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Abstract
Immediately after World War Two, Japan's fertility declined by more than 50 per cent in 10 years. This unprecedented decline of fertility resulted in a substantial shift in personal resource allocation away from childrearing and induced a rapid accumulation of physical capital in the 1950s, which provided a strong base for achieving Japan's phenomenal economic growth from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. By heavily drawing upon two simulation models, this paper attempts to show how large the demographic bonus was in post-war Japan and how serious the demographic onus is likely to be over the period 2000–2025.
Notes
1. Demand for wealth refers to both physical wealth and transfer wealth. Transfer wealth at age x is defined as the difference between the expected survival-adjusted transfers to be received and the present values of those transfers to be provided over the remaining stages of life. At the macro level, in an ageing society the demand for public transfers in the form of social security benefits is expected to increase (for a detailed discussion, see Mason 2001).