Demographics, Statistics etc. 01 (Apr 09 - Aug 22)

[winston]

22 Facts About The Coming Demographic Tsunami That Could Destroy Our Economy All By Itself

By Michael Snyder

Source: The Economic Collapse Blog

http://www.thetradingreport.com/2014/02 ... by-itself/

[winston]

Children are Expensive in Any Language by Rodney Johnson

In the United States, the Department of Agriculture estimates that it’ll cost $245,000 to raise a child born this year. For those parents out there wondering what you get for a quarter of a million bucks, keep in mind that this doesn’t include college. That’s extra.

While the number might be mind-boggling, the idea that children are expensive isn’t new, at least not in the Western world. We’ve long since succumbed to the reality that our kids are giant suction machines, intent on removing every last nickel we have in our pockets. The interesting part is, most of the time we are willing participants.

We sign them up for soccer, SAT tutoring, drama classes, and send them off to adventure/science camps every summer. We make sure that they stay involved with travel sports when their regular sport season is over. Add to this the latest set of gadgets and gizmos, and you have a great recipe for overspending on junior. And that’s once the kid reaches school age.

When a two-income family takes the step into parenthood, they get a terrible reality check…

They find out that one of the biggest costs associated with kids is daycare. The going rate is roughly $200/week, or $10,400 per year.

Americans look at these figures and shake their heads, knowing that many young people simply can’t afford to have more children, not if they want to keep them at a high standard of living.

It appears that a fair number of Asian countries have come to the same conclusion.

According to the CIA Factbook, the estimate of the fertility rate of women in the U.S. this year is 2.01, which means women of child-bearing age are expected to have 2.01 children, on average. This is slightly below the rate of 2.10 that is needed to replace our population (one for each parent, plus a little for mortality and those that don’t have kids).

This might sound low, but we’re ahead of just about every other developed nation on the planet, and light years ahead of some major Asian nations. The same source shows that the five countries with the lowest fertility rates are South Korea (1.25), Hong Kong (1.17), Taiwan (1.11), Macau (0.93), and Singapore (0.80). This is very interesting because the list doesn’t include the poster child of declining populations, Japan (1.42) or the best-known forced family planning country, China (1.55).

The bottom five countries have all experienced incredible growth over the last 50 years and the standard of living in each nation has risen dramatically. Along with it, the pressures of raising children to exacting standards so that they can attend the best schools and have all that life has to offer has increased as well. So parents self-regulate, choosing to have fewer children so that they can focus their spending on one child, or maybe two.

This works for a little while. The standard of living increases because there are more productive workers and fewer mouths to feed. But eventually the tables turn. There are more retirees than new workers, reflecting the falling number of children entering the workforce. At this point, governments are like deer in headlights, not sure which way to go.

How do you fill in the gaps of missing populations? No one knows. This is exactly the situation faced by each of the five bottom countries, which have been running state-sponsored dating services, offering tax incentives and any other program they think will lead to matrimony and parenthood.

This is also what led China to ease its one-child policy last fall, hoping to create a wave of births this year. So far, the program has fallen flat. Of the 11 million families eligible to file for permission to have a second child, less than 3% have done so. This probably has something to do with the fact that raising a child is estimated to cost over 40% of the average income in China.

Not having kids in a small country like South Korea can be a problem. A lack of kids in a medium-sized nation like Japan is cause for concern. The small number of births in China might be devastating.

The normal structure of a society is to have a larger number of children in successive generations or, at worst, to have roughly the same number of kids in the next generation. This way, there will be enough workers and consumers not only to help the country grow, but also to care for the aging members of the population.

Over the last 25 years the world has watched Japan and witnessed what occurs when there are fewer children. The economy stagnates. Consumers hold tightly to their assets. Property prices fall. Aging citizens begin to determine the direction of the country and there are few opportunities for the young.

