Japan Continues to Tighten Screws on Immigrants

News today suggests that Japan is not only not interested in accepting new immigrants, but is actively discouraging them. The specific case is an almost impossibly difficult test that prospective nurses from other countries must complete in Japanese if they are to be certified to stay in the country after an initial trial period.

Despite facing an imminent labor shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. In fact, as Ms. Fransiska and many others have discovered, the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups — in the case of Ms. Fransiska, a local nursing association afraid that an influx of foreign nurses would lower industry salaries.

Life in the Old-Old Lane

We spend a lot of time thinking about the economic consequences of an aging society, especially in terms of how such countries will pay for pensions and health care for an increasingly larger older population. Here the demographic focus is on low birth rates and whether immigration can or should be part of a solution. Recently, however, author Susan Jacoby took a more personal look at the reality of our living to increasingly older ages. What does it mean to be among those who are the aging population? Her 65th birthday produced reflections on what might lie ahead.

People my age and younger still pretend that old age will yield to what has long been our generational credo — that we can transform ourselves endlessly, even undo reality, if only we live right. “Age-defying” is a modifier that figures prominently in advertisements for everything from vitamins and beauty products to services for the most frail among the “old old,” as demographers classify those over 85. You haven’t experienced cognitive dissonance until you receive a brochure encouraging you to spend thousands of dollars a year for long-term care insurance as you prepare to “defy” old age. “Deny” is the word the hucksters of longevity should be using. Nearly half of the old old — the fastest-growing segment of the over-65 population — will spend some time in a nursing home before they die, as a result of mental or physical disability. 

Recession Demographics

One of the stories being plumbed from the latest American Community Survey data is the doubling up of households as a coping strategy in the current recession. A story in the New York Times focuses on only one family, but it starts with a few numbers from the ACS:

Of the myriad ways the Great Recession has altered the country’s social fabric, the surge in households like the Maggis’, where relatives and friends have moved in together as a last resort, is one of the most concrete, yet underexplored, demographic shifts.

Census Bureau data released in September showed that the number of multifamily households jumped 11.7 percent from 2008 to 2010, reaching 15.5 million, or 13.2 percent of all households. It is the highest proportion since at least 1968, accounting for 54 million people.