The number of Japanese age 65 or older stands at a record 22.72 million, accounting for a record 17.9 percent of the population, the Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said in a report Friday.
The number of elderly people was up 820,000 from the previous year, meaning that one in 5.6 people is now 65 or over, according to the report. Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday, is observed today.
The proportion of senior citizens in the population, which rose 0.6 percent, is now higher than the 17.7 percent in Italy and 17.3 percent in Sweden. Of the elderly, 15.49 million are older than 70, 9.45 million are over 75, 5.07 million are over 80 and 2.38 million are over 85.
The report says 9.51 million of the elderly are men and 13.21 million are women. Among those over 85, there are about 2.5 times more women than men.
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates the number of people over 65 will reach 31.88 million in 2015, or one in four people.
In 2000, 4.93 million, or about 22.6 percent, of those older than 65 were working or intended to work, the report says. The same ratio was 12.8 percent in the United States, 6.2 percent in Canada, and 3.6 percent in Italy.