In a nation like Japan, which had achieved a high level of wealth before it began to age, many of the ill effects are being mitigated by government spending. What happens when a country the size of China, which has grown dramatically in the last 20 years but is still not rich, starts to grey? Who’ll care for the elderly? Who’ll buy the internal assets of the country to keep their domestic economy not just afloat, but growing?

Having children is certainly expensive, but not having them can be the death of a nation. These trends take years to develop, and can’t be undone quickly. When choosing areas for your investment dollars, consider how a country might grow — or contract — demographically. This could enable you to avoid the next Japan.

Source: Money & Markets

[winston]

Hearing More Wedding Bells by Rodney Johnson

The cool thing about people and economics (if there can be anything cool about economics), is the power of averages and human nature.

As people age, they move through distinct stages of life. While this progression can be interrupted by circumstances such as war or a huge economic upheaval, people still want to hit the milestones in life.

This makes a lot of things, like the growth and contraction of weddings, very predictable.

During the 2000s, the front end of the next large generation — the millennials — had begun entering the workforce. This stepping stone in life is typically followed by renting apartments and then getting married.

Tying the knot acts as a spending supercharger, because it sets in motion the process of buying a home and having children, both of which are very expensive.

Then we got hit with the financial crisis. While weddings still occurred, hundreds of thousands of people delayed their wedding plans, hoping for better times ahead. Even though six years have gone by, it’s hard to argue that the U.S. economy has enjoyed a sustained recovery, especially for those who are in the younger generations.

Good jobs are difficult to come by and wages have remained flat. But the days and months keep rolling by and to paraphrase an old quote, “time waits for no man.”

Now we have even more young people in the normal age range for marriage as the millennials grow older, plus those who were waiting for better times. There appears to be some pent-up demand for nuptials that is now showing up in the marketplace.

The number of weddings in the U.S. was up 3.7% in 2013… that is 2,156,300 weddings. It’s expected to climb by 4% both this year and next. This is good for our economy both today and in the future.

Whether a marriage is small or a big shindig, there tends to be a boost in spending with the event. It doesn’t matter if the funds used on the wedding are from savings or are borrowed, the dollars still flow into the economy and become someone else’s income.

From a long-term perspective, as mentioned above marriages are the normal starting point for much greater spending as families grow. The newlyweds become new parents, then new homeowners, and buy all the things that go into supporting those roles.

This trajectory is the underpinning of our work at Dent Research, because we use the number of consumers in each stage of life to estimate demand for the products and services that are common in each stage.

As I’ll explore in the next edition of Boom & Bust, according to our research we are currently in a down period, or economic winter season, but the future looks bright. Starting with weddings, there should be more positive news for the economy in the years ahead.

Of course, the fact that these positive trends begin with weddings isn’t all good news for everyone. Someone has to pay for these things… and it typically falls to parents.

According to the website TheKnot.com, the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. reached $29,858 in 2013. This figure includes all the things associated with the big day, like the rings, venue, catering, and entertainment, but does not include the honeymoon.

That being said, the cost of a wedding varies dramatically by location. In Manhattan the average wedding costs $87,000, while getting hitched in Utah was less than $17,000.

As the parent of two daughters under 20, I’m wondering if it’s too late to move out west.

Source: Money & Markets

[winston]

It’s a Singles World Out There by Harry Dent Jr

It’s very clear that as any emerging or more developed country urbanizes that people tend to have fewer kids. Urban life costs more and people tend to be more highly educated and naturally, they want to better educate their kids… so they choose to have one or two.

Nearly 25% choose their well-paid careers and social life over having children.

Almost all developed countries are experiencing a slowing down of their economies due to fewer kids and sluggish demographic growth.

The best English-speaking countries like Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand have offset such slowing to some degree, or even fully, with high immigration. Immigrating households, especially the Chinese, tend to prefer a wealthy country where their kids can get a high-quality English-language education.

Other countries ranging from Japan and South Korea to Germany and Italy (to name a few) have steep demographic cliffs ahead. They’re not only having fewer kids but aren’t attracting substantial immigration. Most developed countries fall into this category of “decliners”…

“Decliners” are countries with futures made up of declining workforces and shrinking populations.

