How common is pension fraud in Japan?

We have travelled for about a month in Japan last year. They work under constant stress, lots of commute on public transit. I also did not feel their food was that healthy, lots of fried food and sweets. But the portion is small compared to what we would normally eat in a meal.

Did you actually visit Japanese families, or is that assessment based on what you saw in convenience stores and similar? "Convenience" food and western style food has somewhat increased, but on average Japanese cuisine is very healthy.

I also agree on the stressful work part, but don't quite understand what you mean with "lots of commute on public transit". If you mean the Tokyo-style rush hour traffic where people are literally shoved into the train car, of course that's stressful. But at any other time apart from that, Japan's public transit is enormously soothing and stress-free, both because of culture and transit technology.

Day in day out, everyday in public transit, just sheer noise would not add any lifetime. We stayed at our Japanese friend’s house so we did have exposure to their everyday life. The point I want to make is that many things contribute to a long life, and of course Japanese people are doing most of those things right, regardless of what that might be. I remember watching a documentary about Okinawa people. One thing they mentioned was laughter.

I don’t get the bit about public transport. Do you mean it’s unhealthy because public transport is stressful?

Surely the exercise that comes with using public transport outweighs that. I feel like being able to zone out and not having to focus on driving, is more relaxing to me.

If we're talking about the extremely elderly, it seems better for them to be taking public transport than driving.

What exactly did you eat the entire time? tonkatsu and karaage?

there's plenty of great home style food that isn't fried.. nikujaga, gyusuji, nikudofu, etc.

Public transit there is pretty great. If anything the lack of escalators for some stations can be unmotivating to some people but on the other hand walking a lot of flights of stairs is healthy.

Private transit there is pretty great

Corrected that for you.

this is HN not reddit. no need for snarky replies.

It's not a snarky reply. It's important IMO that people realize the consistently top rated transit system in the world is nearly all private. Otherwise, they push for public transit, not realizing they are asking for something different.

“A government audit of family registries in Japan in 2010 uncovered more than 230,000 people listed as being aged 100 or older who were unaccounted for, some having died decades previously. The miscounting was attributed to patchy record-keeping and suspicions that some families may have tried to hide the deaths of elderly relatives in order to claim their pensions“ Thus they need to redo the audit in 2026.

The secret to extreme long life is bad record keeping.

Yeah, I agree that the "Blue Zone" theory is mostly explained by bad record keeping. Okinawa is one of the poorest areas of Japan, but was deemed a Blue Zone, despite that wealth is nearly always positively correlated with longevity within similar cultures. Low and behold Okinawa had shitty record keeping and tons of incentives for relatives to commit pension fraud.

This is dumb. If you go to any Japanese graveyard in Hawaii (where family graves have prefecture of origin) you will find the preponderance of centenarians are from okinawan families. There is no incentive for pension fraud for someone born in the us (or emigrated to the us in their younger years) and died in the us in the 1980s-> early 20XXs

Sure, but there would have still been the same poor record keeping around birth dates and the same incentives for people in a poor area 60 years ago to enter the workforce early.

If it's all just fraud, why are 88% of them women? Is there any reason fraudsters would overwhelmingly claim for women?

To be 100 years or older you would have been born in 1926 or before. Meaning you turned 18 in 1944 or before. Maybe something happened in Japan that killed of a large percentage of young adult males around that time?

Well, exactly, but this lends credence to the numbers being somewhat accurate. If there were almost as many male centenarians then it could probably be attributed to bad record keeping.

This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.

I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.

Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.

And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care.

I'm torn on this issue. I think the elderly and people in general should get a decent life, but on the opposite side we have Europe that's investing massively more in making its boomers richer and more comfortable than anyone in human history has ever been(average pension in France is now higher than the average salary), rather than investing that money in ensuring opportunities and prosperity of future generations, who are facing economic stagnation/degrowth and are forced to foot the bill for this elderly spending, with the guarantee the pyramid scheme they're funding will fail them when their turn comes to benefit from it.

