Editing Baby boomers (section)

=== Asia ===
{{Hatnote|See also: [[Aging of China]], [[Aging of Japan|of Japan]], and [[Aging of South Korea|of South Korea]]}}<gallery mode="packed" heights="209" caption="Population pyramids of China, Japan, and South Korea in 2018">
File:China population pyramid (2018).jpg
File:Japan population pyramid (2018).jpg
File:South Korea population pyramid (2018).jpg
</gallery> During the time of the [[Great Leap Forward]], the [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP) encouraged couples to have as many children as possible because it believed a growing labor force was needed for national development along socialist lines.<ref name="Nectar-2021" /> China's baby-boom cohort is the largest in the world. According to journalist and photographer Howard French, who spent many years in China, many Chinese neighborhoods were, by the mid-2010s, disproportionately filled with the elderly, to whom the Chinese themselves referred as a "lost generation", who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when higher education was discouraged and large numbers of people were sent to the countryside for political reasons. As China's baby boomers retire in the late-2010s and onward, the people replacing in the workforce will be a much smaller cohort due to the one-child policy. Consequently, China's central government faces a stark economic trade-off between "cane and butter"—how much to spend on social welfare programs such as state pensions to support the elderly and how much to spend in the military to achieve the nation's geopolitical objectives.<ref name="Woodruff-2016" />

According to the [[National Development Council (Taiwan)|National Development Council of Taiwan]], the nation's population could start shrinking by 2022 and the number of people of working age could fall 10% by 2027. About half of Taiwanese would be aged 50 or over by 2034.<ref name="Hsu-2018">{{Cite news|last=Hsu|first=Crystal|date=August 31, 2018|title=Population decline might start sooner than forecast|work=Taipei Times|url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/08/31/2003699509|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101022704/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/08/31/2003699509}}</ref> At the current rate, Taiwan is set to transition from an aged to super-aged society, where 21% of the population is over 65 years of age, in eight years, compared to seven years for Singapore, eight years for South Korea, 11 years for Japan, 14 for the United States, 29 for France, and 51 for the United Kingdom.<ref name="Liao-2018">{{Cite news|last=Liao|first=George|date=April 10, 2018|title=MOI: Taiwan officially becomes an aged society with people over 65 years old breaking the 14% mark|work=Taiwan News|department=Society|url=https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3402395|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101213604/https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3402395}}</ref>

Japan at present has one of the oldest populations in the world and persistently subreplacement fertility, currently 1.4 per woman. Japan's population peaked in 2017. Forecasts suggest that the elderly will make up 35% of Japan's population by 2040.<ref name="BBC News-2020">{{Cite news|date=July 16, 2020|title=Seven countries with big (and small) population problems|work=BBC News|department=World|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53424726|url-status=live|access-date=August 24, 2020|archive-date=August 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801050016/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53424726}}</ref> As of 2018, Japan was already a super-aged society,<ref name="Steger-2018">{{Cite news|last=Steger|first=Isabella|date=August 31, 2018|title=Taiwan's population could start shrinking in four years|work=Quartz|url=https://qz.com/1375403/taiwans-population-could-start-shrinking-by-2022/|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101213549/https://qz.com/1375403/taiwans-population-could-start-shrinking-by-2022/}}</ref> with 27% of its people being older than 65 years.<ref name="Duarte-2018">{{Cite news|last=Duarte|first=Fernando|date=April 8, 2018|title=Why the world now has more grandparents than grandchildren|work=BBC News|department=Generation Project|url=https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190405-why-the-world-now-has-more-grandparents-than-grandchildren|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=December 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222123013/https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190405-why-the-world-now-has-more-grandparents-than-grandchildren}}</ref> According to government data, Japan's total fertility rate was 1.43 in 2017.<ref name="Japan Times-2019">{{Cite news|date=May 10, 2019|title=Japan enacts legislation making preschool education free in effort to boost low fertility rate|work=Japan Times|department=National|url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/10/national/japan-enacts-legislation-making-preschool-education-free-effort-boost-low-fertility-rate/|url-status=dead|access-date=January 1, 2010|archive-date=May 10, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190510102655/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/10/national/japan-enacts-legislation-making-preschool-education-free-effort-boost-low-fertility-rate/}}</ref> According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, with a median age of 47 years in 2017.<ref name="Desjardins-2019">{{Cite web|last=Desjardins|first=Jeff|date=April 18, 2019|title=Median Age of the Population in Every Country|url=https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-of-the-population-in-every-country/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200722234817/https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-of-the-population-in-every-country/|archive-date=July 22, 2020|website=Visual Capitalist}}</ref>

A baby boom occurred in the aftermath of the Korean War, and the government subsequently encouraged people to have no more than two children per couple. Although South Korean fertility remained above replacement well in to the 1970s,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Haub |first1=Carl |title=Did South Korea's Population Policy Work Too Well? |url=https://www.prb.org/resources/did-south-koreas-population-policy-work-too-well/ |website=PRB}}</ref> its fertility has since been declining due to declining economic prospects for young people, and women's liberation. In recent times, the South Korean government has since made many efforts to increase the national fertility rate through subsidies; however, these efforts have failed, and South Korea retains one of the world's lowest fertility rates, with a [[total fertility rate]] of less than 1 child per woman.<ref name="Haas-2018">{{Cite news|last=Haas|first=Benjamin|date=September 3, 2018|title=South Korea's fertility rate set to hit record low of 0.96|work=The Guardian|department=South Korea|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low|url-status=live|access-date=February 8, 2020|archive-date=April 25, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200425184629/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low}}</ref>