With its 58,820 centenarians, Japan is one of the countries with the highest number of senior citizens. On September 15th, the country of the Rising Sun celebrated the Day dedicated to the respect for them. However, as the Misna News Agency reported, this is not only a bed of roses: because of the demographic trend, 25% of the total population is elderly, and the situation is preoccupying the authorities in their attempt to find adequate resources.
Although the retirement age in Japan is 60, individuals and businesses are allowed to make a permanent agreement or to go back to work in certain conditions. The programs being studied foresee not only development in the specific structures for an aging population, but also an extension of the working age in order to ensure greater sustainability. With an increasingly higher life expectancy—86.61 years for women and 80.21 for men—, 4,423 centenarians in Japan have already joined last year’s record number. In fact, the number of the elderly is growing steadily: they were 10,000 in 1998, 30,000 in 2007 and over 50,000 in 2012.
