Declining fertility and the rising costs of children and the elderly in Japan and other selected Asian countries: An analysis based upon the NTA approach

Abstract

Since the late 1960s, the growth of the world population has been steadily slowing down, primarily owing to an almost worldwide decline of fertility. Because of the reduction in world population growth rates in the second half of the 20th century, the outlook we have today is substantially different from the one we had a few decades ago. It is often mentioned by some demographers that while the 20th century was the century of ‘population explosion’, the 21st is likely to become the century of ‘population ageing’ (Lutz et al. 2004). At present, 60 per cent of the world population