How Will the Aging and Shrinking of Japan's Population Progress? Spatial Analyses Using Small Area Population Projection Data

Takashi Inoue, Aoyama Gakuin University

Japan is currently the most rapidly aging country in the world, and as a result, the population has been declining since 2008. Therefore, analyzing how the aging and shrinking of Japan's population will progress is extremely important not only for Japan but also for other countries. However, there have been few studies that have used small area population projection data to examine such trends. The purpose of this study is to analyze the aging and shrinking of Japan's population from a spatial demographic perspective using such data, and to clarify the future process of change. The analyses are performed using two methods. One is to analyze the differences in the progression of aging by clustering small areas. The other is to analyze how much population shrinking will progress using a logit model on a per-small-area basis. As a result of the former analysis, in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, the initial proportion of the elderly population is low, although the proportion is expected to progress most rapidly. In the latter analysis, the risk of population shrinking is expected to be high in areas with a high proportion of the elderly population and a sharp decline in the young female population.

Keywords: Population Ageing, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, Small area estimation, Spatial Demography

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