Compared with the “post-war baby boom” in the 1970s, the number of newborns in that era generally exceeded 2 million per year.
Prince Genki, a subsidiary of Prince Paper Holdings, said in a statement that the company produces 400 million baby diapers a year, and the production peaked in 2001 (700 million pieces), and has been declining since then.
By 2011, Unicharm, Japan’s largest diaper manufacturer, said that its sales of adult diapers had exceeded those of baby diapers.
At the same time, disposable high quality adult diaper market has been growing and is estimated to be worth more than US$2 billion (about RM9.467 billion).
Japan is now one of the countries with the highest aging population in the world, with nearly 30% of people aged 65 or above. Last year, the proportion of elderly people aged 80 or above exceeded 10% for the first time.
A shrinking population due to aging and a plunging birthrate has become a crisis for Japan, and the government’s efforts to address these challenges have so far had little effect despite the world’s largest economy.
Japan has introduced various policies to provide child-related assistance and subsidies for young couples or parents, but they have not increased the birth rate. Experts say the reasons for the reluctance to start a family are complex, including falling marriage rates, more women entering the labor market and the rising cost of raising children.
“Japan is on the verge of whether society can continue to function,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last year, adding that it was a matter of “now or never.”
But Japan is not alone. In fact, many parts of East Asia have similar problems. Fertility rates are also falling in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, with South Korea’s birth rate even lower than Japan’s.
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Post time: Dec-18-2024
