The Risks of Japan’s Aging Democracy

Kishida Fumio announced on August 14 that he would not run in September's election for the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), thus guaranteeing an end to his nearly three-year tenure as Japan’s prime minister.

At 49.9, Japan’s median age is the oldest among the world’s major economies, making it a test case of how an aging electorate can affect development through the ballot box. Hypothetically, advanced age should retard development. Politicians seeking to curry favor with elderly voters would channel the country’s resources to pensions and healthcare at the expense of education, research and development, digital infrastructure, and other future-oriented investments. As the youths spurn democratic politics as not catering to their interests, politicians become even more beholden to the interests of the elderly.

But does Japan conform to this hypothesis? By one measure, the answer is an unequivocal yes. According to data maintained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, voter turnout for parliamentary elections steadily declined from 73.99 percent in 1967 to 55.93 percent in 2021. While the turnout of voters in their 60s stayed relatively the same (77.08 percent to 71.38 percent), the voting rate for those in their 20s nosedived from 66.69 percent to 36.5 percent in the same period. This divergence clearly illustrates the correlation between age and interest in political participation and accentuates the size of the elderly electorate beyond their actual proportion of the overall population.

More worryingly, there appears to be a corresponding age gap in how Japanese citizens view the general wellbeing of their country. According to the latest opinions survey conducted by the Cabinet Office, among respondents in their 70s, 67.7 percent stated that they love their country and 63.1 percent are satisfied with society overall. The corresponding figures for those in their late teens and 20s are only 40.2 percent and 40.8 percent. With more and more youths disappointed with the outlook of Japan as a country, a greater share is becoming uninterested in heading to the ballot box.

The data confirms the hypothesis that Japan is headed toward “old people politics.” Even faster than they are disappearing in demographic data and the streets, the country’s young people are disappearing from the electorate, driven by their general pessimism about society’s overall direction. The political helplessness of the youths is contrasted by the country’s older citizens, who, out of their greater love for the country and greater social satisfaction, continue to trust in the ballot box’s ability to make society even aligned with their interests.

Due to the disproportionate presence of the elderly in the electorate, Japanese politicians seem to be adjusting their policies for the sake of the elderly. The increasing focus on the elderly is clear when comparing the country’s annual budget across the past few decades. The proportion of expenditure on social welfare, which includes pensions and healthcare, steadily increased from 18.4 percent in 1998 to 33.7 percent in 2024. In the same period, the respective expenditures for education/R&D and public works declined from 8 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively, to 4.9 percent and 5.4 percent. The story is one in which spending on “old people” needs is squeezing out human and physical capital investments that will make Japan globally competitive in the future.

Granted, one could argue that the greater resources devoted to welfare in Japan merely cater to the genuine needs of an older population. After all, between 1998 and today, the country’s proportion of over-65s increased from 17 percent to 30 percent. However, to say that expenditure should simply be proportional to population ignores the evolution of technology in recent years. Even if the youth population declines, implementing digital transformation in the government setting, as Japan has struggled through its newly created Digital Agency, requires increased spending on new infrastructure – and the teaching of people who can use them – rather than the decline seen in the budget.

It is no wonder that Japanese youths do not view their country as moving in a positive direction. With future-oriented investment steadily declining, Japan increasingly lacks government-led efforts to compete with other major powers in yet-to-be-developed cutting-edge technologies. The result is the possibility of Japan missing out on technology-led economic development in the coming years.

What is definite is that the country’s youths are increasingly convinced that they cannot change that possibility in the ballot box. For other democracies with older populations, this correlation in itself should be a warning sign, that the youths’ voices need to be accounted for even as their numbers decline so that the country remains on a path of future-oriented economic development.