Socioeconomic Consequences of Population Aging in Japan
Naohiro OGAWA
Professor
College of Economics
and
Deputy Director
Population Research Institute
Nihon University
Introduction
The story of Japan's miraculous postwar economic success has been told many times (Minami, 1986; Ogawa, Jones, and Williamson, 1993).No less striking, however, was the unprecedented rapidity with which Japan completed her demographic transition (Hodge and Ogawa, 1991). Among all the industrialized nations, Japan was the first to experience a fertility decline in the postwar period and it had the greatest decline in national fertility among these countries.
In contrast to the United States and European countries, the postwar baby boom in Japan was extremely short, lasting only three years, from 1947 to 1949 (Hodge and Ogawa, 1991; Ogawa and Retherford, 1993a).
