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日本の高齢社会
Japan’s ageing society has a large and rising share of people aged 65 or over. This population change affects households, work, care, housing and local services. Older people themselves have widely different resources, health and ways of living.
The 2026 White Paper reports a population of 123.22 million on 1 October 2025, including 36.22 million aged 65 or over: 29.4 percent of the total. This ageing rate changes with both the older population and the size of other age groups.
At the same date, people aged 65–74 made up 12.1 percent of the population, and those aged 75 or over accounted for 17.3 percent. Together they form the 29.4 percent aged 65-plus. The 75-plus share is already included in that total.
The White Paper notes that there is no single definition of an older person for every context. A 65-plus category makes long-term comparison possible, but it includes people with different jobs, activities and support needs. An age category describes neither one lifestyle nor one level of ability.
Japan crossed 7 percent in 1970, 14 percent in 1994 and, for the first time, 21 percent in 2007, when the share reached 21.5 percent. Terms such as ageing and aged society commonly refer to such thresholds; their use is distinct from the age rules of individual institutions.
In 1950, there were about 12.1 people aged 15–64 for each person aged 65-plus; by 2025, the ratio was about 2.0. This describes the demographic setting for social security, not a count of actual financial support between individuals. Some older people work, while not everyone aged 15–64 is employed.
In 1950, fewer than 5 percent of Japan’s people were aged 65 or over. Age-adjusted mortality subsequently fell substantially. The White Paper identifies growth in the older population and a decline in younger cohorts through low fertility as the two main forces behind ageing.
A birth cohort is a group born in the same period. Japan’s first baby boom in 1947–49 produced the dankai generation; the 1971–74 second boom produced the generation often called dankai juniors. As the same people move into older bands, peaks in an age pyramid move upward.
By 2025 everyone in the first group was aged 75 or over. By 2040 the second group will all have reached age 65. Smaller incoming cohorts meanwhile narrow the pyramid’s base and the future working-age population. Ageing therefore concerns cohort size and movement as well as longer survival.
Low fertility reduces the size of incoming younger cohorts. The White Paper records a total fertility rate of 1.91 in 1975 and a renewed downward trend after 2015. This rate combines one year’s age-specific fertility rates; it is not a completed lifetime count for one generation of women.
Japan’s move from 7 to 14 percent took 24 years. In the 2026 White Paper’s comparison, France took 127 years and Germany 40, while South Korea took 18 and Singapore 20. Japan’s rapid transition belongs to a wider, changing pattern of population ageing.
People aged 75-plus accounted for about 9.9 percent of the population in 2007 and 17.3 percent in 2025. The first baby-boom cohort’s movement into this band helps explain why 2025 became a planning milestone for care and housing. MHLW’s rationale also stresses that regional demand peaks differ: rapidly ageing urban areas and places losing population cannot simply use identical provision.
MHLW’s 2018 reform headquarters and 2019 policy summary framed 2040 as a two-sided problem: growth in the older population slows while the working-age population supplying services shrinks more sharply. Planning therefore goes beyond adding beds under an unchanged model. It also concerns participation in work, healthy life expectancy, and ways to sustain medical and welfare services with fewer staff.
These are policy responses, not proof that staffing shortages have been solved. The 2025 statistics above describe observations; discussion of 2040 combines projections with choices about provision.
Healthy life expectancy measures average years without limitations on daily life caused by health problems. The White Paper gives 2022 values of 72.57 years for men and 75.45 for women. This differs from overall life expectancy and is not an age at which every person becomes ill.
Among insured people aged 65-plus in fiscal 2023, 3.0 percent of those aged 65–74 were certified as needing long-term care, compared with 11.4 percent at 75–84 and 44.8 percent at 85-plus. Certification for support needs is a separate category. Care needs become more concentrated at older ages, but age alone does not assign an individual care level.
Using a survey conducted in 2022–23, the White Paper estimates that 4.432 million people aged 65-plus had dementia in 2022, a prevalence of 12.3 percent. Mild cognitive impairment is counted separately. If prevalence within each sex and age group remains constant after 2025, the projected number with dementia reaches about 5.842 million in 2040. A changing age structure can increase the total even without rising prevalence within each group.
