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Japan has the highest share of elderly people in the population now, and Japanese future aging rate will be very high, rarely anticipated in other developed countries. The challenge of dealing with the issues related to ageing of the population is more acute in Japan than in many other countries. Japan has of course country-specific features, but the future situation in Japan concerning living arrangements of the elderly will provide useful implications to the other developed countries. By using a dynamic micro-simulation model named INAHSIM, we conducted a population-household projection in Japan for the period of 2015-2070. Among the elderly (65 years old or older), the proportions of those who live in one-person households will increase from the present 18% to 30%, living in institutions from 6% to 15%, having little relatives from 1.6% to 10% in 55 years. All these trends suggest that there is quite a strong pressure for elderly care in Japan, and a paradigm change is necessary to construct a sustainable elderly care system.

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Fukawa, Tetsuo
Tetsuo Fukawa was born in 1950. He has attained MSc in 1974 and PhD(Public Health) in 1998 at the University of Tokyo. He served for Japanese Government during 1974-1990 as administrator and during 1990-2010 as researcher. Since 2010, he is co-representative of Inst. for Future Welfare in Tokyo. Research areas: elderly policies and health services.

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