Ask Japan how hard it is to stimulate your way out of that. It’s been flatlining since 1990 after almost two decades of money printing and massive fiscal deficits.

There’s another trend that leads to fewer kids and slower demographic growth and decline in the future… not getting married at all.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that single people became a majority in the U.S. for the first time reaching 50.2%. The chart below shows the trends over the last century in 20-year snapshots.

See larger image

In 1920, 65% of people were married. That rose to a peak in 1960 at 72%. That means that only 28% of people were single back then. By 2000, those who were married had dropped to 57% and in 2013, it hit 50%.

As I mentioned earlier, as we get more urban and affluent, social and career options expand. But since the great recession in 2008 and 2009, it’s also fair to point out that more young people are too financially insecure to buy a house or get married.

Job prospects aren’t good for the young right now. Unemployment is four percentage points higher for younger people and they’re vying more for part-time jobs and at lower salaries, to boot.

They’re the first generation to be saddled with high and rising student debt (over $1 trillion and rising) once the government decided to stop subsidizing education as much. They actually encouraged student loans with the knowledge that they make money off of it to the tune of $600 billion a year in interest until the default rates go high enough… and they will. In our depression scenario for 2015 to 2020 and on, this trend will only get worse.

This means we’ll have more single people in the years ahead. I’ve argued for a long time that even married (and cohabiting) households have less kids in down times just like in the 1930s and 1970s. Since 2007, the falling birth rate alone is proof enough already as is the trend toward more single people and households.

Here’s another worrisome trend. The number of households in the U.S. has grown from 52,000 in 1960 to around 122 million in 2013, but the number of people per household has fallen from 3.36 to 2.54 with most of that decline occurring by 1989. Since 2012, this trend has gone dead flat and smaller households aren’t as good for the economy as larger ones.

More people are moving in with roommates or staying with parents later. This is to be expected in a down economy, but this is occurring as most people see the recovery as increasingly sustainable after going on for over five years (even though they’ll be wrong about that).

This shows that the new younger generation doesn’t see the economy improving as much as older and more affluent households that have better job security and more financial assets that are benefiting from the Fed-generated stock bubble.

It’s estimated that every new household formed contributes $145,000 immediately in new construction and furnishings, not to count the acceleration in spending after people have formed the household and/or get married. It’s simple… no growth in households is NOT a good trend.

From every demographic angle, the long-term looks less promising, much more for some countries than others. Australia, Singapore and Switzerland look the best in the aging, developed world with the U.S., Canada, France and the U.K. more in the middle. Most other countries in central, southern and Eastern Europe, Russia and East Asia look downright horrible for decades to come.

The short-term demographic trends with fewer households, more singles, more older people and the more affluent going off their demographic cliff (after age 53), look dismal for the next several years as well.

The Fed and central banks around the world have gone to unprecedented lengths to pump money into our economies to offset these trends. But demographic trends, from all angles, only get worse ahead, especially starting in 2015.

This bubble and desperate stimulus plan WILL fail.


Source: Economy & Markets

[winston]

Unretirement is Unrealistic by Rodney Johnson

I was reading the paper recently when I happened upon a review of the book, Unretirement (Bloomsbury Press, 2014) by Chris Farrell. The premise of the book is that boomers have changed every stage of life they have passed through, and they are set to change retirement as well. No longer will workers rejoice when they reach age 65 and immediately hit the road to Florida.

Instead, the huge generation of boomers will look around and realize they are bored, healthy, well-educated and unable to afford traditional retirement. This will lead many if not most of them to seek out something — anything! — that they can do to provide meaning for their lives as well as income.

His suggestion — don’t wait. Plan today for your “unretirement,” the point in life where you can reinvent yourself, either full-time or part-time. In addition to keeping you active and involved with interpersonal relationships, still working in some capacity will provide substantially more financial benefits than any sort of savings or investment plan.

