Again, according to the medium variant projections of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the proportion of the aged will reach 32.3 percent, an astonishing figure, around the middle of the 21st century. If we look into the low variant projections which assume a farther decline in fertility and an eventual stabilization at 1.38 in terms of total fertility rate in the future, the proportion of the aged may rise even to the level 35.2 percent, that is to say, just an one-third of the total population would become the aged. Of course, there are some analytic projections for China on the assumption that their one-child policy would be maintained in the next century. According to such projections by Banister, the proportion of the aged in China currently being only 6 percent would become 41 percent of the total population, the percentage incomparably and even incomprehensively large (Banister, 1990). The future prospects of population ageing for Japan might not be as far-fetched as those for China, but their implications are immense and mind-boggling.
