Hmmm, I can see myself reporting on random trivia now that I’m watching that trivia program but anyway, according to the Japan National Institute of Population and Social Secruity Research the average number of kids born per couple is 1.2. Computing out, if it says the same there will only be 27 people left in Japan in the year 3000.
That part if the show ended with “How about doing your best to help solve this problem tonight?” :-p
The demographics are quite scary.
A couple of years ago I was doing some market research for restarting my language school, and calculated that the number of 15-25 year olds in ~2010 is set to go down by ~30% from what it was when I first arrived in Japan (1992).
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/jinsui/2003np/
shows that the peak demographic for postwar people in 2003 was at age 30, and every year group under that shows a decline, until the 12 year olds where the rate of decrease zeros out.
In other words there are ~2x more 30yos than 12yos in Japan right now!
Mitigating the hollowing out of young-adult-focused business enterprises is that I expect the urban areas to continue sucking in young people at a constant rate, so that businesses located in the major cities will not see such a decline in business as indicated in the population pyramid.
Being single dudes on the make, noting the population of women age 30-40 is interesting — the younger you look in this age group the more they are!
The notch in the 37yo’s was that weird 60-yr Chinese zodiacal lineup (fire + horse) in 1966, btw.
http://www.io.com/~cortese/hinoeuma/what.html