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Asia faces a problem: Its population is aging faster than any
other continent’s. A growing percentage of people in Japan,
South Korea and China are over 65, and those countries’
economies are suffering because of a lack of available
workers. Governments are struggling to find the money to
support retirees.
You can compare the issue to how people used to view climate
change: It was happening for many years, but we weren’t
paying attention. Societies need to plan for aging, and they’re
not well set up to do so. It’s not an in-your-face crisis — it’s a
slow-rolling crisis.
Japan is not the only country in the region struggling with this.
Last year in China, deaths outnumbered births for the first time
in six decades. How is China dealing with its aging population?
Motoko Rich is The Times’s Tokyo bureau chief. Her first front-
page story from Japan was about the middle-aged dissolution
of a beloved boy band.