tively low ageing scores are those which have been noted by heavy inmigration.
The population ageing is more problem-ridden and badly affects their fate in those out-migrating prefectures because out-migrating people are usually in the prime years of labour force, say in their 20s and early 30s,ineluctably facilitating speedier ageing than otherwise. In general, population ageing is the outcome of vital evolution, interplay of fertility and mortality, particularly reflecting a long term decline in fertility. But, since the end of World War II internal migration from rural to urban and to metropolitan areas, has been promoting heavy concentration of population and industries in the urban and metropolitan areas, on the one hand,and depopulation and heavy erosion of working age population in those remote and traditionally agricultural prefectures, on the other.
Both central and local governments have paid great and painful efforts to prevent and reverse the on-going metropolitan-ward migration of the population by promoting to develop modern industries or to invite those from the metropolitan areas. But, unfortunately, despite their Herculean efforts and programmes exerted towards decentralization of population and industries, their outcome has not visibly been successful. Over-centralization rather than decentralization still prevails in the Japanese Archipelago in the area of population and manpower distribution.
2. Population Ageing and Changes in the Family and Household
A. General Framework
The family or household is a single unit for many social and economic activities, including income maintenance, economic dependency, savings,fertility, migration, social welfare and social adjustment, etc. Very broadly speaking, the family or household has two different aspects in relation to the process of population ageing. First, the family itself undergoes its transformation by demographic changes through the ageing process.