The reason is that while you work, you’re not drawing money from your savings and you’re marching closer to the day when you can draw 100% of your Social Security benefits. It’s a two-for-one great deal!

Farrell points out that more boomers are working during traditional retirement age today and the trend should only grow. In addition to benefiting the workers, this also bodes well for employers, who are watching decades of education and expense walk out the door.

But there’s another side to this story, and it starts with the same people — retirees and those nearing retirement...

While it’s true that the percentage of people 65 and over in the workforce has increased in recent years, the number has moved up from 12% in 1990 to 16% in 2010 and 18% today. That’s a big increase, but it still means that 82% of people 65 and over are not in the workforce. Even if another 10% of boomers stay on the job, the number would only reach 28%, with 72% kicking the time clock goodbye.

Farrell believes that roughly two-thirds of retirees will be able to make it on their savings, which seems odd. The 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve shows the median net worth of people 65 to 74 is $232,000, including $88,000 of equity in their primary residence. It’s difficult to see how two-thirds of retirees will be just fine when the median person 65 to 74 years old has roughly $145,000 outside of his home.

Keep in mind that this means half of everyone in that age group has less.

For Mr. Farrell, the real worry is about the one-third of retirees that have little savings and are counting on Social Security for the bulk of their retirement income. Given that the typical benefit today is $1,290 per month, it won’t go very far in covering housing, transportation, food, and medicine, much less travel and leisure.

But to say most everyone should and will simply work longer to alleviate this pressure glosses over a lot of facts. The people most able to continue working at their chosen pace are the same people who are already comfortable — top-level executives and entrepreneurs. The farther down the pay scale you go, the less likely an employee is to have any power to set his or her own schedule. The choice is to work, or not.

Then there is the whole question of what would happen if boomers did choose to stay in their jobs — or get new ones — en masse? Millions of job openings that would have been taken by gen-x’ers, which would make room for the emerging millennial generation to enter the workforce, would never become available. This would keep the young, emerging generation from getting a leg up on the corporate ladder, which would delay them even further in terms of ramping up their consumer spending.

Would we rather encourage boomers to stay in their jobs so that they can stash more cash and feel comfortable in retirement? Or make room for millennials to join the workforce in quality jobs so that they can go about getting married, having kids, and spending with abandon? The answer to the question is up for debate but in the end is probably moot.

While it might be much better for boomers to keep punching in for a few years after 65, most of them won’t do it. And of those that do, most are probably self-employed people that have the least financial need.


Source: Economy & Markets

[winston]

Life Expectancy Of Older People Increasing: Study

http://www.rttnews.com/story.aspx?Id=2412990

[winston]

The Simple Chart That the Fed and Economists Don’t Understand… Why GDP Won’t Keep Accelerating in 2015

I always say that economists don’t understand the most important thing about our economy. It’s not money, stocks, companies or banks.

The most important part is simple: people.

It’s you and me.

There are many crystal clear cycles most economists don’t understand — commodities, geopolitical, innovation and decennial boom/bust. Here at Dent Research, we do understand them but we’re most known for our focus on demographics — the predictable things people do as they age.

Spending is a big part of our research. And it’s not just a broad wall-to-wall mural that we look at… we prefer to look at Polaroid snapshots of every phase of life. We break it down by age group and we see it all from cradle to grave.

It’s all in the details…

As we age, everything about us changes, even things like calorie intake which peaks at age 14 on average, height at 19 and weight at 60.

I’ve found that the propensity to innovate and the power held in society relate to age. The younger generation tends to be more innovative peaking at age 22, as they’re more familiar with current technological advances — but the older generation holds the power especially at age 64 when their net worth peaks.

Young people tend to be inflationary since they “cost everything and produce nothing.” It costs $250,000 to get the average kid through high school. Then for many there’s college.

Then there’s the cost for businesses to train and equip new workers at age 20 on average before they become productive. Economists that think the massive inflation of the 1970s was caused by government and oil prices missed the impact of the massive baby boom entering the workforce.

