Japan Demographic Challenges

INTRODUCTION
The populations of all industrial countries are aging. As prosperity has increased, birth rates have declined, and with the baby-boom generation about to enter retirement, public pension schemes have come under pressure to raise contribution levels or cut the size of benefits. Japan’s population, which enjoys the greatest longevity in the world, will be particularly affected. The share of elderly people as a percentage of the working population in Japan is already one of the highest in the world, whereas the fertility rate is among the lowest, implying that the age distribution of the population will shift rapidly in the coming decades (Muhleisen & Faruqee 2001).
This paper attempts to review the views of a number of academics on population control programs. Furthermore, the demographic challenges that Japan faces in terms of being an aging population will be discussed. The paper will also conduct a comparison of the demographic challenges faced by Japan with a number of other countries.

ACADEMIC VIEWS ON POPULATION CONTROL PROGRAMS
In his article “China’s One-Child Mistake”, Eberstadt (2007) expresses his opinion on coercive population control. He believes that coercive population control has been “a tragic and historic mistake”, and pushes to abandoning it immediately. Eberstadt uses China as an example to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this program. He believes that China’s population program has been a superficial success. Today, China’s fertility rate is far below the “net reproduction rate”; by many estimates. Eberstadt argues that what might seem as a success in China’s population program in reality has “immense inadvertent costs” and “unintended consequences”. The decade and a half of sub-replacement fertility, has poised China’s work population to peak in size, and then start to decline, more or less indefinitely within less than a decade. Thus, China’s potential labour force (ages 15-64) will be no larger than it is today, perhaps...