60% of Men, 50% Of Women Between 18 And 39 Have No Partner
by Beth on Monday, August 26, 2013
by Beth on Monday, August 26, 2013
A key issue for the Abe administration is to tackle Japan’s declining birthrate.
Now, the 2013 edition of the annual report issued by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been unveiled, revealing that over half of men and women not only don’t have a partner, but they don’t even have a friend of the opposite sex. Netizens were shocked at these percentages, making this one of the most tweeted about stories of the day.
From Yomiuri Shimbun:
60% Of Young Men And 50% Of Young Women Have No Partner
On August 26, the 2013 edition of the Annual Health, Labour and Welfare Report was unveiled.
This is the first edition of the report in which has dealt with “young people” as a separate theme, and one of the report’s special features was to analyse why young people are getting married later and the rate of unmarried people is rising, both of which are linked to the declining birthrate. The report stated “One cause of these problems is in the difficulty of finding your ‘ideal partner’ by yourself”.
Once the white paper is reported at a cabinet meeting in mid-September, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is scheduled to publish the report. Under the subtitle “Investigating Young People’s Consciousness”, the report analysed how young people felt about marriage, childbirth/child raising, and work.
Regarding marriage, the white paper indicated that “There is a limited number of young people who have a partner they who could possibly be a candidate for marriage”, based on results from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (JSPSS) survey (2010), such as (1) Just under 90% of unmarried people aged between 18 and 39 want to get married; (2) More than 60% of men and 50% of women have neither a partner of the opposite sex nor a friend of the opposite sex.