Older individuals are deflationary as they downsize virtually everything. They reduce food intake, spending and even driving. With no effort at all, their physical appearance changes and they lose weight and lose inches in height… it’s inevitable.

They often move to smaller homes when the kids leave the nest or when one of them dies.

When they hit their mid-to-late 40s, they start serious saving and begin dipping into their vault and start spending down those savings from 64 forward. Statistics say they stop earning and retire on average at 63.

So where are we today?

There is one simple graph that summarizes the impact of consumers on our economy.

See larger image

I explored this spending premise in my first book, Our Power to Predict where I featured a graph that we’ve used for looking at 5-year cohorts dating back to 1989. It showed a peak in spending in the 45- to 49-year-old followed by a steep decline.

How do we look back at the previous patterns and apply them to today?

In order to focus on individual spending segments more effectively, we took 10 years of the Consumer Expenditure Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor to get enough data to get accurate charts on hundreds of sectors of consumer spending from diapers to nursing homes.

There was another benefit to this in-depth research into the consumer: we could more accurately plot the total spending cycle by year, not just by 5-year cohorts. When we were able to down the exact peak, it was age 46… that had already been our assumption for decades as that was where the correlation with the economy was the best.

It’s important to note that in this version of the consumer cycle of spending, we saw a plateau that landed between the ages of 39 to 53. Spending rises rapidly into age 39 as home buying is surging. Economic growth first slowed down when the baby boomers first hit that plateau in 2000. Stock prices adjusted for inflation have made little progress ever since.

The key turning points in our economy occurred in 2000 when spending first slowed down and then peaked at age 46 in 2007… bringing our next key turning point to late 2014, the last year of this long plateau at age 53.

There are two factors driving this plateau from 39 to 53. First is that affluent people peak in their spending later than the average or below average. While the average person peaks at 46, the most affluent go to school longer, as do their kids.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the Fed’s money printing in late 2008 worked to a moderate degree up until now. Economists who expect this improving trend to continue will be disappointed.

All you peak baby boomers born in 1961 are age 53 this year and right at the end of this plateau before spending tapers off rapidly and it’s one of the reasons why the economy looks so good right now.

According to our demographic research and to quote Jack Nicholson: “Maybe this is as good as it gets.”

Let’s delve a bit further into the numbers.

Cars over $50,000 are up 31% vs. 4% for cars under $50,000 because the more affluent dominate car buying in their early 50s. That brings us to the second factor driving this plateau: major consumer durable goods.

On the other hand, home buying has a dual peak at age 37 and 41. On average, home buying slows down in between those two peaks at around age 39. That’s a big deal and it hits its apex before their income hits its high by several years.

At 46, spending on furniture peaks (the next big durable goods area). Those numbers are comparable to 2007. The last to peak is automobiles at age 53 right now in 2014.

These are big-ticket items and the very ones that are most financed with debt. They’re the most leveraged in the consumer spending cycle.

The Fed has no clue that auto sales are very likely to peak right here, neither do the car dealers. They have no idea that the more affluent consumers that have continued to spend and benefit from quantitative easing (keep in mind that these households own over 90% of stocks and financial assets) are getting ready to peak and spend less as we move into 2015, especially in 2016.

Most economists are predicting growth of 3% to 4% next year, extrapolating trends as always.

Yeah, good luck on that.

So, let’s see how quantitative easing, which has been halted in the U.S. since October, works when the baby boom generation goes off the final demographic cliff at age 53 and auto sales start diving like home sales did back in 2006.

No one is going to see this curve ball coming.

But you saw it coming off the mitt… and you’ve already covered your bases.

Source: Economy & Markets

[winston]

The Simple Chart That the Fed and Economists Don’t Understand… Why GDP Won’t Keep Accelerating in 2015

I always say that economists don’t understand the most important thing about our economy. It’s not money, stocks, companies or banks.

The most important part is simple: people.

It’s you and me.