So perhaps Japan sees the defense capability those 150 F-35's bring to its future national security more valuable than keeping the elderly alive for a few more years.

Yeah, it sounds harsh when you look at people like that, but taking care of people takes resources(money), and money is finite, so all these decisions are a game theory trolley problem, where you have to choose whose lives a country should prioritize the most: the past generations, or the future generations.

Historically in the history of nations would be willing to sacrifice the elderly to prioritize the survival and growth of its future generations, that was the social contract of the tribe, that is until the western boomers came and decided they deserve to fuck the future of their nation if they can get wealthier and feel good till the end.

I'm not saying there's one correct solution here, because I don't have it. I'm saying tough decisions have to be made from which there will be winners and losers, so a nation should choose the winners carefully, if it wishes to have a future.

When those boomers die where does the money go?

Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos.

The single biggest generational transfer of wealth in human history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer

I sincerely wonder how this is going to work given the large divergence in lifestyle preferences between these generations. Real estate especially will be an interesting one - lots of young people either cannot (due to employment situations) or actively choose not to live in the areas that their parents did. What will happen when these houses hit the market? How will this huge supply increase affect the people who do live there? Nobody I know is moving to Pennsyltucky to live in their parents' house even if it's free... will it crater property values for all of the hard-working townies who sunk their money into their own homes?

I agree to some degree. There is also the case to be made that whereas in the past, young people would stay at home until they were married, and therefore assist their parents/grandparents, the rapid westernization (or "de-Japanization"?) of Japanese youth has them moving out asap into larger cities to be "free individuals" and those downstream effects on the elderly aren't anyone's fault, I guess.

Can you blame kids (especially those without siblings) wanting to strike out for a life and family of their own?

They don't choose to be born. Have few/no rights to change how they're raised or their parents spend the family funds while they are minors. Often they have no choice over large portions of their education. To say they owe their parents decades of unpaid caregiving is absurd.

I'm speaking from a Japanese cultural point of view, here. To say that Japan has been wrong until now to focus on family values over rampant individualism, waiting until you are married to leave the home, and respecting the lives of the elderly until they pass on is one I've never heard before. And where do you get that their education takes a backseat by living with their parents? Post secondary education has always been a pillar in Japan.

Until this most recent generation Japan (and the rest of the world) had no problem starting a "life and family of their own" as you put it.

This is doing a lot of cover for an airplane that has massive supply issues and mostly seems to have been invented to extract more money out of allies to serve the US military industrial complex.

An island nation under the protectorate of the US TOTALLY needs to spend over $300 billion over the needs of their people, okay sure. Makes sense I guess.

Historically those that were greedy were banished from society so the community can continue thrive. How greedy are you willing to be since you're okay with sacrificing other humans for political ploys?

This is doing a lot of cover for an airplane that has massive supply issues

I'm not covering the damn plane in my comment. I was covering the nation's need for self defense which is gonna cost crazy money any way you slice it if your military wants to have latest gen "sci-fi" jets capable of beating Chinese ones.

An island nation under the protectorate of the US TOTALLY needs to spend over $300 billion over the needs of their people, okay sure. Makes sense I guess.

The security guarantee that nations, like Japan in this case, receive from the US is not free of charge, it never was. It's paid in barter via purchasing US military gear like F-35s that supports the US economy and defense industry jobs. It's the same deal with the gulf states. Saudi Arabia and the others, accepted to trade their oil only in USD, making the USD the world reserve currency and the US the richest country in the world, and in exchange it received defense assurances form the US. That's always been the deal. Are there still people oblivious to this fact?

Yeah I don't think it was a good look for a supposed democratic nation to sell weaponry to nations that rely on slave labor either, but there never was a good look for American imperialism. Still shocked to see people champion it still.

Are there still people oblivious to this fact?

