Global population living six years longer than in 1990: study
Global life expectancy has risen by more than six years since 1990 thanks to falling death rates from cancer and heart disease in rich countries and better survival in poor countries from diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria. But in an analysis of the 2013 Global Burden ...
Abe bill would steal from temps to engorge industrialists
Akemi Hirose, 39, recalls when her contract as a temporary worker at a medical organization in Kanagawa Prefecture was suddenly terminated three years and three months after she started. No clear explanation was given by the organization or the temp dispatch company, she said. Hirose, ...
Shrinking well: Is depopulation affecting Japan's energy, climate goals?
Keishi looks a lot like it did when Toshiko Nakamura first moved there four decades ago. The quiet farming community in Nagano Prefecture is a patchwork of verdant rice fields, lush kitchen gardens and picturesque post-and-beam houses nestled between pine and chestnut trees on ...
Japan population panel says aim for GDP growth of 2% at most, even after 50 years
A panel tasked with tackling the country's declining population on Friday compiled its final report that sets a goal of maintaining gross domestic product growth of around 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent even after 50 years. The panel under the government's Council on Economic and ...
China parents put all eggs in one basket due to family planning rules
Communist Party leaders have praised their one-child policy for preventing the population from spiraling out of control, but critics say it has spawned decades of forced abortions, infanticide and child trafficking. China, the world's most populous country with nearly 1.4 billion people, says the policy ...
Following an incomplete count due to ethnic conflicts in parts of the country, Myanmar said on Saturday that its first census in 30 years shows the population to be 51.4 million, some 10 million less than expected. The provisional findings of the census, taken between ...
Budget requests for fiscal 2015 have surged a record ¥101.7 trillion amid Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to halt Japan's population decline and remilitarize, government officials said Friday. It is the first time general-account budget requests have topped the ¥100 trillion ($961.7 billion) line, highlighting ...
Japan records fewer than 500,000 births in first half of year
The number of babies born in Japan in the January to June period dropped 2.7 percent from a year earlier to 496,391, pointing to the possibility of the annual figure slipping below the 1 million mark for the first time on record, government data ...
Pensioners' lives are likely to become even more severe in fiscal 2015 as scheduled increases in pension payments track lower than the rise in general prices.
Aichi politician reprimanded for 'punctured condoms' population proposal
A member of the Shinshiro Municipal Assembly in Aichi Prefecture proposed distributing "punctured condoms" to married residents to bolster the city's dwindling population, the legislature's secretariat said Friday. Independent Assemblyman Tomonaga Osada was verbally reprimanded Wednesday for the controversial proposal last month and told his ...
As Scotland decides, not all Scots get a say
Ruth McPherson was born and educated in Scotland but left to work in London two years ago and so has no say on whether her native country should end three centuries of union with England. Over a million Scots like McPherson living outside the land ...
EU court adviser says extreme obesity can be disability at work
A European Union law barring job discrimination against the disabled may apply to extremely obese people, an adviser to Europe's top court said Thursday. The nonbinding opinion concerns the dismissal of Karsten Kaltoft, a child-minder, by a Danish city council in 2010. Kaltoft argued that ...