About 106,000 people left work to provide family care or nursing between October 2021 and September 2022; roughly three quarters were women. Professional care services also face recruitment pressures: care-related occupations had a ratio of 4.03 active job openings per applicant in 2025. Supporting carers who wish to remain in work and staffing professional services are both parts of arranging care.
MHLW lists four routes for receiving foreign care personnel: Economic Partnership Agreements, the “Nursing Care” residence status, technical intern training and specified skilled worker arrangements. These provide channels for international movement within the care workforce; they do not establish that migration alone can reverse population ageing.
Japan’s social-security benefits totalled about ¥135.49 trillion in fiscal 2023, covering pensions, medical care, welfare and other benefits. Older-age-related benefits accounted for about ¥86.06 trillion, or 63.5 percent, including pension insurance, older-age medical care, welfare services and continued-employment benefits. This is a classification of benefits, rather than a claim that population ageing causes all social-security spending.
Japan expanded its social-security framework during recovery and rapid economic growth. The 1963 Act on Social Welfare for the Elderly provided for residential and home-help services. Free medical care for older people followed in 1973. Medical, residential and home-based services became established areas of public policy.
The Health and Medical Services Act for the Aged, enacted in 1982, provided for measures including a patient contribution. The 1989 Gold Plan promoted facilities and home-based welfare. The earlier system limited service choice, while some people needing care stayed in general hospitals for long periods. This increased medical costs, and hospital staffing and living spaces were not necessarily suited to long-term care.
Local integration and the New Gold Plan prepared change during the 1990s. The Long-Term Care Insurance Act was enacted in 1997 and implemented in 2000; the 1995 Basic Law on Measures for the Ageing Society also addressed population change across policy fields.
Insurance changed more than financing. Earlier welfare arrangements had municipalities decide the service and provider, with medical and welfare applications handled separately. The new model emphasised users choosing providers and combining services through a care plan, with businesses, cooperatives, nonprofits and others supplying them. Municipal administration still handles insurance and certification without itself making every choice or delivering every service.
Municipalities and special wards act as insurers: they organise certification, manage finance and pay benefits. Public funds and premiums from insured people aged 40-plus finance the insurance benefits; MHLW’s 2024 guide presents each as half this funding. People aged 65-plus and medically insured people aged 40–64 form separate categories, with benefits for the latter tied to specified age-related diseases.
For covered care services, a user pays a prescribed share and insurance covers the remainder. This differs from leaving the entire purchase to a family. Paying premiums, receiving certification and choosing services are connected but distinct: reaching 65 does not by itself establish access to a particular service.
The 2024 official guide sets out an application to the municipality, an assessment of everyday and physical/mental functioning, and a physician’s report. A review committee assesses the evidence and the municipality notifies the result. The doctor’s opinion matters but is not a sole personal decision on certification.
A person certified as needing long-term care and seeking home services contracts with a home-care support agency, whose care manager helps select services and prepare a plan. Someone seeking residential care applies to the relevant facility. People certified as needing support follow a separate preventive-care planning route through a prevention-support provider. The community support centre offers consultation, rights protection and coordination; that entry-point role differs from the care manager responsible for an individual home-care plan.
Different settings and rhythms can meet everyday support needs. A home visit brings assistance with activities such as bathing, meals or household work into the home. Day services take place at a service location before the user returns home. A short stay provides accommodation and support for a limited period and can give family carers a break.
These are forms that a plan can combine, not an automatic package for everyone. The guide separately describes residential facilities and housing-based services. Care is therefore more varied than hospital admission or exclusive reliance on relatives.
Community-based integrated care connects housing, medical treatment, long-term care, prevention and everyday support. Municipal support centres provide consultation, rights protection, coordination and preventive assistance. Meal delivery, check-ins and other support can involve public services, nonprofits, volunteers and businesses. Older people can also provide support to others.
A 2024 report by Kashiwa, the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Gerontology and UR offers a concrete example. The area developed primary-and-substitute physician arrangements, joint training, and information sharing among medical, nursing and care staff. These address the difficulty of home provision depending on one doctor. The Kashiwa medical coordination centre established in 2014 added consultation and coordination support.
Primary-and-substitute arrangements share doctors’ responsibilities, while information exchange helps different professions coordinate a resident’s home-based care. The three-party agreement reviewed in the report ended in May 2024, with some work continuing through separate arrangements. The report documents organisation, not proof that every resident’s health improved.