Most people think the US just goes around bullying people and kicking up dust. There is a genuine widespread belief that if the US didn't exist, the world would be living in harmonious peace, just like how the world was before WWII.

average pension in France is now higher than the average salary

This sounded crazy so I looked it up. I don’t think it’s quite true, but after you subtract taxes and living expenses (a lot of old people own their homes) and add investments, seems like retirees do have a higher standard of living than workers in France.

Thanks for looking into that - that claim also surprises me!

It makes sense to subtract the taxes for a comparison between pension and salary, but by taking investments into account, and probably living expenses too, since they depend upon investments, I think you're doing too much work to support that claim.

Presumably it is fairly standard for the average retiree to have more assets/investments than the average worker. Those assets generate income (or reduce living expenses). I think that is too different from the claim that the pension is higher.

buying 150 F35's

Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.

The F-35s are for the children and grandchildren. It's to safeguard their future.

Democracy is important and it isn't free.

If the Japanese are looking for technology to protect themselves against a heavily armed imperial force they should be mass producing Shaheds instead of paying tributes to the US MIC.

They should be mass producing Iran's drone?

who is winning that war right now?

Holy non-sequitur batman.

Why would Japan mass produce an inferior product when they would easily be able to design and build a far superior one? "Shahed" isn't just another word for drone, it's a specific company's name.

They certainly should not be buying 150 f35s judging by recent track records.

There has been one US F35 damaged in combat. That's total, across all the areas its been in and all the countries that have deployed them, starting in 2018. They've been up against the best air defense systems in the world in Venezuela and Iran and they received a single scratch.

The countries acquiring them are doing so because they are best strike fighters on the planet, and it's not even close. Unless you know something that Norway, Japan, England, the Netherlands, etc don't know?

give yourself a break. F-35 doesn't even have long range a2a missiles comparable to PL-17 in service. its radar is 2nd class at best, a full generation behind the Chinese counterpart and heavily rely on Chinese rare earth.

it is 2026 now, partially de-industrialized US no longer has the best weapons in the world. that is why it is struggling to even beat Iran.

Shahed drone's are not serious weapons of war. Japan could easily produce millions of them if needed. The drones are good for antagonizing and terrorising a civilian population. A few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties.

In other words if Japan were in a position where they were willing to use drones to indiscriminately attack soft targets an F-35 would be about a trillion times more effective.

few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties

the current admin does not care about civilians casualties. remember the tomahawk on school girls? so what are they waiting for if it was that easy?

Yeah, it's laughable to think that somewhere in the DoD a map labeled like "Iran: Huge Undefended Drone Warehouses" has just been sitting around unused because Hegseth/Trump keep vetoing it on account of potential civilian casualties.

Sure, we could easily wrap this whole thing up a couple days but the admin is choosing to remain stuck in a quagmire that's dooming GOP in the midterms. Based on a moral red line, of all things. Makes perfect sense.

They obviously could start methodically destroying civilian infrastructure to cause a huge humanitarian crisis which might force the Iranian government to collapse. They have clearly chosen not to commit to that approach so far.

The drones are good for antagonizing and terrorising [sic] a civilian population. A few F35s and bomber squads could reliably deplete and destroy the entire Iranian drone stock and manufacturing capacity if there was the desire and higher tolerance for civilian casualties.

Absolutely incorrect.

- The purpose of these drones is to establish deterrence.

- US is not capable of reaching every inch of Iranian airspace with F-35s unless it is willing to accept a significant casualty rate among pilots.

- Even if they could, the US has not been able to decimate Iran's drone stockpile even in the areas it can ~safely reach.

The age of the fighter jet is over.

Because of stealth jets, the US is capable of destroying every single power plant in the country, with all the horrible human cost you would expect. Exactly like Putin has been trying to do in Ukraine. Except, they could actually do it.

Trump and Hegseth may be bumbling idiots but so far they have been showing restraint. The jets seem to be pretty effective at making big holes in the ground, I wouldn't call their demise just yet.

The scoreboard says otherwise. US jets can't even reach the northeastern half of the country because the refueling tankers can't get close enough to give them the range.

