Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > Annual Report on the Promotion of Science and Technology 1999 > Part1 Chapter1 Section1 2

(1) Today's Low Birth Rates cause rapid increase relatively. The population of aged people. The increasing rate of the percentage of aged people in Japan is faster than it in any other advanced countries. Introducing the scientific and technological systems that assure vigor in the face of eldering of society would enable Japan to contribute to and lead the world in this field.

Assuming a continuation of the capital and labor investment trends of the first half of the 1990s, technology's contribution to growth of economy would have to be increased by approximately 300% over the level of the early 1990s in order to maintain an annual growth rate of 2%. Achieving annual growth rates in excess of 4% would require a roughly 1,000% increase over the level of the early 1990s. Thus, dramatic increases in the contribution of technology to growth require innovative, new ideas that depart from conventional thinking.

To slow down the rate at which the workforce is shrinking, Japan must create working environments that are conducive to women and elderly persons who wish to work. Science and technology are certain to play a major role in creating the new businesses and forms of employment that will enable this pool of labor to find employment more readily and to produce even greater economic value added.

The public is concerned about the raising burden of caring for the elderly, and about the larger burden that raising social security obligation will place on the working generation. Medical expenditure, which totaled \24 trillion in 1995, are forecasted to reach the \90-trillion mark.

Another important theme in science and technology is to minimize the rise in medical expenditure and the number of elderly requiring care by studying the aging process, developing new medicine to compensate for aging-related hypofunction, providing functional foodstuffs, and finding other ways to improve the health of the elderly.

It is essential to improve the social infrastructure in ways that enable the elderly and the handicapped to engage in social and economic activities. There exist many opportunities to utilize science and technology to develop new devices and facilities.