1495 residents of Gojome, a town in northern Japan, have gathered for a morning market. On a recent weekday, along a street of closed shops with almost no people, elderly sellers lay out their autumnal wares: mushrooms and chestnuts, okra, aubergines and pears. It was not always so empty, sighs Ogawa Kosei, who runs a bookshop on the street. He points to pictures his father took that show the scene packed with shoppers.
Demographic change has two drivers often lumped together: rising longevity and a falling birth rate. Their convergence demands “a new map of life”, says Akiyama Hiroko, founder of the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Gerontology. Infrastructure created when the population was younger and the demographic pyramid sturdier must be redesigned, from health care to housing to transport.
That makes designing national policy difficult. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all model,” says Iio Jun, a political scientist at. While the national government is responsible for finance, including pensions, the new map of life is best drawn from the ground up. Many ideas come from listening to citizens, says Ms Akiyama. “They know what the issues are—and many times they know how to solve them.”
This means finding ways for old people to keep working. Nearly half of 65- to 69-year-olds and a third of 70- to 74-year-olds have jobs. Japan’s gerontological society has called for reclassifying those aged 65-74 as “pre-old”. Ms Akiyama speaks of creating “workplaces for the second life”. But the work of the second life will differ from that of the first; its contribution may not be easily captured in growth statistics.
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What comes after 'old old?'
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