Additionally, Iran had deterrence that you're not giving them credit for. If they destroyed Saudi and UAE's water desalination, it would be a mass casualty event.

The US and Russia can destroy every power plant in their respective opposing countries with I(C/R)BMs, but this would involve breaking taboos of which even their respective leaders are fearful.

The fighter jet is not capable of destroying every power plant in Iran without risking pilot casualties, an endeavor for which the US lacks political capital. The drone has no such issue. A rational nation would have shifted primary investment into medium-range drones many yesterdays ago.

The ministry of propaganda in China runs an English language international news channel available as an IPTV stream (https://tvexplorer.live/)

If you want a better understanding of which world events China is not happy about, tuning in there to see what they cover unfavorably has been useful for me.

They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.

They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.

Maybe because of Japan's history of horrific war crimes and occupation in China? You know, the actual imperial conquest for which their constitution prohibits them from having a standing air force?

I fail to see the logic here, can you spell this out for me? Are you saying:

1. Japan pissed off other countries and therefore does not need to defend itself from this greater threat?

2. Japan pissed off other countries and therefore should not be allowed to defend itself from this greater threat? It should just be conquered as a type of moral punishment (wasn't Japan already nuked, conquered, and occupied? Wasn't that enough? If not, why not?)

3. There is no greater threat. That Japan pissed off countries in the past has no bearing on the level of threat facing Japan today, in which case they should be allowed to spend as much as their neighbors on defense and the past is a non-issue.

4. There is a negative threat -- that Japan pissed off countries in the past means that they are now more secure and therefore less in need of defense?

Which of these are you arguing?

I am a little lost about how Japan committing war crimes in the past means they do need to spend as much on defense today, as this is a very counterintuitive claim, and it appears you are arguing for 4 or, if a dark personality, for 2. In which case, I'd like you to spell it out for the community to hear.

I think its 5. that it is understandable for some countries to fear and be concerned when Japan arms itself.

it's not a statement on what should be and shouldn't be, but rather attempting to provide reasons as to why China might not like this move, without resorting to claims of propaganda or the fear being illegitement

The irony of westerners accusing china of propaganda will never be lost on me.

Germany is also pumping a lot of money into Military. Nobody in Europe seems to mind.

Pretty sure China is unhappy not for history reason, but because of the current situation, which is that China tries to establish military dominance in the region and wants to invade Taiwan.

The person you're afraid of conquering you not liking that you're trying to defend yourself against conquest is not an argument against doing that.

Japan is never going to voluntarily attack China. Even if there was a desire to, they know they could not win. Any military build up by the former is due to fear of the latter.

Japan probably won't not attack China (I don't see why they would, not proactively at least), that's not what was being asserted. Japan however may defend Taiwan or allies/neighbors in the south china sea should things go hot there elsewise. And Japan have stated at least some interest in doing so which means that if China wants Taiwan, they might have to contend with japan.

These sort of things can work as a deterrent as much as power projection, and they don't have to get into direct violent/physical conflict for there to be diplomatic tension/worsening of relations as a result. I'm not saying this is most effective use of Japan's resources or focus or that China is for sure going to do anything or making any other such claims, just explaining the potential rational for why China would be non-plussed at Japan over F35 purchases even if they don't feel Japan is gunning for them.

Of course, if china has no actual wartime intentions in Japans sphere of influence, then yeah, they probably give much less of a shit. So depends on what their intentions really are as to how they feel about it. The fact that they're publicly broadcasting displeasure is probably not a sign that they're cool with it though.

Any protest from China is just painting themselves as being in a defensive position, whilst they make claims over the oceans and territories that the international community disagrees with. Very much not defensive acts.

It's the Putin playbook. "It's NATO's fault we need to kill Ukranians!"

Putin actually invaded Ukraine. America has threatened to invade Greenland and made noises about Canada.

What has China done new?

It's wild that people say this. Japan attacking China (and later the Western colonies, and later the US) knowing that it could not win was one of the most important events in the 20th century. There isn't a country as infamous as Japan for starting wars it cannot win.

