Column Finance and the Social Security System 2018.05.22
In March 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released a report of demographics pertaining to the period 1899-2016 titled "Vital Statistics in Japan." As shown in Figure 1, the number of deaths per 1,000 population has been rising after declining sharply from 21.5 in 1899 to 6.2 in 1980. This reflects that the number of deaths due to cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, and senility has started to rise along with the increase in the number of elderly individuals aged 75-years and older, although the mortality rate has remained low in the period when average life expectancy extended even as aging progressed (Figure 2).
Figure 3 is an international comparison of the number of deaths per 1,000 population before adjusting for age composition differences. Among the industrialized countries, the rise in Japan's mortality rate is conspicuous.
Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare