- Feb 5, 2002
- 167,156
- 56,579
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
“Growth is anticipated.”
That’s how the Tokyo-based company Oji Holdings described the Japanese adult diaper economy last week. The company announced in a press release that it would be terminating its “domestic disposal diaper business for babies” later this year.
The baby diaper market in Japan is a “low-growth business,” the company indicated, though the 150-year-old company said it will not exit the diaper business altogether.
The company “aims to continue … focusing its resources on the market for the domestic disposable diapers business for adults, where growth is anticipated,” the press release said.
Oji’s pivot toward adult diaper manufacturing underscores an ongoing crisis facing many developed nations around the world, Japan in particular: cratering fertility rates.
Global fertility has been falling for decades, though the problem is often most acute in industrialized nations with high standards of living.
Many of these countries are well below the “replacement rate” of fertility — generally about 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime — needed to keep a population stable. In the U.S. the overall fertility rate is about 1.7; in the U.K. it’s about 1.5; in Germany it’s about 1.4.
Japan, meanwhile, sits at about 1.3 births per woman. The country’s severely low fertility rate has persisted for decades; it has not been at replacement rate since roughly the 1970s.
With so relatively few births of children, the country is growing steadily older: The International Monetary Fund in 2020 saidthat “with a median age of 48.4 years, Japan’s population is the world’s oldest,” with the government predicting that by 2060 “there will be almost one elderly person for each person of working age.”
Continued below.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
That’s how the Tokyo-based company Oji Holdings described the Japanese adult diaper economy last week. The company announced in a press release that it would be terminating its “domestic disposal diaper business for babies” later this year.
The baby diaper market in Japan is a “low-growth business,” the company indicated, though the 150-year-old company said it will not exit the diaper business altogether.
The company “aims to continue … focusing its resources on the market for the domestic disposable diapers business for adults, where growth is anticipated,” the press release said.
Oji’s pivot toward adult diaper manufacturing underscores an ongoing crisis facing many developed nations around the world, Japan in particular: cratering fertility rates.
Global fertility has been falling for decades, though the problem is often most acute in industrialized nations with high standards of living.
Many of these countries are well below the “replacement rate” of fertility — generally about 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime — needed to keep a population stable. In the U.S. the overall fertility rate is about 1.7; in the U.K. it’s about 1.5; in Germany it’s about 1.4.
Japan, meanwhile, sits at about 1.3 births per woman. The country’s severely low fertility rate has persisted for decades; it has not been at replacement rate since roughly the 1970s.
With so relatively few births of children, the country is growing steadily older: The International Monetary Fund in 2020 saidthat “with a median age of 48.4 years, Japan’s population is the world’s oldest,” with the government predicting that by 2060 “there will be almost one elderly person for each person of working age.”
Church has warned of cratering fertility for years
Continued below.
Japan company’s pivot to adult diapers underscores fertility rates
Tokyo-based Oji Holdings’ pivot to adult diaper manufacturing underscores an ongoing crisis facing many developed nations around the world: cratering fertility rates.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