Also that attack happened on Sept 18, this very day, in 1931.

Not so wild when you realise that it's not the 1930s, and Japan isn't being led by an imperialist & expansionist regime. I'm not denying any past aggression from Japan, my grandparents fought them, but the situation is quite different now.

They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.

Could be a strategy going on here.

Before they invaded Ukraine, Russia criticized Ukrainian military buildup as "destabalising". Probably with full knowledge of their own plans to invade.

Russia also criticized the ethnic cleansing of Donbass via artillery strikes on civilian areas - casualties and deaths reported daily in the LPR and DPR media, but never made a single peep in the Western news.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russ...

https://time.com/3042640/satellite-russian-ukraine-shelling/

Those strikes?

I meant the strikes while the Minsk ceasefire was in effect - one that was admitted to by Merkel to merely buy time for Ukraine's arms build-up into the 3rd largest European military. And then used effectively to shell and kill Russian civilians including children. Not a SINGLE word in the Western media. There dozens of such daily reports in 2021 marking deaths and casualties as very banal. Never made a peep in the Western news.

https://antimaydan.info//opolchenie_novorossii/svodki_ot_opo...

https://www.osce.org/sites/default/files/2021-04-06_SMM_Dail...

https://www.interfax-russia.ru/military/news/547769

very quickly, going to need extra care.

they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention.

What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?

Wtf is going on with the discourse here lately? Are you advocating for effective "euthanasia" by neglect?

I disagree with downvoting the parent; I did not interpret their post as advocating neglect or euthanasia or anything else of a nasty kind.

There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually.

However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left). There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.

From the article. >While immigration has risen in previous years, foreigners only make up around 3% of the population and opposition to accepting more has grown.

That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population.

The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities.

Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up.

As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.

Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up.

'fixing' one issue by swapping it out for another

Whats the other issue? Immigrants? That's a bit racist.

Ok.

What’s your solution then. Unless you can convince the average Japanese woman to have 3 kids and then hop in a time machine to do this 20 years ago, then immigration is the only option.

Almost every advanced economy relies on low paid migrant workers to do crappy jobs.

Occasionally you can pull these migrants from within the country like in China

There is no solution needed. Populations go up and down, there is no need to for the arrow to always go up and to the right, particularly for overcrowded places like Japan and China. Japan with 50 million Japanese would be a much nicer place, just as China with 500 million Chinese would result in each of those people being happier. Let nature take its course.

Thank you. Finally a sane response. This place is nothing but "line must go up!!!" capitalist shills.

Ultimately the problem is that Japanese people are not having enough kids. It's a huge emergency. It is recoverable, but it has to be done very soon or it will be much harder. Right now, 5.1% of the population is 25-29, prime childbearing years. If all of those people had 2.1 kids, and so did their descendants, Japan's population would stabilize reasonably well. The problem is that the 0-4 range is only 3.1%. Even if that generation has 2.1 kids, the population will be massively diminished.

If that happens, the majority of Japanese people will be retired, and the cost to provide medical care for them will be astronomical compared to the number of people that can provide that care. It's easy to say "Japan is a rich country, they can afford it." However, medical care for old people is very labor intensive. Even if the old people have "savings", this is just a claim against the labor of young people. If the young people are too worn out from caring for their parents to have their own kids, the country dies out.

The only solution I can think of is to provide massive incentives to have kids. Massive meaning something like "you get $40k per year for every kid in your house under 18", or "you get a free house when you have your first kid, and a bigger one when you have your second."

Maybe this sounds extreme, but the alternative is that young people are taxed at punitive rates in order to provide care for older people. As the situation progresses, younger people will have even less kids because they can't afford them, and eventually they won't even be able to pay for a reasonable living standard for themselves. Older people won't care and will vote themselves excellent benefits, since they would have a good majority in voting. The only option younger people would have would be to leave the country, which only forces the tax rates higher. Eventually something breaks. It's difficult to predict exactly how it would go but it's not pretty.

