Socio-economic dimension of Japan's population ageing

The ageing of the population is one of the main challenges Japan is facing. It occurs under the influence of both the economic achievements of the country and the peculiarities of the demographic situation. The article considers three aspects of population ageing - the position of elderly Japanese in the labor market and the problem of their employment, the financial situation and the level of consumption of elderly citizens, as well as the impact of population ageing on the situation in the social security system. The elderly Japanese have become an important reserve of the workforce, which compensates for the reduction in the number of young workers. Their economic activity has significantly increased in the last decade, in particularly due to the purposeful policy of the state, which legislatively establishes rules for extending the employment of workers after reaching the teinen. The incomes of elderly Japanese allow most of them to maintain a fairly high level of consumption, and non-working citizens use their savings for this purpose too. The state policy of smoothing economic inequality in this group, which increases sharply after entering retirement age due to increased diversification of lifestyles, also contributes to maintaining a decent standard of living for older citizens. In general, the absolute and relative growth in the number of senior citizens among Japanese consumers does not lead to a reduction in the volume of the consumer market, although it affects in a certain way the structure of goods and services offered in it. The most obvious negative consequence of the ageing of the population is a sharp increase in the share of spending on senior citizens in the total state spending on the welfare sphere. The main part of their financing is borne by working generations, and the inevitable further change in the ratio between the number of working Japanese and the number of elderly citizens in favor of the latter threatens to further aggravate the problem of financing the country's welfare system. Considering the tools offered by Japanese specialists, the author believes that Japan will be able to preserve the obvious achievements in the field of social security without overstraining its financing system.