There are many crystal clear cycles most economists don’t understand — commodities, geopolitical, innovation and decennial boom/bust. Here at Dent Research, we do understand them but we’re most known for our focus on demographics — the predictable things people do as they age.

Spending is a big part of our research. And it’s not just a broad wall-to-wall mural that we look at… we prefer to look at Polaroid snapshots of every phase of life. We break it down by age group and we see it all from cradle to grave.

It’s all in the details…

As we age, everything about us changes, even things like calorie intake which peaks at age 14 on average, height at 19 and weight at 60.

I’ve found that the propensity to innovate and the power held in society relate to age. The younger generation tends to be more innovative peaking at age 22, as they’re more familiar with current technological advances — but the older generation holds the power especially at age 64 when their net worth peaks.

Young people tend to be inflationary since they “cost everything and produce nothing.” It costs $250,000 to get the average kid through high school. Then for many there’s college.

Then there’s the cost for businesses to train and equip new workers at age 20 on average before they become productive. Economists that think the massive inflation of the 1970s was caused by government and oil prices missed the impact of the massive baby boom entering the workforce.

Older individuals are deflationary as they downsize virtually everything. They reduce food intake, spending and even driving. With no effort at all, their physical appearance changes and they lose weight and lose inches in height… it’s inevitable.

They often move to smaller homes when the kids leave the nest or when one of them dies.

When they hit their mid-to-late 40s, they start serious saving and begin dipping into their vault and start spending down those savings from 64 forward. Statistics say they stop earning and retire on average at 63.

So where are we today?

There is one simple graph that summarizes the impact of consumers on our economy.

See larger image

I explored this spending premise in my first book, Our Power to Predict where I featured a graph that we’ve used for looking at 5-year cohorts dating back to 1989. It showed a peak in spending in the 45- to 49-year-old followed by a steep decline.

How do we look back at the previous patterns and apply them to today?

In order to focus on individual spending segments more effectively, we took 10 years of the Consumer Expenditure Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor to get enough data to get accurate charts on hundreds of sectors of consumer spending from diapers to nursing homes.

There was another benefit to this in-depth research into the consumer: we could more accurately plot the total spending cycle by year, not just by 5-year cohorts. When we were able to down the exact peak, it was age 46… that had already been our assumption for decades as that was where the correlation with the economy was the best.

It’s important to note that in this version of the consumer cycle of spending, we saw a plateau that landed between the ages of 39 to 53. Spending rises rapidly into age 39 as home buying is surging. Economic growth first slowed down when the baby boomers first hit that plateau in 2000. Stock prices adjusted for inflation have made little progress ever since.

The key turning points in our economy occurred in 2000 when spending first slowed down and then peaked at age 46 in 2007… bringing our next key turning point to late 2014, the last year of this long plateau at age 53.

There are two factors driving this plateau from 39 to 53. First is that affluent people peak in their spending later than the average or below average. While the average person peaks at 46, the most affluent go to school longer, as do their kids.

This is one of the biggest reasons why the Fed’s money printing in late 2008 worked to a moderate degree up until now. Economists who expect this improving trend to continue will be disappointed.

All you peak baby boomers born in 1961 are age 53 this year and right at the end of this plateau before spending tapers off rapidly and it’s one of the reasons why the economy looks so good right now.

According to our demographic research and to quote Jack Nicholson: “Maybe this is as good as it gets.”

Let’s delve a bit further into the numbers.

Cars over $50,000 are up 31% vs. 4% for cars under $50,000 because the more affluent dominate car buying in their early 50s. That brings us to the second factor driving this plateau: major consumer durable goods.

On the other hand, home buying has a dual peak at age 37 and 41. On average, home buying slows down in between those two peaks at around age 39. That’s a big deal and it hits its apex before their income hits its high by several years.

At 46, spending on furniture peaks (the next big durable goods area). Those numbers are comparable to 2007. The last to peak is automobiles at age 53 right now in 2014.

These are big-ticket items and the very ones that are most financed with debt. They’re the most leveraged in the consumer spending cycle.

