Source： National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Population Projections for Japan： 1996-2100. Tokyo, 1997.
If the degree of ageing is expressed by the percentage of the total population which is 65 years and over, the Japanese age structure at present is hardly very "aged" , since the percentage is approximately 13-not particularly high in comparison with such countries as Switzerland, Sweden and the Federal Republic of Germany (before the unification) where the corresponding proportions exceed 15 percent. However, according to the medium variant of the above-mentioned provisional population projections prepared by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in 1997, the future pace of ageing in Japan will be rapid and, by the year 2025, Japan's population aged 65 and over will be 27.4 percent. Since the recent United Nations projections as assessed in 1996 do not reveal any country with equivalently high ageing indicators, Japan would probably be the country which is most aged in the world in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. In this first quarter the mean age will continue to rise and will pass the mark of 47 years.