Since 2021, employers have had a duty to make efforts to secure work opportunities up to age 70. Measures can include continued employment, ongoing contracted work or social-contribution activities. This is an obligation to make efforts, rather than a guarantee that every person will remain employed until 70.
Responses to low fertility also address younger people’s incomes, childcare and working arrangements. The Children and Families Agency describes the strategy adopted in December 2023 as including expanded child allowances, postnatal care and after-school clubs, alongside support for fathers’ childcare leave and benefits for reduced-hours work. These are measures intended to improve conditions for family formation and childrearing, rather than evidence that fertility has already risen.
The White Paper’s regional table uses 2024 data: 39.5 percent of Akita’s population was aged 65-plus, compared with 22.7 percent in Tokyo. Yet Tokyo had about 3.215 million older residents and Akita about 354,000. A lower share can accompany a much larger older population, so both proportions and numbers matter in planning services.
Three-generation households accounted for about half of households with someone aged 65-plus in 1980. In 2024, couple-only and single-person households each made up roughly three tenths. Changing household structures alter how families and local services organise everyday support.
Employment rates in 2025 were 54.5 percent at ages 65–69, 36.2 percent at 70–74 and 12.6 percent at 75-plus. The age profile also differs by industry: people aged 65-plus made up 50.6 percent of agricultural and forestry workers that year. Older people are part of the workforce as well as users of services.
The same project connected retirement with local work needs. Its report describes direct employment by providers and work shared in short time slots in areas such as childcare, welfare and everyday support. Seminars and job coordinators helped participants explore openings and workable arrangements.
The example is not a demand that every older person keep a full-time job. It shows tasks being reorganised into smaller time commitments and matched with retirees’ experience and availability. Volunteering, learning and other activities also appear in the project: paid work is one route into participation.
The White Paper’s savings comparison covers households of two or more people: those headed by someone aged 60–69 or 70-plus hold greater average net savings than younger-headed households. Its income statistics define an older household differently, as one containing only people aged 65-plus, possibly with children under 18. Such households had an average annual income of ¥3.148 million in 2023. These categories and averages describe different aspects of finances; they do not represent every household.
Work histories also connect older households to pensions. The Japan Pension Service describes a basic pension layer and an employees’ pension layer; company employees and public servants join both, while membership and contribution arrangements differ for other occupational situations. People of the same age need not therefore have the same pension composition.
The service also states that employees under 70 who meet the applicable employment conditions remain insured regardless of whether they receive a pension. Employment and pension receipt are not simple alternatives. This explains institutional income sources rather than calculating an individual entitlement from age or an average income.
Home ownership is common in older age groups, while registered housing with support services has expanded. The White Paper also tracks step-free stations, guidance facilities and low-floor buses. Later-life living therefore involves the home and access to services beyond it.
Recorded learning activities include cooking, arts and computer skills. Internet use also varies by age: in 2024, 87.9 percent of people aged 65–69 used it, compared with 33.1 percent at 80-plus. Participation and access need to be examined across distinct groups.
The projection used in the 2026 White Paper places the 65-plus population peak at about 39.53 million in 2043 and its share at 38.7 percent in 2070. A share can keep rising even after the number falls if other age groups shrink faster. These are conditional projections, distinct from the observed 2025 figures.
The denominator is Japan’s whole population; the numerator is people aged 65 or over.
No. The 75-plus population is already part of the 65-plus group.
Growth in the older population and smaller younger cohorts through low fertility.
It began in 2000 after the 1997 law. The change emphasised users choosing providers and combining services through a care plan, while municipalities retained insurance and certification roles.
No. They are projections used by the White Paper and need to be distinguished from observed figures.
Certification uses an assessment and physician’s report, with review and municipal notification. A care manager at a home-care support agency prepares the individual plan; the community support centre provides consultation, rights protection and coordination.
They mark large cohorts reaching older bands: the 1947–49 cohort had all reached age 75 by 2025 and the 1971–74 cohort will all have reached age 65 by 2040. Smaller younger cohorts also make staffing part of the planning problem.
Primary/substitute doctors, shared information and a coordination centre link home-based services. Short direct-employment shifts, seminars and job coordinators match local tasks with retirees’ experience and time. These are organisational examples, not automatic evidence of national effects.