Proportion of Elderly Remains World's Highest in Japan

Tokyo, June 29 (Jiji Press)--People aged 65 or over accounted for 23.1 pct of Japan's population, the government's official census survey for 2010 showed Wednesday.
The preliminary results found that the proportion, up 2.9 percentage points from the previous census survey in 2005, remained the highest in the world, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said.
The number of people aged 65 or over stood at 29.29 million.
The number of people in the age bracket who live alone, excluding those housed in nursing-care and other facilities, stood at 4.58 million, up from 3.87 million. One out of 10 men and one out of five women in the age group live alone, the data showed.
The preliminary results covered about 500,000 households, or one pct of all households in Japan. The survey was conducted in October.
The survey also showed that the number of households in Japan stood at 50.93 million. The average number of household members fell to 2.46 from 2.55 in the previous survey.
The number of single-member households stood at 15.89 million, accounting for 31.2 pct of all households, up from 29.5 pct. Such households thus became the most common type of household in Japan for the first time since records began in 1960.
The number of households made up of couples and children stood at 14.59 million, accounting for 28.7 pct, down from 29.8 pct. Ten million households are made up of couples only, accounting for 19.6 pct, unchanged.
The survey also revealed that the number of children aged under 15 stood at 16.8 million. The proportion of children stood at 13.2, down 0.6 point.