The Fed has no clue that auto sales are very likely to peak right here, neither do the car dealers. They have no idea that the more affluent consumers that have continued to spend and benefit from quantitative easing (keep in mind that these households own over 90% of stocks and financial assets) are getting ready to peak and spend less as we move into 2015, especially in 2016.

Most economists are predicting growth of 3% to 4% next year, extrapolating trends as always.

Yeah, good luck on that.

So, let’s see how quantitative easing, which has been halted in the U.S. since October, works when the baby boom generation goes off the final demographic cliff at age 53 and auto sales start diving like home sales did back in 2006.

No one is going to see this curve ball coming.

But you saw it coming off the mitt… and you’ve already covered your bases.

Source: Economy & Markets

[winston]

China: Car Accidents

Road injuries have emerged as the third-leading cause of death in China, compared with eighth in the developing world and ahead of a range of cancers, according to a global study in The Lancet medical journal. (http://bit.ly/1x3IlL1)

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuter ... z3MLPjKbhP

Source: SCMP

[winston]

Sex is Dead in Japan: Committing Economic Hara-kiri

It’s one thing to naturally have fewer kids as a country urbanizes and gets more wealthy. It costs more to raise and educate kids in such a society and so couples naturally choose to have fewer kids and educate them better. Every developed country has seen such trends, as have the urban populations of emerging countries.

But there’s something different in Japan, something downright scary. They not only have one of the lowest birth rates per 100,000 women of 1.41 vs. a 2.1 replacement rate, but single and married people increasingly have no interest in sex or romantic relationships.

I’ve commented on this before, but there is a good 2011 report by Japan’s population center that has more detail on this dangerous trend.

The one thing that Japan, East Asia and southern Europe share is that women get virtually no help from the government, corporations or their husbands when they have kids.

But in Japan it goes farther…

Here are some key findings:

45% of women and 25% of men 16 to 24 are “not interested in or despised sexual contact.”
More than 49% of Japanese citizens are single.
40% of unmarried men and 61% of unmarried women age 18 to 34 are not in any kind of romantic relationship.
23% of women and 27% of men say “they are not interested in any kind of romantic relationship.”
39% of Japanese women and 36% of men of child-bearing age, 18 to 34, have never had sex.

Women in their early 20s have a 25% chance of never getting married and a 40% chance of never having kids.

Japanese laws and social customs make it extremely difficult for women to have a career and a family. Women who get pregnant, or even just marry, are generally expected to quit work and become a housewife.

The following chart shows men’s reasons for staying single. I’ll quote the survey results for women as well and they’re mostly similar. The survey was taken periodically between 1987 and 2011. There are 5 surveys in order but I’ll quote the most recent one in 2011.

See larger image

The key reasons were:

46.2% of men and 51.3% of women: “cannot meet a suitable partner.”
31.2% of men and 30.4% of women: “don’t feel the necessity.”
30.3% of men and 16.5% of women: “do not have enough money.” (Here’s where men differed the most for obvious reasons and a poor economy.)
25.5% of men and 31.1% of women: “do not want to lose freedom or comfort.” (This is where women rated higher due to conflict with career ambitions for them.)

On top of this extraordinarily high lack of interest in sex and having families, the Japanese live longer than any other wealthy country in the world, with a life expectancy of 84 vs. 79 in the U.S. and 80 to 81 in most of Europe.

That means they retire longer and require more support from a dwindling workforce.

In 2012, Japan’s population fell 212,000 with 1,256,254 deaths vs. 1,037,101 births making up almost all of that difference and further hampered by very minor immigration. Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million recently to about 97 million by 2050… that’s a decline of 24%.

Much worse and even more critical is the enormous fall in workforce growth of the population aged 15 to 64. It peaked in the mid-1990s at 87 million and is projected to fall to 48 million by 2050. A whopping 45%!

By 2050, that 48 million workforce will be supporting 37 million elderly aged 65 and over.

If this isn’t economic suicide, or Hara-kiri, I don’t know what is.

Source: Economy & Markets