If Japan is to be saved though, it has to happen in the next 5-10 years or so, and the sooner the better. Once the population pyramid slides up another decade, you'd need the average couple to have 4 kids or so, and the incentives required to make that happen are not affordable, and wouldn't be agreed to democratically when the majority of the population is retired and wants the money for the remainder of their lives rather than paying for kids that would be too young to provide labor to care for them while they're alive.

Has any country really reversed the diminishing fertility rate with industrialization without religious zealotry? I honestly don’t think money is the factor here. Yes it matters but $40k is nothing. That covers maybe a year or two of daycare in the states. It needs to be a cultural change but not sure what would reverse it.

Or we set a max age of the population where you off yourself. It’s the plot of Half a Life in Star Trek TNG

But why does it need to be reversed?

We are at the same time experiencing all the challenges and consequences of depleting the planet of resources, a warming climate and shortages everywhere. Why can less people in a natural way not be part of the solution?

You’ll need to kill people off at say 70. Healthcare meds increase dramatically when you get older and older, and that means more people needed to care. When the worker:dependence ratio increases you end up with people emigrating or care reducing.

That's where spreading the young population around via migration comes in, but people are racist and can't tolerate that.

In your solution you also wouldn't have to kill people off. They would die naturally due to a lack of healthcare.

If Japan is to be saved

As I said in another comment, the population of Japan is projected to be 64 million in 2100. A hundred years ago, the population was 64 million, and that was at the peak of their colonial expansion.

Yes I get it that the demographics pyramid would not be the same as it was in 1930, but this whole narrative that "Japan is dying" is at the very least spread to pull on heartstrings in order to fuel this lines must go UP ALL THE TIME hypercapitalist nonsense.

Why can't a people wax and wane according to the needs of their culture and not the needs of bigwig bank accounts? Does Japan need a convenience store on every block? If every single convenience store disappeared tomorrow, you'd suddenly have a massive workforce able to go to school or care for the elderly, so here I am just yelling at clouds while the average Japanese person is more in line with your way of thinking that being able to buy a sandwich instead of making your own is the "Japan" they want to save.

Japan desperately needs some defense of its own, American is an unreliable ally and Japan has no nukes. And we’ve seen what happens to countries with no nukes.

Are these eldery people receiving extra care going to repel an enemy force when the time comes?

Is China going to invade Japan?

Obligatory note about most centenarians not having verifiable birth records.

Semi-related, but I did recently wonder if China's real-estate bust might serve as a strong fertility support measure / incidental pronatalist policy.

Tier-3 and tier-4 cities supposedly saw 30-50% property value declines, setting them back more than two decades. If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.

Otoh, rural Japan has lots of cheap or even free real estate but it doesn't seem to support fertility rates at all.

Real estate is not the only reason why folks have less children, especially in cultures where people don’t mind having less space. Kids are expensive for other reasons in china

because there is no work in rural area, why you not asking the same question why younger people move to city at their 20s ??

The more salient point is why is this happening.

That is to say, it also mean less and less younger people, as 'modernity' induces fewer marriages and fewer children.

It's pretty easy to follow if you know which neoliberal polity forced Japan to abandon traditionalism.

Wild that the article goes on about the percentage of centenarians, then just has this brief note about how the data are completely unreliable, and never squares the two sets of statements.

  centenarians per 10,000
  Japan   8.8
  France  6.3
  Italy   3.6
  Canada  3.2
  US      3.0
  UK      2.4  
  Germany 2.2
  Russia  0.9
  China   0.3
  India   0.2

What are Japan and France doing so much better?

What are Japan and France doing so much better?

I think the question misunderstands the data.

Or more specifically, a big part of the answer is "not having kids." Think about the denominator.

And why is Japan so obsessed with french things?

Paris Syndrome’s wikipedia article [0] has some causal clues.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

Years ago people warned that we had to limit the population to save the planet.

Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.

Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.

The key word is gradual. Population decline in Japan may be faster than is economically manageable, depending on whose projections you read.